Consistent and high-quality hiring challenges organizations of all sizes. The Talent Leader Council, published by the Recruitment Process Outsourcing Association, recently gathered insights from six talent recruitment experts to show that companies can achieve hiring excellence through strategic partnerships and hiring process optimization.
Our distinguished contributors included Mike Gillespie from Hueman RPO, Elaine Nicol from AgileOne, Curtis Grajedas from LevelUP HCS, Mike Foster of Advanced RPO, and Terry Terhark of NXTThing. They all shared valuable perspectives on the importance of consistent hiring practices.
Small, mid-size, and large organizations can create a consistent recruitment process that hires dependable, high-quality talent. Here are nine tips to help employers do just that.
By choosing quality over quantity, companies can maintain company culture and values, leading to increased long-term retention. As a result, organizations will have a more stable and productive workforce, and reduced turnover costs.
"…TA leaders often feel the pressure–not only do they have competing priorities, but quality can suffer when they just want to get people through the door. They start to think of it as a numbers game. They might think that if they have ten openings, let's just hire ten people rather than the right people. Maybe it's a slower process, but hiring consistency is about the long-term play and getting the right employees into the organization." -Mike Gillespie
Establish a well-defined, documented, standardized hiring process across the organization. Make sure stakeholders communicate and follow the standardized hiring process consistently. Practicing a uniform hiring process ensures all new hires meet the same standard of skills, qualifications, and work culture fit. As a result, the organization gains a high-quality workforce across all departments.
"The lack of a talent acquisition strategy at the top leads to inconsistent hiring processes. …Without a strategic, documented hiring process and the necessary tools, people will fill in the gaps with ad-hoc solutions, leading to inconsistencies across multiple locations and a disjointed hiring experience." - Elaine Nicol
Educate hiring managers properly on the recruitment process. Educating hiring managers on the recruitment process helps them understand their roles and responsibilities in the process. Proper training can prevent inconsistencies and empower hiring managers to make better decisions.
"Several simple, easily addressable issues often cause inconsistency in the hiring process. One major factor is the lack of education or understanding among hiring managers about the process. This is especially true for new hiring managers who haven't yet experienced the full recruitment cycle. Providing education and advisory services to these managers is crucial," - Curtis Grajeda.
Giving hiring managers access to consistent recruitment resources ensures they maintain institutional knowledge and best practices within the recruitment team. The ability of hiring managers to use and employ these resources can minimize disruptions and inconsistencies caused by high recruitment staff turnover.
"Inconsistency can arise when hiring managers lack understanding of their roles, responsibilities, and accountability throughout the hiring process. More importantly, the overall recruitment process in the organization may lack consistency from top to bottom. That's one of the key things that happens within organizations at the department level; each particular division manager may have their own process, which creates a hybrid or hodgepodge environment, yielding inefficiencies." - Curtias Grajeda
Implementing standardized criteria and processes can minimize unconscious bias in hiring decisions. This action promotes fairness in the hiring process and enhances the organization's reputation and employer brand.
"A consistent hiring process benefits organizations by maintaining a high-quality workforce across all departments and locations, leading to … reduced unconscious bias and enhanced fairness in the hiring process." - Elaine Nicol
When employers align their recruitment process with their ATS, they can use the data and analytics from the ATS to see gaps and inefficiencies in their hiring process and then improve it. This alignment enables continuous improvement and adaptation to changing business needs.
"Employers need to look at and evaluate their recruitment process from start to finish and then configure their ATS to match that process. Alignment between the ATS and the recruitment process is essential because you can create recruitment reports and recruiter efficiencies from it. An ATS that is not properly configured can end up causing recruiters to resort to manual reporting and processes that will directly affect the speed and quality of your recruitment process." - Mike Foster
Reduce the number of interviews by identifying and using only the key hiring decision-makers in the interview process. Shortening the interview process can reduce time-to-hire, improve the candidate experience, and help employers efficiently identify the right person for the role.
"Condense the process as much as possible. That means reducing hiring manager interviews to one or two. Making hiring decisions faster, getting everybody in the process to understand what a quality candidate is, moving them through as quickly as possible, and then being able to scale." - Mike Foster
Staying current on labor market intelligence provides insights to inform hiring strategies. When employers understand current labor trends and candidate behavior, they can anticipate changes, adapt their hiring tactics, and remain competitive.
"Post-Covid, hiring decisions and the dynamics in the labor markets contributed to a noticeable increase in employee turnover. Companies should take proactive steps to minimize turnover and maintain quality." - Terry Terhark.
Without a consistent hiring process, things start to fall apart. Nicol pointed out that people will fill in the gaps with ad-hoc solutions, leading to inconsistencies across multiple locations and a disjointed hiring experience.
"As an example, at manufacturing or plant locations, somebody sees we don't have a recruiter working on this site. The HR business partner steps in because the hiring managers are busy. They get to know things and to help out; they may take on some of the hiring manager's work. That help can create inconsistency" - Elaine Nicol
Consistent hiring practices enable employers to regularly hire the right talent. By focusing on quality of hire over quantity, developing a clear hiring strategy and process, educating hiring managers, providing consistent recruitment resources, ensuring compliance and fairness, and aligning the recruitment process with the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), organizations can create a streamlined and effective hiring process. These steps not only lead to a high-quality and dependable workforce but also contribute to reduced unconscious bias and enhanced fairness in the hiring process. Ultimately, establishing consistent hiring practices not only benefits individual organizations but also creates an equitable and efficient job market as a whole.
Check out our talent leader council page to gain more insights from our talent leader contributors and subscribe to the RPO Voice blog to receive valuable talent intelligence in your inbox.