7 Ways Your Hiring Process is Hurting Your Business
A recruiting officer in your Human Resources department has added a new job posting on LinkedIn for a position in need of filling.
Two weeks later, 23 applicants and still no new hire, you begin questioning where the “perfect candidate” is hiding and how you can bring them into your hiring pool.
Weeks turn into months – and you wonder whether or not your hiring process can be improved.
Does this sound familiar?
If so, you are not alone.
You still have time to make your hiring process a seamless one for applicants. And there is no better time than the present to tweak this process.
Today, unemployment is at a record low with there being more job openings than unemployed people.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, just under 6.7 million job openings were available for the picking among 6.35 million eligible candidates for jobs.
Because of the current shortage in labor, a quick and simple hiring process is a necessity to ensure all the great candidates are applying for a position with your company.
Use Your Hiring Process to Secure Top Talent Fast and Efficiently
According to MRI Network’s Sentiment Study released on July 6, 2017, up to 32 percent of candidates rejected job offers, citing that they accepted a competitor’s job offer instead.
Checking in with a competitor’s offer and compensation is a great way to start thinking about a more effective hiring process. However, to secure top talent, you need to go beyond a competitor’s offer.
Glassdoor’s research study reveals that hiring processes in the United States take about 22.9 days while those in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom take about 4 to 9 days longer. If you’re looking to secure a great candidate in your company, it’s a must to update any archaic techniques you’ve been using.
Here are seven ways you’re losing business with your current hiring process.
1. Missing Out on Engaging Top Talent with a Slow Recruitment Process
A slower recruitment process will cause your candidates to pack their bags and begin the application process with another company.
According to an Office Vibe report, the best candidates land a position within 10 days.
Moving candidates through the hiring process at a steady pace keeps candidates interested in a new role in your company.
Several rounds of screening can easily be shortened to a few, succinct rounds that accurately test a candidate’s confidence, experience and knowledge required for a given role.
The ideal hire should have the confidence, experience, skills and personality to move your business forward.
2. Diminishing Productivity and Morale of Current Employees
When a position remains vacant for a long period of time, your current staff members must carry the weight of the vacancy.
Oftentimes, this means current staff must complete tasks that were not initially outlined in their job description. Your staff will have less time to complete their own work, causing an overall lack of productivity.
Given the additional work assigned to them, your staff members will feel overworked and even underappreciated. Their motivation to continue working for you will diminish over time.
For example, the lack of a customer service representative at your business means that several employees will have to assume this role and the duties along with it. This takes away time and energy that staff members can spend on completing their own tasks to the best of their abilities.
3. Hiring Mistakes Create Added Expenses and Costs
Putting a candidate through several interview tryouts can create an extra expense, or “hidden expense,” in your company.
In a 2012 CareerBuilder survey, 1 in 3 small business owners revealed that bad hires cost them more than $25,000 and almost 1 in 5 claimed it cost them more than $50,000.
A project manager or coordinator would need to take time away from their regular duties in order to screen an applicant.
To cut this extra expense, you can consider the usefulness of phone call interviews to pre-screen an applicant before determining they would be a qualified candidate to bring in for an onsite tryout.
As well, the time a manager or coordinator spends away from working on projects with tight deadlines can result in delays in the completion of projects for clients. These delays can result in a negative review not only about your company’s hiring process, but also your company’s ability to successfully execute quality work on tight deadlines.
Ultimately, you could even lose your reputation as a trusted brand among even the most loyal clients with reviews such as these.
4. Increasing the Likelihood of Hiring Less Qualified Hires
Since most passive candidates — those professionals currently employed, but open to the opportunity to grow — would be deterred from a longer recruitment process, the pool of moderately to highly qualified professionals applying for a role at your company diminishes.
A smaller pool of active job seekers will apply for a position with your company instead. If your hiring process is too complicated, you may be losing qualified candidates in the process.
If you provide a stronger company vision, better working conditions, and a greater opportunity to learn than with a competitor, you’ll be able to retain you current employees as well as give reasons why passive candidates should work for
your company instead of their current one.
5. Losing the Opportunity to Grow Your Company’s Brand
An inefficient hiring process can dissuade the right candidates from pursuing employment with your business. Qualified, active applicants looking for work will cast their net wide in the job market with the intent of having choice in their future employment.
With a confusing hiring process, you will lose the opportunity of having young candidates with a refreshing perspective spruce up your company’s branding.
In 1919, successful business mogul Walt Disney was fired from one of his first animation roles at the Kansas City Star because his editor felt he “lacked imagination and had no good ideas” according to The Wisdom of Oz.
It’s important to remember that there is no “perfect candidate” in the application process.
No candidate will complete your assessments perfectly. Instead, this requires time and hard work on the candidate’s part.
While sometimes a candidate simply is not the right fit despite their qualifications, it is important to take a chance on the candidate, not their resume. Otherwise, you may be saying goodbye to many Walt Disney’s.
6. Receiving Negative Reviews Because of a Complicated Hiring Process
Having a slow or inefficient recruitment process can breed negative reviews also.
For the candidates who want to pass the torch to the next applicant, writing a review about your business’s complex hiring process is a way for them to air out their frustrations.
To prevent a future negative review, read through the pain points the applicants expressed in their reviews and consider changes to the hiring process.
For example, if a candidate expressed a complaint about knowing whether or not they passed or failed an onsite tryout test, this requires an adjustment to move the process along. Having too many staff members vetting a candidate means that these staff members must arrive at a consensus together.
As a result, the candidate must wait for the final decision before moving forward.
Taking one or two staff members off the vetting process who will not directly work with or aid in the vetting process would be beneficial for all involved.
7. Being Vulnerable to Competitors Poaching Applicants and Employees
A longer or complicated recruitment process can lead competitors to poach not only qualified applicants, but even current employees if the rate is that much better.
If your staff members’ morale dips to record lows, competition will have no difficulty offering a better employment situation than the one you are currently supplying staff.
The inability to act quickly in adjusting your hiring process will put you at risk of losing current staff members, even the most loyal ones if presented with a better opportunity.
According to MRI Network’s 2017 Sentiment Study, as many as 32 percent of applicants rejected an employer’s job offer because of a higher compensation offered at a competing company.
While you can’t put a number on the loyalty of your staff members, you don’t want to risk pushing them to the point of fatigue and losing them to a competitor. It’s much more beneficial to solve the hiring process problem before it snowballs into a series of unstoppable events.
Transform the Hiring Process and Save Your Business
Maintaining an awkward or slow recruitment process costs your business valuable time and resources. More importantly, you lose the opportunity to hire top talent and even loyal employees in the process.
To avoid these uncomfortable decisions, adjust your hiring process for speed and efficiency and you’ll win every time in the job market.
If you need help updating your hiring process in your business, please contact us at Atlas Staffing and we’d be happy to assist you in any way possible.
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