Josh TolanEvery time there’s an open position at your organization, there’s additional pressure on your team — especially for hiring managers. They have to juggle their typical daily responsibilities while finding, reviewing, and interviewing candidates.
At the same time, they have to manage a team that is overworked while down an employee. Until hiring managers fill that empty role, they have to double their efforts to keep morale and productivity high.
Chances are, if your hiring managers had a choice, they’d make some big changes to make the hiring process easier. But that power lies with HR leaders.
Step up to the plate for your hiring managers. Take a look at your hiring process and find ways you can lower hiring managers’ day-to-day stress while improving hiring efficiency.
Here are three steps HR leaders should take to alleviate the hiring headache for hiring managers:
1. Shorten time to hire
In Spark Hire’s Growth Hiring Trends report, just 48% of hiring managers said it takes their company between seven and 14 days to fill an open position. And that was before the shift to Hiring Amid the Apply-Anyways Candidate Culture. We’ve learned since 2020, hiring managers have seen an overwhelming rise in applicants who do not meet the qualifications for jobs but apply anyways. This trend increases time to hire and leads to managers working under higher stress levels!
That’s one reason why 84% of hiring professionals currently say reducing their time to hire is a critical KPI. The good news is you can help them cut down time-to-hire by providing the right tools.
First, start using video interviews as your company’s initial screen. With one-way video interviews, your hiring managers can review candidate responses quickly and at any time of their day. Our research with HR.com revealed 62% of respondents credit video interviews with shortening their time-to-hire. Plus, nearly two-thirds of HR leaders who provide video interviews to their team report having happy hiring managers.
Encourage your hiring managers to consider reviewing video interviews during opportunities such as:
- Waiting in line for coffee or the bus
- When a meeting ends early
- As short breaks between other tasks
Additionally, when your hiring manager chooses to advance a candidate to an in-person interview, make sure they have access to an interview scheduling tool.
Look at your current process of scheduling candidate interviews. First, your hiring manager sends an email confirming the candidate is interested in an interview. They include a few times when they are available to meet. If they’re lucky, within a day, the candidate will respond with their selected time. But if nothing works, precious time is wasted with more back-and-forth
An interview scheduler drastically cuts down on that time. All a hiring manager has to do is send a link to their calendar in the interview invitation. The candidate sees all available times at once and can quickly choose what works best for them. The scheduler takes care of marking the appointment in your hiring manager’s calendar and sending a confirmation to the candidate.
2. Make employer branding material readily available
A big part of the hiring process is answering applicants’ questions. But when hiring managers have to respond to the same questions from dozens of candidates, it’s mentally exhausting.
Employer branding materials gives the HR team a library of resources to pass on to candidates at the beginning of the hiring process. This allows candidates to do their research and approach hiring managers with unique and meaningful questions.
Don’t think the information currently on your career page is enough. Arm hiring managers with more in-depth employer branding material.
Build a library of employer branding videos that give a behind-the-scenes look at your organization. Some good videos to have on file include.
- Employee testimonials
- Messages from organizational leaders
- Footage from company events
- Virtual office tours
3. Provide an objective way to compare candidates
Making a final decision can be particularly stressful for hiring managers, especially when they only make a few new hires a year. They may not have fully-honed skills to confidently choose between candidates who are equally qualified.
With an objective rating system, hiring managers organize their thoughts and compare candidates with ease. Based on the position’s criteria, they simply rate each individual to see who’s the clear best choice. The best part is, other decision-makers can weigh in as well.
Hold a workshop to teach hiring managers how to establish and use better criteria. Start by having them create the ideal persona of a candidate for a position on their team. This will be their benchmark for a five-star candidate.
Have them break down the skills of this candidate, as well as what past experiences they might have, and reasons they’d fit in at the company. Then repeat this exercise with four-star, three-star, etc. candidates.
This will give hiring managers an objective process for developing and using hiring criteria. In practice, they can make better decisions without the stress of second-guessing themselves.
Make your hiring managers’ lives easier in any way you can. Provide them with efficient and effective hiring resources and support so they can better handle the hiring process. Reducing hiring stress will ultimately lead to better hiring decisions.
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Guest Post
Spark Hire
