Why Your Hiring Practices Could Be Deterring Top Talent

Complicated Job Descriptions

Wordy and complicated job descriptions could be letting down your recruitment efforts from the get go. Job postings that don’t clearly convey your open position’s responsibilities and requirements may mean you’re not reaching the best candidates out there.

Crafting clear, concise and effective job descriptions is a delicate task that can be hard to get right. Ideally, the vacancy title should give a good idea of exactly what the role entails. In the body of the description, you need to make sure that key information is front and centre, and easy to glean at a glance. You should stray away from including irrelevant or supplementary information, opting to share these kinds of details during the interview or later down the line.

You should also write your job descriptions using language and tone that aligns with your brand identity. This is important for giving candidates a feel for your company culture and identity.

Rigid Requirements

You probably have a good idea of what an ideal candidate’s profile looks like. And although ideal qualifications and experience are effective metrics, it’s also best to infuse some flexibility and open-mindedness into your recruitment practices.

Sticking too closely to your job description requirements might mean you’re overlooking worthy candidates. These applicants may not have exactly the right credentials but could still be a great fit for the position. For this reason, it’s worth including a caveat in your job description welcoming candidates who don’t necessarily fulfil the requirements you’ve outlined.

Acknowledge receipt

A simple, yet often overlooked, step in the recruitment process is acknowledging receipt of an application. Even if through an automated message, thanking a candidate for taking the time to apply ensures they get a welcoming first impression of your recruitment team and company.

This also means your HR team don’t have to field and respond to follow up messages.

Impersonal recruitment

It’s easy to (inadvertently) create an impersonal and transactional recruitment process. But this can result in a negative candidate experience that ultimately deters applicants from taking the job.

Though they’re not part of your company yet, you should see the recruitment stage as an opportunity to initiate your candidates into what your business is all about. Some ways to do this include keeping them updated on progress throughout the recruitment process and establishing an open and personal line of communication.

Barriers to entry & delayed time to hire

Any obstacles or complications that candidates encounter during recruitment could reflect badly on their overall experience and impression of your business. You should try to avoid clunky workflows, lengthy emails and multiple attachments as far as possible.

A streamlined candidate experience combined with a minimised time to hire is key to optimising your recruitment process. Harness dedicated tools and platforms designed to simplify key stages such as applications, candidate management, and references to make your life easier and ensure your applicants have the easiest candidate journey possible.

Reply to everyone

The impressions you make on unsuccessful applicants should be just as important as the ones you end up hiring. Even if you don’t wind up working with someone this time around, another position that they’re better suited to may open up further down the line. Ensure to factor responding to unsuccessful candidates into your recruitment workflow.

If you have the capacity, you may even want to consider offering feedback. You could also ask their permission to keep their contact details on file so that you can reach out directly when and if another position becomes available.

Interview Flexibility

Scheduling difficulties should not be getting in your way. If you’re offering a tight interview period or inflexible time-frames, you may find that some candidates are unable to make the time to speak with you (even on a remote basis).

Try as far as possible to accommodate your candidates’ time constraints and schedules. Using dedicated scheduling platforms is an easy way to empower applicants with the ability to choose the time and date of their interview according to their own availability.

Manual vs Automated Processes

If you’re still relying on manual workflows, the likelihood is that your recruitment processes are being held back by inefficiencies and human error.

Automation is the answer. Dedicated tools like RefNow enhance candidate experience with intuitive and straightforward workflows. They also help to free up a significant amount of your HR team’s time and reduce time to hire.

Recruitment automation is all about making you and your candidates’ lives easier. You’ll have an easier time managing and liaising with your applicants, storing and accessing candidate information, requesting references, scheduling interviews, and tracking time to hire. Crucially, without the need to manually manage each stage of the recruitment process, your HR team should have more bandwidth to focus on building candidate relationships.

Automating Reference Collection with RefNow

For example, using RefNow to request, collect and manage candidate references will transform (and speed up) this stage of your recruitment process. Our consolidated and easy-to-access portal means you can easily contact candidates asking for their referee contact details. Once entered, RefNow automatically sends out a secure and mobile-friendly questionnaire. You’ll be notified when your reference report is ready to read.

Refining Recruitment for Better Outcomes

Best talent acquisition and recruitment practices are constantly changing as candidate expectations shift. That’s why it’s so pivotal to take a proactive approach to recruitment that continues to attract top candidates.

A current core focus for many HR professionals is streamlining candidate experience and recruitment workflows by adopting dedicated digital technologies. This comes in tandem with a drive to minimise time to hire as much as possible, especially with the heightened talent shortage that employers are currently grappling with. Though there’s no ideal formula for recruitment, you should, at the very least, ensure that your current practices aren’t letting you down.