It's important to continually evaluate your hiring process before any surge in hiring. Here are some tips:
Update your internal processes
In order to ensure that your hiring process is efficient and consistent, create and optimize job descriptions, come up with sample interview questions, design experiential interviews, and determine who will be conducting interviews.
Create and optimize job descriptions
Take an inventory of your job descriptions. What’s changed about established roles, and what new roles have been identified? Update the language of your job postings to sell your opportunities to job seekers — make sure to include the perks and benefits that come along with a job. Check out more of our tips on creating great job descriptions.
Next, create job templates with your new postings in advance so you can post new openings when you’re ready with just a few clicks.
Come up with sample interview questions
When you have a consistent interview process, you can be sure that each hiring manager at your company is ranking candidates based on set criteria rather than gut feelings. When you specify the interview questions that should be asked, you have a way to consistently evaluate whether a candidate has the right skills and experience to succeed in a new role.
Consider creating an interview scorecard — a guide with questions and scored responses that you can use to conduct interviews.
Design experiential interviews
If you’re not already using experiential interviews, it’s time to add them to your hiring process. Experiential interviews require an interviewee to complete a task that they would encounter on the job. For example, you might ask a candidate for a customer support position to respond to a hypothetical angry client. Experiential tasks might not be appropriate for a phone screen or first interview, but they can really help you make decisions about which candidates have the skills needed to succeed in the role.
Determine who will be conducting interviews
Decide in advance who will manage each step in the hiring process, such as conducting phone screens, first interviews, second interviews and completing reference checks. This is especially important if you don’t have an in-house recruiter. Let everyone at your company know that you’re getting ready to start hiring and ask if anyone is interested in sitting in on interviews to provide another perspective.
When you’ve determined who will be taking part in the interview process, give them access to CareerPlug.
Depending on the user's hiring access level, make sure to send them the appropriate Getting Started Guide so they can become familiar with how to use CareerPlug
- Getting Started Guide - Account Administrators
- Getting Started Guide - Full Access Users
- Getting Started Guide - Limited Access Users
Optimize your candidate experience
The job market will continue to be candidate-driven. Great candidates expect a lot from a company’s hiring process. They want to feel understood, appreciated, and catered to. The best applicants are applying to multiple different opportunities, so ensuring that your hiring process is efficient, thoughtful, and attractive to job seekers will help you stand out from your competitors.
Consider how you market your company to job seekers
Think about how you’re marketing your company to job seekers. For example, your applicant-facing company description should be different than your client-facing company description. Your applicant-facing company description should describe the benefits of working at your company. In the past year, has your company description or mission changed at all? Do you have team photos to show what a typical day might be like at your company?
CareerPlug offers a configurable Careers Page complete with areas to include a company description, team photos, employee testimonials, perks, and benefits. Learn how to configure your Careers Page: Careers Page Configuration Guide
Reduce your applicant drop off rate
A CareerPlug application requires only the most essential information about an applicant, and there’s a reason for that. There's huge value in shortening an application process in order to prevent applicant drop off rates. Here, let’s take it a step further: Where are candidates who have already applied dropping off in your hiring process, and how can you change your hiring process to retain good candidates?
For example, candidates might be dropping off when you ask them to fill out a formal application, or maybe you’re getting caught up in the back-and-forth of the interview scheduling process. CareerPlug offers tools to help — like the ability to create a custom hiring process and integrate your Google or Outlook calendar so applicants can seamlessly schedule interviews.
Consider adding text messaging
Another option is considering whether text messaging might be the best way to communicate with applicants. Text messaging can help you meet applicants where they are.
Think about the roles for which you’re hiring and the potential candidates you’re looking for. Will they spend most of the time in the field or on their feet? Sending a text message to follow up on an email may be the best way to reach these candidates.
Text messaging is helping thousands of CareerPlug clients contact and hire applicants faster. Consider adding text messaging to your hiring budget.