A Comprehensive Guide
Today’s companies are growing at a phenomenal rate, making the competition for top talent fiercer. Resources are getting scarce, and the demand for top talent is through the roof. Gauging a great fit is tough, and if you try to take a leap of faith without the right due diligence, it could cost you a small fortune.
Hiring has become difficult, and this guide can help you with how to hire employees. It discusses some fundamental concepts that apply to the hiring process. It also highlights a wide variety of hiring techniques that employers can use to meet their needs.
The hiring process involves reviewing applications for the open roles, shortlisting the potential candidates, testing the candidates through interviews and other testing tools, and making the decision to hire them. The hiring process also involves performing various pre-employment tests and checks.
As with most things in business, there is no definitive answer to this question. But there are signs that you may have missed or overlooked because you may have been too pre-occupied with other essential aspects of your business.
These five red flags indicate that it’s time to hire:
Your employees are overworked
Have you noticed that your people are missing deadlines on their projects?
Do they appear more stressed than usual?
Deal with employee burnout by adding more people to the team. If you don’t, you may lose some of the people you have, making the situation worse for people who stay.
Your current team has a skills gap
Are you finding it challenging to meet your growing business needs of specialized skills?
When you started your business, your team was good enough to meet the business needs. But now, as you grow your business, the skills of your current team may not be enough; you need people with more specialized skills. You have a choice to either train your existing team to level up or add a team with a better skill set. Step up and make that decision.
You’re missing new opportunities
Do you turn down a new client or a new exciting project because you don’t have the time to manage it?
Hiring a team of qualified candidates who can tackle new projects or clients can solve your problem.
Cutting down costs is turning out to be expensive
You may think that having a small team is a way of saving money. But are you really saving money?
If a project needs extra human resources to meet the deadline, do you end up paying your employees for overtime?
Making your employees work overtime is not a long-term solution; it may result in burnout and employees heading for the door. When employees leave, you lose the investment you put into hiring employees and training them. That’s not all – you also lose time and energy in looking for a replacement.
Customer service is weakening
Have your customer complaints gone up?
Are project deadlines extended or not met at all?
Recognize the problem and correct it. If you have checked off the above points, then you have realized that you need to hire employees. That said, hiring employees is not an easy process. The statistics in the next section tells us just how challenging hiring employees can be.
According to a Glassdoor survey, the following are the challenges most hiring managers face:
74% of hiring decision-makers feel that candidates have access to enough information about the company and the job before they apply. Yet, three in five candidates say job realities do not match expectations.
76% of hiring decision-makers face challenges in attracting and hiring passive candidates as they are slow at responding to contact through networking sites.
76% report the poor quality of candidates.
65% don't know where to advertise jobs to attract and hire the right person.
65% have trouble competing with compensation and employee benefit packages offered by the competition.
72% face budget constraints.
Salary and compensation
Company reputation/Employer brand
Company culture
Company mission and values
Interviews with managers
Senior leadership
Current employee reviews
Relationships with current employees
Former employee reviews
The hiring process starts with the company identifying its hiring needs and ends with the candidate accepting a job offer. The typical hiring process steps vary depending on the job role and company. But, most hiring process goes through these seven phases:
The first phase involves planning. Follow the steps below to get the ball rolling.
Even before you start searching for a new employee, it's recommended to be clear from the get-go on what the job requires. List down the job's responsibilities and skills required. Get the specific details of the job expectations and work requirements documented.
Job descriptions help organizations and job applicants figure out what is expected in a specific position and help determine whether an applicant is a good fit for that position.
Importance of
a Job Description
A job title should:
The section on competencies should:
This section of the job description should:
This section of the job description should:
This section of the job description should:
Once you are finished writing a job description, it’s ready to reach out to the masses. The 3 methods below are proven to be successful in getting the attention of the potential candidates.
According to CareerBuilder, 82% of employers said that employee referrals generate the best return on investment (ROI).
Employee referrals are a tried and true hiring strategy. You can turn your employees into your very own hiring agency. Why? Because your employees know your business inside out.
However, make sure you reward the employees for the referrals. Consider these options to offer:
31% of hires come from job search engines and job boards. Job postings remain a top source of hires.
Although job posting and job description may be used interchangeably, they are not the same.
A job description is a detailed document that outlines the responsibilities and duties of the position while a job posting is an advertisement specially designed to sell the position to potential applicants. Therefore, a job posting is a thinner and concise version of the job description.
An effective job ad generally consists of the following:
Job Posting and Advertising on Job Portals
You have numerous options to post your job ads on job boards. Some job boards like Indeed and Glassdoor have a massive database and extensive reach across background, industry, and experience. Some job portals like Career Builder and Glassdoor take a fee for job posting, but they help you attract strong candidates through their AI and machine learning tools.
Job Posting and Advertising on Social Media
Job seekers depend on social networks to search and apply for jobs. So, to attract these people, you need to be where they are – on popular social sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Posting jobs on these social networking platforms helps increase the visibility of your job ads among job seekers and potential applicants.
In a buoyant jobs market, companies are competing with one another for top talent. Hiring a staffing agency to identify and attract talent can give you a competitive edge.
#1. Ability to identify talent
They work as an intermediary between you and the potential candidates. They have strong networks and have a clear idea of where to find talent.
#2. Negotiate salaries
They can successfully negotiate salaries on behalf of both the parties to reach a mutually agreeable remuneration package.
#3. Advertise roles
They advertise vacancies – both online and on the high street. They also actively look for professionals who fit the job description.
#4. Offer industry insight
They have significant expertise and job market insights to understand the impact of supply and demand in the job market.
#5. Interview candidates
They have their own candidate screening and interviewing process in place, which can save your time and money. Rest assured, the candidates who come to you are a filtered product of the agency’s screening and interview process.
After the successful completion of Phase 2, you'll have tons of applications to sort through. According to a survey, resume screening is the most time-consuming part of the hiring process, and it is estimated to take up 23 hours for just one hire.
You can begin shortlisting the candidates based on these parameters:
The below how-to guide focuses on how you can use technology to screen and shortlist candidates.
The biggest challenges of screening resumes: volume and quality of hire.
Automation helps solve these two significant challenges. There are various tools and software available which have a shortlisting algorithm that enables you to shortlist candidates on various data points, thus making your job easier. One of the hiring technologies is an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
94% of the organizations that use ATS say that it has improved their hiring process.
An ATS organizes all the resumes received for each job role and makes accurate recommendations about which candidates should move forward to the next stage, thus increasing the quality of hire too.
After shortlisting, you are now left with a handful of candidates to assess and interview. That said, this is a crucial part of the entire hiring process.
Depending on the skills and competencies you need for your job role, make your candidate go through assessments, which may include the following:
The following are the types of interviews you can conduct -
Phone Interviews
Before you set up a full interview appointment with the shortlisted candidates, make sure you set up a phone interview to quickly assess their interest in the role. This is also an excellent way to know if the candidate has already accepted a job with another firm.
Video Interviews
Video interviews are great for interviewing candidates who are:
In-person Interviews
This is the most common type of interview. At this stage, you already know that the candidate is qualified for the role. The interview allows you to delve a little deeper into culture fit and work style. Ask questions to identify what motivates the candidate, what made them apply for the job, and how they work on a team, amongst other interview questions.
| Note: After the interview is done, remember to thank candidates for applying. Communicate promptly and appropriately to the ones who didn’t clear the interview round. |
If you are at this phase, it means that you have already zeroed in on a candidate. Before you roll out the offer, it is crucial to conduct a few pre-employment checks. These background checks will enable you to reduce the risk of hiring employees who can prove harmful to your organization.
After the candidate checks off all the checks, it’s time to send the job offer. The job offer should state what the role is when it starts and what it pays.
While writing a job offer letter, ensure that you clearly describe your company and the position that’s being offered. It should reflect the personality and culture of your company. Many job posting sites, like Indeed, offer job letter templates, which you can customize as per your needs.
Note: Once you send out an offer, don’t be surprised if the candidate rejects the offer. Negotiate the salary until you can’t pay a penny more.
According to statistics –
To avoid such poor new hire experiences, prepare for their arrival. Go through this checklist of things:
Ensure that the new employee is aware of the company's culture, mission, vision, structure, key developments, and can identify with it.
Ensure that the new employee has all the materials and knowledge to do their job well.
Ensure that the new hire feels welcome and is encouraged to build and promote valuable relationships with colleagues.
Bottom Line
The best way to find the right candidates for your open roles is by automating your hiring process. Jobsoid, a mobile-responsive applicant tracking software, is capable of automating the hiring process at every phase, and at every step, thus making the hiring process a whole lot easier.
