Secrets to Finding the Perfect Job Candidate: 6 Recruiting Best Practices
So you’re in charge of culling the chaff and producing the wheat for your company. You want to find superstar hires, but it seems like, too often, they don’t work out or they end up leaving too soon. What if there were some way to significantly improve your system, so that the people you hired stuck around and performed beyond your wildest dreams?
Okay, not your wildest dreams, but maybe your regular dreams? Here are six recruiting best practices to help you get there.
Recruiting Best Practices Uncovered
1. Define the Ideal Candidate In-House
You can’t hire the right person if you don’t know who that person is. It’s your responsibility, not the candidate’s, to ensure that you’re working with a clear vision of whom you want to hire. So get really specific, working with other department heads, stakeholders in your own department or, if you’re in HR, affected members across the company. It is a common procedure to hold a “kick-off meeting” for each new role you are trying to fill. Create an internal guide to ensure stakeholders are totally aligned on the company’s needs and expectations for the role.
2. Fine-Tune Job Descriptions
One of the easiest ways to ensure you get the perfect candidate for the job is to tailor the job description even more closely. What exact skills would they need? List them out in their entirety, and make sure those requirements are un-fudgeable, if you will. Instead of “solid computer skills” try more detailed requirements like “90 WPM” or “a thorough understanding of PHP.”
3. Keep Up with Trends
Understanding recruiting trends and how to leverage talent pools is important, but it changes all the time. If you’re out of the loop, you might also be out great candidates without knowing it. Stay apprised of these trends either by following industry news or be seeking the help of a knowledgeable recruiter.
4. Be Active on Social Media
Staying active on social media is not only a good way to highlight your employer brand and make people want to come work for you, it’s an awesome way to find great candidates. Just put the word out over the social airwaves about a description listed on your website or job boards, and watch them roll in.
5. Don’t Wait for the Candidate to Come to You
Want the ideal candidate? Don’t wait; go find them. Utilize your company’s referrals and networks. Whether the connection is professional or personal, reach out to the potential candidates introducing yourself and the connection. You’d be surprised at how often a passive candidate will become active in response to the right offer.
6. Use a Many-Pronged Approach
If you take just one track, you’ll find only disappointment. You must use all recruiting resources available. That includes employee referrals, social media, job boards, listings on your own websites, the help of recruiters, industry fairs and more.
It’s Go Time
Of course, all the tricks in the world won’t ensure you never hire a dud or that your perfect-beyond-perfect candidate won’t leave you for greener pastures. But this is a numbers game; you don’t have to be flawless. Instead, your goal is to reduce turnover and increase your targeting skills, and if you can do that, you’re doing mighty well indeed. So get started!
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That’s when you probably need HR tech that offers some kind of automation. One centralized system that all stakeholders can access will do miracles in your recruiting. For example, you can keep track of all steps in the recruitment process – from the moment a hiring manager requests to open a new job till the moment a new employee comes onboard – and quickly generate reports on the status of hiring at any time. Likewise, to avoid back-and-forth emails, you can keep all communications between candidates and the hiring team in one place. Your hiring process is rich in data: from candidate information to recruitment metrics. Making sense of this data, and keeping it safe, is essential to ensuring recruitment success for your organization. You can do this by creating and studying accurate recruitment reports.