Resources

by Brian Cavataio 05/15/2021

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Finding qualified employees in a timely fashion is hard, and it only seems to be getting more difficult. Research shows that the average interview process has nearly doubled over the course of the last four years. While it is important to ensure that your candidates are qualified, an exceedingly slow process could very well filter out any top talent you may be looking for; if they don’t get hired quickly, they’ll most likely move on to the next opportunity.

If your recruitment efforts fail to find the sort of candidates you’re looking for, it may be because your hiring process is far too slow. Here are 10 proven ways to speed up your hiring process and help you find the employees you’re looking for.

1. Be Clear and Concise in Your Job Listing

Avoid any potential confusion that may arise from an ambiguous job description. Be sure to include exactly what the job entails and the specific qualifications required. Failure to do this can leave you with many useless applications obscuring any qualified candidates that may have expressed interest in the job.

2. Use Technology

If you’re not up to date with all the different ways technology can improve your hiring process, your process is likely too slow. Websites like Glassdoor and ZipRecruiter and recruitment software can exponentially increase the speed at which you find applicants.

The right technology can help you develop a streamlined process through which you acquire and interact with applicants. Use it to your advantage, and things will speed up for you in no time.

3. Contact Applicants in a Timely Fashion

You may need to hire for a job as soon as possible, but in all likelihood, applicants need to find employment even faster than that. If they have a skill set that is in high demand, there’s no way they’re going to hang around for weeks to see what you think of their resume if they can help it at all. Be sure to stay on top of your applications and reach out to the best candidates as soon as you can.

4. Don’t Wait to Schedule Further Interviews

If the process of getting to know your applicant starts to drag too much, they may lose interest or think you’ve lost interest, or they may find a job that will get them on the payroll quicker. It’s best to line up a series of interviews in quick succession to keep the ball rolling and the applicant engaged.

If the initial interview goes well enough, schedule a second one right then and there, and be sure it’s not too far away. If that one goes well, too, quickly find a time for a third. Be sure to give the applicant room to breathe between interviews, but don’t give them enough time to become impatient or disinterested.

5. Don’t Wait to Check References

The last thing you want to do is go through the whole hiring process with a candidate only to find out in the eleventh hour that they’ve been dishonest about their qualifications or that their references couldn’t quite give them the glowing review you’d hoped for. Be diligent in verifying references ahead of time. It’s highly recommended to get references that have supervised someone’s work. If they are unwilling to give references from Supervisors, that should be a red flag.

However, it’s important to remember that you can also be too fast to check references. If you’re not feeling all that convinced about a particular candidate, it may not be worth it to waste any time looking into their references. Find a balance.

6. Hire a Search Firm

Recruiters can help you optimize your own hiring process, or they can take the task on themselves through recruitment process outsourcing. If you find that nothing you’ve been doing on your own is speeding up the hiring process, you may want to connect with a team of professionals who are experts in the field.

7. Use Social Media 

You can use social media to cast a wide net and pull in many candidates with relative ease. Take the time to develop a network of people aware of your business, and you’ll have applicants waiting for you whenever a job opening may arise.

8. Clean Up your Process

One of the reasons why the hiring process takes almost twice as long now as it did four years ago is because employers are adding more and more steps to their procedures. IQ tests, personality tests, background checks, drug tests, and multi-step interviews all serve to slow the process to a crawl.

Of course, they also serve to ensure that the employer doesn’t make a costly hiring mistake. None of these procedures are necessarily useless; it’s just a matter of deciding what is necessary. Again, it would help if you found a balance.

9. Don’t Pick Just Anyone

You may require an immediate hire, but reaching out to whoever sends you a half-decent application might end up slowing you down in the end. Dealing with all of those e-mails, interviews, and reference checks will make finding the exact right applicant a more difficult task. Reach out to only the candidates you truly think are best for the job.

10. Reduce the Amount of Software You Use

A whole lot of time can be wasted sorting through several different recruitment software programs. Consolidating into as few as possible will streamline the process and take away a lot of the hassle.

Your Business Deserves Top Talent

Whether you’re looking to hire for a job immediately, or you want to reinforce your hiring process now so that when openings do pop up, you can be confident that they’ll get filled fast, these 10 tips are just about all you need to know. And if nothing seems to be working, refer to number 6 and reach out to a professional recruitment agency like BWC Executive Group.

Call today at 913-225-9058 or e-mail info@bwcexecutivegroup.com, and connect with an expert recruiter to learn how you can speed up your hiring process and get your business running smoothly.