When it comes to hiring, the quality of the talent you hire really influences the future of your company while letting you know how well your team finds and recruits talent. If you are struggling to find top talent, it’s time to play catch-up.
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Making bad hires can be costly. A few years ago, the CEO of Zappos restructured the company’s recruiting process, saying that over the course of his company’s existence, bad hires had cost the organization “well over $100 million.” It’s important to make your adjustments now to stop wasting time and money. Let’s take a look at how to train your hiring team on improving the recruiting process and making the right hires.
Create Candidate Profiles
Show your talent acquisition team how to define what the ideal candidate looks like before it starts posting positions. The team must identify what the essentials are—years of experience, skills, competencies, education, and personality types. Encourage the team to collaborate to ensure there is a clear understanding of the perfect match. The team should hold meetings with department heads as well so they have some input in who they want. This way, everyone agrees on a standard on which to base their hiring decisions.
The candidate profile is what makes or breaks each applicant’s chances of advancing. Hiring managers can compare applicants to the profile to quickly eliminate those who fall short and move forward with the better matches.
Use Metrics
Measurements should take place before and after the hire, but the problem still lingers—most companies aren’t confident in how they measure quality of hire. LinkedIn’s Global Recruiting Trends 2016 report found that only 33% of talent leaders surveyed feel that their methodologies are strong. Take a look at the metrics your hiring team is measuring—the prehire metrics should look at things like source of hire. Learn how effectively your hiring manager is sourcing by looking at candidates per hire; your hiring manager should only be interviewing a few people before making a decision. However, if your hiring manager is spending more time and resources calling in dozens of candidates, he or she may need to be trained on how to properly screen. Consider other important metrics like passive candidate conversion rates, referrals per call, e-mail conversion, and job posting effectiveness. You can learn what channels need more attention, like seeking out passive candidates and boosting employee referrals, and how job postings can be improved to earn a high apply rate.
After the hire is made, hiring managers should be looking at metrics like performance, productivity, engagement, and cultural fit. This helps them track how well new hires are performing and how they stack up against expectations. Surveying employees helps HR best understand how new hires perceive the onboarding process and where they can make improvements.
Tomorrow we’ll look at finding the best sources and knowing what to ask.
| Andre Lavoie is the CEO of ClearCompany, the talent management solution that helps companies identify, hire, and retain more A-players. You can connect with him and the ClearCompany team on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. |