8 SIMPLE WAYS TO SPEED UP YOUR HIRING PROCESS

One of the most important aspects of building any company is acquiring the right talent to assist you. Whether you are a small contracting firm or a large multi-tiered corporation, skillful team members are vital to your operation. This means that your hiring process needs to be perfected from the beginning. Too often though, companies equate a good hiring process with a slow, methodical hiring process. Having a slow process, however, presents problems of its own when you need to hire as soon as possible. Either you cannot find anyone or you hire the wrong person. Rather, having a fast hiring process can still be met with precision. And, after all, it is easier to slow things down when necessary than speed things up.

Here are 8 simple ways you can speed up your hiring process without sacrificing quality:

Be very clear with your job description

This one may seem obvious, but most companies throw together a job description that is not all that complete, too much in some places and lacking in others. As a result, they get candidates who might be underqualified for the true position. It takes a lot of time reviewing each application you receive. Being very clear with your description will help avoid unwarranted applications. 

Be honest when assessing your applicant pool

As a hiring manager, you just know when a candidate is not right for your job. Do not waste any extra time on such candidates. And for those candidates in whom you do see the potential, only bring in candidates that you feel overly confident within for interviews. If there are 30 potential applicants, surely interviewing all 30 would be unnecessary. You should only bring in true contenders. 

Have a thorough application

Given point 2 made above, you must have an application that details more from your applicants to truly assess their quality. Asks some tough questions, require a resume, require a cover letter. These things will help you paint a better picture of each and every candidate. In doing so, you will be able to better assess each and identify those ultimately worthy of an interview.

Stick to one or two interviews

Unless you are hiring a new CEO, it is unlikely that you really need 3 or 4 interviews to assess their quality. Ideally, you want to stick to a 1-2 interview process. Creating an application that demands more information and having rigorous first and second interviews should allow you to see the true nature of each applicant. Any additional interviews are just wasting time.

Always have applications open

This certainly does not hold true for all positions, but if your company has some positions that have a short turnover period, you should consider leaving your applications open year-round. This makes it quicker to fill those vacancies because you have a pool of candidates to sort through immediately.

Assess applicants regularly

If you leave your application open year-round or for extended periods of time, you should still be reviewing the submissions. Taking this step speeds up the process when a new employee is needed. Also, it allows you to get back to your candidate with a decision or at least a notification that they are being held until openings are made available. This is just common courtesy to your applicants. They are probably applying to multiple jobs and hearing about their applications, good or bad, allows them to make better decisions about their work life.

Build a strong online presence

Having a strong online or social media presence might not seem like it would help with hiring, but there certainly may be a connection. If your company has a fun, engaging, and active online presence more people will likely follow you and become interested in what you do. This may make jobs at your company more appealing given the energetic environment that new applicants would be stepping into. Boring companies would have the opposite effect. Plus, if you build up a large following, you have an immediate audience to advertise your new job openings to once they open up. A strong online presence wields many benefits. 

Promote your job in the right places

All this talk about social media has us thinking about where else you should be posting your job openings. Know which job boards, radio stations, news organizations, websites or peer to peer networking organizations are best for your company and industry. Simply throwing your job opening on to a job board might not be enough anymore. It is important to diversify the sources of your applications to ensure you are getting the right talent from the jump.