Josh TolanJust like candidates, hiring professionals come in all shapes and sizes. A combination of personality traits, experiences, and professional skills on the hiring team ensure companies hire diverse top talent.
In fact, too much of one hiring process style can stunt your growth. This causes your process and client relationships to drastically suffer. It’s important to consistently look at your overall hiring strategy with a critical eye and maintain the ultimate stylistic-balance.
In my 6+ years in the HR tech world, I’ve witnessed many types of hiring professionals. Each unique style has proven its own way of finding, attracting, and hiring quality candidates. I’ve learned hiring professionals typically fall into four general categories.
Let’s take a look at which style best describes you and your hiring process:
1. The all recruiting, no play hiring pro
The ‘all recruit and no play’ hiring pro doesn’t mess around when it comes to finding the right talent for their teams. To do this, they tend to play by the book — rarely ever straying from guidelines, job descriptions, or even interview scripts.
They often miss out on truly connecting with candidates because they’re so focused on checking boxes. This style makes it difficult to see when a candidate shows cultural fit and the ability to grow and excel in atypical ways.
If this sounds like you, add open-ended cultural fit and fun experience questions to your interview questionnaire. Fully focus on candidates’ answers and make room for deeper, more meaningful connections.
2. The overly enthusiastic hiring pro
This type of hiring pro is the recruiting and hiring world’s cheerleader. Everyone they meet knows they’re hiring.
Having a passion for finding amazing candidates and placing them in roles where they’ll flourish is a positive trait. However, an unsolicited explosion of energy and passion comes off as disingenuine and too in-your-face — a major candidate turnoff.
Candidates want — and deserve — someone who is excited to put them in a new role. They also connect better with someone who can slow down, get real, and relate to their experience.
If you find yourself trying to convince talent the role is the best fit for them instead of finding out where they want to fit in the equation, stop and take a breath. Step back and consider how you’re approaching candidates. Give them time to evaluate the details and ask questions before showing your unabridged enthusiasm about the opportunity.
3. The fill-it-and-move-on hiring pro
Saving time and money while attracting top talent is a dream all hiring pros can relate to.
In fact, 56 percent of rapidly growing companies want to shorten their hiring process, according to the new 2018 Growth Hiring Trends in the United States report from my team here at Spark Hire. Even more surprising, of the companies that take less than a week, half of them responded they can still improve their time to hire.
While a shorter hiring process is a benefit, the ‘fill it and move on’ hiring pro is so focused on a short hiring time, they’re more likely to miss opportunities to fill positions with the best candidates. As a result, company growth remains stagnant and retention rates deteriorate.
If you’re focused more on a role’s closing date than on candidates, this may be your hiring style. Stop looking at a timeline and hone in specifically on finding the best-suited talent for your open roles. You’ll find switching your focus to the quality of your talent saves time and money in the long run.
4. The modern tech hiring pro
Sixty-two percent of companies in our previously mentioned survey said following the latest hiring trends and using modern tools are very important for rapid growth hiring.
While keeping up with new hiring tech and trends propels your hiring strategy forward, you need to proceed with caution. Putting too much time and energy into trying every new recruitment and hiring tool will result in a sluggish hiring process.
If you find yourself caught up in new hiring gadgets, gizmos, and latest hiring trends, pause and take the time to reevaluate what is already working. Focus on the tools that have improved the candidate experience.
Candidates don’t want to spend hours trying to figure out the latest and greatest app. They want to be empowered to apply, showcase their skills and personalities, interview, and take the next step in their career paths.
Keep track of the effectiveness of your hiring tools by collecting ongoing data through candidate surveys. Before adding a new one to your process, ask yourself if it will enhance the candidate experience and improve your ability to quickly and effectively evaluate top talent.
What type of hiring pro are you? Let us know!
Guest Post
Spark Hire
