Recruitment is a tricky business, with a seemingly endless number of considerations, concerns, and potential pitfalls for anyone who wants to hire the best new staff.
That means you’ve got to pay attention if you want to make the best hiring decisions. While that’s easier for someone who’s been doing the job for decades, issues can still arise, and recruitment can seem like a minefield for anyone without lots of experience.
We’ve rounded up eleven of the biggest questions around recruitment and delivered quick-fire answers that’ll help you avoid issues, improve your processes and make better hires. And if you’re on the hunt for more recruitment inspiration, here’s our verdict on 2021’s best job sites, the best recruitment platforms, and our favorite resources for writing a top-notch job description.
Where can I post a job opening?
There’s no shortage of places to post job vacancies, but there are some rules you can follow to give yourself the best chance of getting the listing in front of the best candidates.
You should always post vacancies on your own company careers page – that’s a given, and many job boards won’t list the vacancy without that. It’s also crucial to post your vacancy on big job sites like LinkedIn, Indeed, and Monster, because they have the biggest audiences around.
It’s not as simple as posting your listing on the big job boards, though. It’s always worth considering a specialist job site, especially if you’re advertising for an unusual or specific opening or if you want to find part-time, freelance, remote, or contract staff. Also ensure that you advertise your open positions on your company’s social media profiles.
How do I make sure that my job advert is attractive to candidates?
The professional world has experienced massive changes over the past couple of years, and if you want to hire the best candidates, you can’t just list a job’s duties and requirements and wait for the applications to arrive.
You’ve got to spend a bit more time on the job description and advert if you want to draw people’s eyes. These days, candidates want more information about a company’s culture, values, diversity, and environmental credentials before they’re willing to apply.
More candidates also appreciate clear salary and benefit information these days, and people are utterly fed up with buzzwords, cliches, and jargon – clear language is essential.
How can I hire for diversity and inclusion?
More job seekers and companies now prize a diverse and inclusive place of work, so recruiters and HR departments need to ensure that their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts are better than ever to attract the best candidates.
If you want to find diverse candidates, use diverse terms when searching through resume and applicant databases. Beyond that, post your job adverts in a wider variety of locations, create links with colleges and universities, and attend job fairs. Consider an employee referral program to benefit from your existing networks.
If you highlight a progressive company culture and your commitment to diversity in your job adverts, then a wider range of candidates will likely apply.
Should I use an HR outsourcing company or an agency?
There’s a lot to be said for using external companies to help with your recruitment and HR needs. If you rely on a recruitment agency, then you’ll benefit from their expertise when it comes to hiring people in your industry or for different roles, like temporary or executive positions.
A recruitment agency can eliminate risk and deliver better results, but it can lead to increased costs.
If you want to go beyond an agency, you can contract an HR outsourcing service. These companies handle your entire recruitment process, from adverts to onboarding, and they’re ideal if you don’t have the expertise or time required to tackle recruitment in-house.
They’re both ideal if you want help with your recruitment, but be aware that they can prove very expensive, and you have to prepare to give up control over some of your processes.
Should I try and reduce my hiring budget?
This question will come up every year when companies set budgets, and it remains pertinent in every situation. Whether you handle recruitment in-house or with the help of an external company, hiring managers will always be under pressure to cut costs.
It’s not something you should consider unless it’s a last resort. After all, a company’s best asset is its staff, and being able to hire good workers can be the key to increased prosperity.
Sometimes, of course, you may have to freeze your recruitment, but it’s worth trying to negotiate a reduced budget instead – because the ability to hire staff is crucial for long-term success.
Is it worth targeting passive candidates?
Passive candidates are people who are not actively job-hunting. Unsurprisingly, that makes up most of the workforce, so there’s a huge amount of potential talent in the passive ranks. Happily, though, most passive candidates are willing to listen to new opportunities if the right offer comes along.
The downside, though, is that you’ve got to find those passive candidates, and that takes some extra work. You’ve got to network on sites like LinkedIn, take part in industry events, and maintain an active and effective online presence.
It takes more time and effort to find passive candidates, but it’s absolutely worth it – you’ll have access to a bigger pool of talent, and you could employ better people.
Do I need to work on my company’s brand?
This is a simple one: yes, you do. Even if you think you’ve done an impressive job here, you can always do more. And with candidates paying more attention than ever to a company’s culture, mission, and values when searching for a new job, it’s crucial to develop a good brand in every department – it’s not enough to just offer lots of money anymore.
That means having a site that shows off how great it is to work at your company, and it means having staff who are happy to praise their place of work. You’ve got to have a top-notch social media presence, an active company blog, and well-maintained pages on LinkedIn and Glassdoor.
How do I remove bias from the recruitment process?
Companies pay more attention to diverse and inclusive recruitment these days, and rightly so. Part of that involves eliminating bias from the recruitment process – even if it’s unconscious bias, it can still be harmful.
If you want to remove as much bias as possible from recruitment, you need to have a diverse hiring process – make sure that you have a diverse panel of people to conduct interviews and have input at other parts of the recruitment process, and offer diversity training for your staff members.
It’s crucial to have standardized processes throughout recruitment, from applications to interview questions, and consider HR software with anonymized screening and testing facilities to remove all bias when you evaluate candidates.
How can I speed up recruitment?
Recruitment can take too long if the processes involved are laborious and inefficient, and that costs time and money.
If you handle your recruitment in-house, examine your processes and documentation and look for areas you could skip, slim down, or standardize to make things smoother. You could also consider ATS software, which can automate many processes. Speak to everyone involved with your recruitment – they will have different opinions about how the process could be improved, and it’ll allow you to gather new ideas and spot patterns.
If you want to go further than internal analysis and software-based automation, consider an HR outsourcing provider. These companies use their expertise to eliminate inefficiencies, and they’ll take the hard work out of your hands.
How much should I compromise when hiring and offering jobs?
The job market is currently full of open positions and fewer candidates who are willing to fill them, so you’ll have to be more flexible than ever if you want to secure the best person for the job.
You may have to offer higher salaries than you would have considered in the past, for instance, or you could consider developing a better benefits package to attract more candidates.
Be prepared to be flexible when it comes to the candidate’s abilities – consider people who don’t tick every box when it comes to skills and qualifications. If they’re the right person, they can learn on the job.
How can I ensure a good candidate experience?
If you want people to accept your job offers, integrate into your company smoothly, and remain happy in their job, you’ve got to provide a smooth and welcoming candidate experience across the entire recruitment process.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to ensure clear, frequent communication with candidates at every step of the process. It’s simple, but too many companies create a bad impression because they leave people in the dark.
Make sure you give candidates all the information they need for interviews and exercises, explain every step of the process, stay on top of the timetable, and use templates and reminders to keep things standardized and professional.
If someone has a good candidate experience, then they’ll be more likely to accept your job offer, and you’ll get a good reputation through word of mouth, too – it’s a win-win situation.
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