Effective and successful hiring / recruiting involves four (4) key aspects that one needs to focus on. It starts from attracting the right candidates, ensuring the recruiting process is streamlined to screen in the very best fit for the role(s) and once identified, giving the optimum incentives to get them to accept and join. One last factor which gets overlooked a lot of times is the last step -the Retention. Hiring does not/ should not stop when the candidate joins, but appropriate aspects need to be incorporated/ planned so that the hired employee stays with the company for a long extended tenure.
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Attracting candidates
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Screening candidates
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On-boarding candidates
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Retaining candidates
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Attracting candidatesYour company spends $$$ on marketing and branding. How much thought and investment goes in putting together job descriptions? Most of the time, these are rehashed from older, outdated details, or worse - cut and paste form external sources. As companies, we fail to market to our most valuable assets -the candidates -who will be employees, and the best support/ cheerleaders of the company. Your employees and team are your best and costliest investment- how much efforts go in towards attracting the right candidates? Are the JD enticing enough? Do they have the right details to get the ‘A’ players interested? If you are working with recruiters (both internal and external) - are they portraying and marketing the role, team and company effectively?
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Screening candidatesMost often, we perceive screening to be a one way filter. As recruiters, we tend to believe our job is to weed out the candidates not fit or not qualified for the role. We tend to act as high and mighty gatekeepers. Which is definitely a part of the responsibility -but the other part is also making sure we are ‘selling’ the opportunity correct to the candidates who are a great fit. In this scenarios, they are the ones filtering and screening companies/ opportunities. As recruiters (internal or external), the other part of the job is to make sure we communicate the positive and unique values that the opportunity presents to the candidates. Why should they consider this opportunity versus the others out there (current or future).
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On-boarding candidates -transitioning to employeesOnce the candidates has signed on the dotted line, accepted the position/ role and joins the team -is recruiting done? Far from it. This is one of the critical times when the job for HR is strategic. This is their first experience as an insider with the company. Are they made to feel welcome? Are they pumped up about the opportunity? HR usually has a checklist and process that they follow. But equally important is the involvement of the domain/ technical/ operations team.
Are you all set to get the new hire a smooth start? Have you worked out a process to ensure he/she understands the expectations, the internal policies, office dynamics etc.? Have you lined up some team introduction/ team building activities to get the new member integrate with the team?
One thing highly recommended is regular follow ups within the first 30, 90 and 180 days. The first 30 day is to make sure they are well settled in their role, and have made the right connections. The first 90 day follow up is for everyone to ensure the team is focused and progressing in the right directions as a coherent unit. Finally, the 180 day feedback loop is to iron out any kinks in on-boarding -personal/ strategic/ behavioral/ political etc. -
Retaining candidatesIf we have diligently followed the above recommendations, then most factors which guarantee employee retention are already considered and taken care of. But one of the most important factor -which I again need to re-iterate is the one in Step 1 and 2. The employee-brand we portray, and aspects we screen potential employees on -need to keep the retention in mind. Every company has a certain set of values and culture that they want to imbibe and cultivate. Is this integrated with the job description and messaging? Does the screening involve any aspects of this? Do you evaluate for culture fit during the interviews? You might interview an ‘A- lister’, and even might get him to join you -but if he/she is not a fit for your culture, they are not going to stay long. Do make sure you add these considerations in your screening process.
The Fervid Process we use in our Recruiting is based on these and lot of additional lessons we have learnt over our work as managers/ executives, and over the past 8 years when building our company. Our diverse experience across companies. industries and domains have helped us refine and evolve this process.
We add unique value propositions on each of the above aspects. Whether it’s a difficult to fill role (low supply-high demand) or working to screen effectively (high supply -low demand). Our tools including market mapping, expert-led video interviews, comprehensive candidate portal etc. help us add tremendous value for our clients and hiring teams. Helping them save valuable time and efforts, and adding up to great $$$s!
So -is your Hiring Process complete? or is it broken?
Do share any relevant feedback or comments.
