How to Upgrade Your Hiring Strategies to Streamline and Improve your HR Process.

To attract and hire the best new talent, today’s hiring managers face greater challenges than ever. The following questions highlight today’s most critical issues and reveal surprising new strategies for overcoming even the toughest challenges.

1. Am I confident I hired the right person?

Isn’t that always the lingering question?  Regardless of the number of steps, tests, or interviews the applicant has completed—there’s always an element of uncertainty. Will the new employee be the kind of person you want on your team? What about the challenges and demands of the job? How will the person respond to your customers? Will he or she be a team player?

Wouldn’t it be nice to eliminate the doubt and boost your confidence that you’ve made the best choice?

The good news is that today you can eliminate much of the guesswork from the hiring process. There’s a growing body of scientific research related to all aspects of hiring and making the most effective hiring decisions with the lowest possible risk.

Want to make the most informed decisions with scientific precision? Keep reading to discover how you can apply science and technology to your hiring strategies to avoid costly hiring mistakes, attract better candidates, pinpoint top performers—all while saving valuable time and money! That’s what we call Hire Confidence®.

2. Am I maximizing my time and resources?

The time available to acquire good talent is more limited than ever. And, if you have delays or bottlenecks in your hiring process, you are not only losing valuable time—you’re likely losing some of your best candidates.

Given the number of applicants, it’s critical to limit your applicant-facing time to only the most qualified.

The real bottleneck is the job interview. Given that interviews are also the most susceptible to error and bias, a good hiring strategy is to limit live interview time to only a select group of prescreened, prequalified candidates.

Many organizations are now opting for new software to automate the initial screening process—limiting scheduling, travel, and on-site time. Tools such as Job simulations and virtual interviews enable you to quickly filter out the wrong candidates and accurately filter in the right candidates!

3. What is my greatest hiring expense?

Faced with increasing pressure to find better candidates in less time for less money, it’s easy to become distracted by the immediate costs of the hiring process itself and what it costs me now rather than the true and more significant costs of hiring.

Surprisingly, the most significant hiring costs occur after the employee is hired.  And the single greatest hiring expense is employee turnover. When an employee quits or is terminated, your investment is lost, especially when it occurs within the first 90 days.  Turnover also sends a negative message to customers and other employees.

On the other hand, steady long-term employees send a reassuring message, building customer trust and loyalty.

Hiring strategies that focus on accurately finding and retaining top performers decrease turnover and rehire costs—and increase performance, customer satisfaction, and return on investment. So, when considering the cost to hire, don’t forget the greater cost of hiring the wrong person.

4. Are we attracting the best candidates?

Just as employers form impressions about applicants, applicants form impressions about employers. Regardless of economic conditions, today’s job seekers are much more selective about where they want to work and what they want to do.

Typically, it is up to the recruiter or hiring manager to describe the organization and the job. If this responsibility is spread across multiple people or locations, applicants are unlikely to all hear the same message. Miscommunication and failure to differentiate your company could cause you to lose your best candidates to someone that provides a clearer, more compelling message.

The best hiring strategies help applicants understand the unique aspects of the job and why your company is a great place to work. Carefully consider your employer brand and each step in the hiring process, view it as a marketing opportunity, and present your company in the best possible light.

5. What’s the secret to identifying top performers?

There are a lot of screening tools on the market with varying degrees of accuracy in predicting future job performance. The goal, obviously, is to achieve the highest possible accuracy at a reasonable cost.

Science clearly proves that objective tools deliver significantly higher accuracy than subjective ones. Unfortunately, the most commonly used hiring tools today are also the most subjective.

The traditional job interview is the most common screening method. By design, interviews introduce the element of human judgment, and with that comes increased potential for bias and error. Even seasoned interviewers can make errors in judgment due to first impressions, appearance, fatigue, interruptions, etc. That means that the outcome of an interview may depend more on the effectiveness of the interviewer than the qualifications of the applicant. Options are available to increase the accuracy of interviews, yet they will never be entirely objective.

Self-report surveys and tests are also a concern. Motivated to get the job, applicants may inflate their answers or even ‘fake’ responses to better match perceived job requirements. To counter this, test vendors often include additional questions to verify the honesty of an applicant’s answers. The very inclusion of these questions underscores the fact that applicants can, and often do, fake their answers.

Clearly, the most objective and accurate hiring strategies are the ones that require applicants to perform actual job tasks. For instance, if you were hiring race car drivers, would you rather use a written survey or a road test? If you want to pinpoint top performers, let candidates ‘test drive’ the job and prove they have what it takes to succeed.

Gain HIRE CONFIDENCE®

If you’re looking to upgrade your hiring strategies and transform the accuracy of your hiring decisions, contact us for a FREE test drive of the latest hiring technologies. The results may surprise you!