Spark HireWhat is one way a talent acquisition team can make their hiring process faster without sacrificing candidate quality? To help hiring managers streamline their hiring process, we asked HR specialists and business professionals this question for their best input.
From starting with a plan to building a talent pipeline, there are several ideas that may help you speed up talent acquisition for your organization while still attracting ideal candidates. Here are 9 strategies for optimizing the hiring process:
- Condense Interview Rounds
- Start With a Plan
- Implement a Commission Plan
- Identify Top Talent With a Mentorship Program
- Automate Time-Consuming, Repetitive Tasks
- Build a Talent Pipeline for Frequently Open Positions
- Conduct Phone Interviews and Video Calls
- Schedule Interviews in Advance
- Look at Niche Forums and Job Sites
Condense Interview Rounds
Remove unnecessary interview rounds and replace them with tasks instead. Relevant and well-designed tasks can be a wonderful way of weeding out the contenders from the pretenders. They also take up much less time for the recruiting team to evaluate than scheduling a full-fledged interview.
Similarly, take a second look at the team members that have to meet with the candidate. Are all of them absolutely necessary? Can some be combined into one interview to save everyone’s time?
These questions are worth asking to go about the process much more efficiently (without sacrificing the quality).
Peter Bryla, ResumeLab
Start With a Plan
It may sound basic, but planning to hire someone is often overlooked. Have a hiring plan prepped before you get started, and it can take guesswork and ambiguity out of the equation. One of the things we do at Markitors to create a seamless hiring process is to outline a specific process for each role.
We have structured assignments, multiple interviews lined up, and even questions created around our values for the team to leverage during interviews. Couple this with knowing what we want from the role, and we can make quick hiring decisions without sacrificing quality.
Jenn Christie, Markitors
Implement a Commission Plan
Hire more people for the talent acquisition team. This speeds up the hiring process without sacrificing candidate quality. The company won’t have to worry about additional labor costs if the recruiters are on a commission basis.
When they find new talent for the company, they get paid a commission for the recruitment. This will incentivize the talent acquisition team if they get paid for performance.
Janice Wald, Mostly Blogging Academy
Identify Top Talent With a Mentorship Program
In my private practice, we use Notion as a database for our mentorship program. As healthcare professionals, we often seek opportunities to mentor student doctors and nurses to offer advice and assistance through all phases of their studies.
Throughout the mentorship, we input all of the related information into Notion’s applicant tracker template. As mentorships help attract the best and the brightest talent, keeping this database also allows us to identify the top talent we may want to recruit in the future.
Zachary Okhah, PH-1 Miami
Automate Time-Consuming, Repetitive Tasks
A personalized approach to candidates is critical in the hiring process. However, a large part of the recruitment process is based on repetitive but necessary tasks that consume a lot of time.
Therefore, it’s worth analyzing which stages of the recruitment process are time-consuming and whether we can use some automation to make our job more efficient. We can, for example, prepare templates with frequently asked questions or automate the interview scheduling process.
These strategies make our work easier and faster without sacrificing candidate quality and help us create a better recruitment experience.
Ewelina Melon, Tidio
Build a Talent Pipeline for Frequently Open Positions
Have a talent pipeline for positions that are often open at the ready. That way, you avoid wasting time on creating job postings and waiting for application submissions. Creating a list of qualified candidates is extremely effective, saving you time and money.
Payel Gupta, Get Cleared
Conduct Phone Interviews and Video Calls
The quality of a candidate is clear during an interview when they start adding substance to the conversation. These are key details on top of the information you see on their resumes that can help you choose a candidate. In this case, an over-the-phone interview helps you filter potential and well-qualified candidates.
Video conference interviews are helpful for interviewers as they can gauge a candidate’s confidence level. This strategy works best to discern facial expressions and overall demeanor without being physically present for an interview.
Johannes Larsson, Entrepreneur
Schedule Interviews in Advance
In the United States, the average interview process takes nearly 24 days, which can slow down the overall hiring process significantly. To keep this from happening, make sure that all essential actors in the process commit to being available for the same one- or two-week period. You won’t have a week between candidate visits this way, and you’ll be in a better position to make decisions sooner.
Edward Mellett, Wikijob
Look at Niche Forums and Job Sites
Niche job sites offer tremendous potential when it comes to finding the right person for the job. Since the members of these groups are already interested or experienced in the industry that you’re hiring for, skimming through profiles becomes a lot easier.
At the same time, you’re bound to see better success rates than other job portals, and the entire process will also be comparatively quick.
George Mitsov, ProxyEmpire
Josh Tolan
