Did you know that even a single vacancy can cost your business $500 a day or more in lost productivity? However, that does not mean that you should rush out and hire the first applicant that meets the minimum job requirements, as this can be just as detrimental to your company. A bad hire can crush the morale of your existing staff and may even lead some of your top performers to seek jobs elsewhere.
To help you juggle the need to fill vacancies with avoiding bringing in the wrong candidate, we have created this outline of best practices for hiring top talent. We cover everything from how you advertise vacancies online to the methods you leverage for vetting candidates.
These talent management strategies will allow you to hire smarter, and your HR team can implement most of them in short order to begin experiencing results right away.
Be Proactive
The first tip on our list of best practices for hiring top talent is a simple one — be proactive. You must make a concerted effort to seek out and connect with talented individuals. This approach makes sense because approximately 70% of potential hires are passive job seekers.
Being a passive job seeker means not going out of their way to submit applications or schedule interviews. However, they may have accounts on popular job posting forums and might even browse listings from time to time. A passive job seeker is willing to leave their current company if the right opportunity finds them.
Your recruiting staff will need to advertise vacancies via social media campaigns to connect with these candidates. Additionally, your HR personnel can reach out to passive job seekers by sending them an invite to apply or information about your organization.
Keep Applications Simple
In theory, online job applications should be easy and convenient. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), approximately 60% of job seekers will stop filling out a web-based job application if it is too complex or lengthy.
If you are not receiving many applications for organizational vacancies, you should ask recent hires for feedback about your hiring process. Find out how long it took them to fill out the application and see if it was a pain point. If it was, then you should revise it.
While we understand that you need to gather certain information to hire a candidate, consider collecting this data at separate touchpoints during the hiring process.
The initial application should focus on only the most essential information, such as name, work history, educational experience, and skills. If candidates make it past the early stages of the screening process, your team can collect additional information at that time.
Transition Away from Traditional Screening Strategies
You should consider transitioning away from typical screening strategies. Becoming over-reliant on resume reviews and confirming work experience can lead to bad hires. The most experienced applicant is not necessarily the best candidate for the job. It only means that they have been working in the field the longest.
Instead of becoming fixated on resumes and work pedigree, consider focusing on personality traits, soft skills, and technical abilities. A less experienced individual who has the potential to develop chemistry with your existing staff will be more valuable to your organization overall. The ROI can be significant even if you need to invest in them by paying for training opportunities.
Adopt a Skills-Based Talent Management Plan
Skills-based talent management is becoming the new normal in the recruiting and hiring space. Companies realize that the skills candidates possess are far more valuable than the degrees they’ve earned.
To adopt a skills-based talent management plan, you must re-examine every component of your recruiting and hiring. What criteria does your hiring team pay most attention to when differentiating between candidates? Do they focus on measurable skills or documented education and work experience?
If your team is primarily concerned with the latter, it is time to shake things up, which means identifying what skills candidates need to succeed in a given position. Additionally, you must figure out how to measure these skills, something we touch on in our final piece of advice for best practices for hiring top talent.
Incorporate Skills Testing into Your Vetting Process
Skills tests are convenient screening tools that your HR team can administer online. After completing the initial application review, your hiring team can send testing invites to applicants. Skills tests provide quantifiable data on each applicant’s abilities and aptitudes.
There are a variety of skills tests available. You can leverage general skills tests like Verbal Reasoning or Attention to Detail. You can also incorporate job-specific skills tests like Accounts Receivable.
Do you want to learn how you can implement a talent management strategy that applies best practices for hiring top talent? Contact us to request a demo.