It’s no secret that finding and hiring great talent is essential to the success of any business. And to attract the best possible talent, it is important to have a well-run recruitment process.
On season one of the HR Think Tank, our podcast guests share some great tips on how to improve your recruitment process.
Here are some of the things they recommended.
1. Understand the Different Stages of the Recruitment Process
On Episode 11 of the HR Think Tank, we chatted to Zahra Nathwani, a Talent Business Partner at VerifyNow, who took us through the importance of understanding and implementing some of the major steps within the recruitment process.
She identified six key stages:
- The briefing stage
- Candidate sourcing
- Screening and selection
- The offer stage
- Employee onboarding
- Induction.
Zahra points out that one of the most important steps before even proceeding to the different stages of the recruitment process is identifying why you are recruiting.
“It’s important to understand what you’re looking for. Are you recruiting for a newly created role? Is it a replacement role? Are you recruiting because you’re expanding? Because that’s going to help shape the recruitment process that you’re undertaking.”
Another key element to understanding the recruitment process is acknowledging that it isn’t just about meeting potential candidates. It’s also about allowing the candidate the opportunity to think about why they would want to work for you.
2. Having an Effective Search Process Helps Attract, Retain and Nurture High Calibre Talent
Our guest on Episode 6 of the HR Think Tank, Ronel Raat, specialises in proactive talent acquisition to meet immediate and long term strategic hiring needs. And according to Ronel, there are a couple of aspects to look at when setting up an effective search process for high-value talent.
“The first step of the process would be pre-search. When I talk about pre-search, it’s the preparation work that identifies what talent the company needs and what their talent attraction strategy looks like. There are a couple of factors that you consider in the process, but it essentially comes down to knowing your business – knowing your team, your culture and what kind of personality profile will fit in with your business.”
She also maintains that having a job description isn’t necessarily the only thing you need to start your search. In fact, Ronel points out that there is so much more that needs to be considered beyond the job description.
“For example, what are you hoping to achieve from the hire? If you’re recruiting for a sales role, you will want to understand what personality that person needs to have to fit into your business and represent your brand. And how does that personality work with your customer base and what your business hopes to achieve in the market?”
Once you have an effective pre-search process, you need to set up a thorough “in-search” process to help you uncover talent in the market. She emphasises the importance of considering working with an experienced search partner who understands the market.
3. The Candidate Experience Impacts the Attractiveness of a Role
Beyond effective planning, your recruitment process also needs to appeal to the candidate. According to Zahra Nathwani, a Recruitment Specialist at VerifyNow, organisations need to think about their candidate experience throughout the whole recruitment journey.
“Another thing to consider is that we are currently experiencing a candidate short market. So, you really want to give candidates a good experience because they’re the people who you want to secure jobs for.”
She urges you to think about the different types of information you can pass on to candidates that give them insights into your business brand and workplace culture.
And with limited face-to-face interaction becoming the new norm, you need to remember that you don’t have flashy offices that you can bring candidates into to wow them. So you have to find ways to improve the candidate experience and adapt it to remote onboarding to give them a taste of what it’s like to work for you.
4. You Should Hire Based on Merit, Not Only Background
It’s not uncommon for employers to start questioning whether they have selected the best candidate for the role a few months down the line. This is especially true for those who have been hired solely based on the contents of a candidate’s resume.
On Episode 7 of the HR Think Tank, we spoke to Omer Molad, co-founder and CEO of Vervoe – a company that focuses on skills assessment during the recruitment process to allow every candidate to showcase their talent.
By including skills assessments as part of your recruitment process, you allow the candidate to showcase how they will perform in the role. This way, you can hire based on their skills and capabilities instead of just their background.
For example, a sales company may have the candidate sell their product to them, or a marketing company may have the candidate submit a marketing pitch. So, essentially, the skills assessments put the candidates in job-related scenarios to give you insight into their skills and capabilities.
VerifyNow has been using Vervoe for 18 months now, and the benefits are outstanding. Khai Ngo, CEO of VerifyNow, testifies that, “Vervoe has given us a different level of confidence that we didn’t have in the past.”
Key Takeaways
We are finding that the recruitment space is becoming more and more challenging for organisations because the workplace is changing faster than ever, and so are the candidate’s expectations.
While we have selected our top four tips across a few of our podcast episodes, this is definitely not an exhaustive list. The recruitment process is not a static one. You need to constantly think about how your processes can adapt to the market that you’re searching in, the role you’re looking to fill, and the available talent.
In almost every podcast this season, our guests have placed emphasis on the candidate experience and how that impacts your processes. Recruitment is no longer just about finding a candidate that can do the job. Instead, hiring trends indicate that organisations have shifted their focus to think about their employee value proposition.
And to be able to retain high-value talent, you need to ensure that their values align with yours and that they’re going to be happy in the role they’re fulfilling.
Recruitment is a time-intensive and costly exercise, so you don’t want to end up picking someone on a whim just for you to realise they’re not a great fit. That’s where you may want to consider outsourcing your recruitment to an agency such as VerifyNow.
Not only do recruitment agencies have good intel in terms of what the market is doing at the moment, but they’re also good at challenging you and helping you look at a hidden gem or look at a resume from a different perspective.
You can learn more about our VerfiyNow’s recruitment services on our website. Reach out if you need support with recruitment.
And for more recruitment advice, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter for the latest articles and HR Think Tank episodes with Khai Ngo.
