11 Effective Ways to Stay on Top of Your Hiring Process
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers!
Today’s Question: Staying on top of the job market can be tricky in a small company. A lot of people have to wear multiple hats. How do you stay on top of the hiring process and prevent it from getting constantly put on the back burner when competing priorities arise?
The answers below are provided by Young Entrepreneur Council (YEC), an invite-only organization of the world’s most successful young entrepreneurs. YEC members represent nearly every industry, generate billions of dollars in revenue each year, and have created tens of thousands of jobs.
1. Always Be Interviewing
I learned this concept when working at large corporations, but I never fully understood it until I started a company. Having a continual interview process, even when you aren’t hiring, helps you maintain a pool of candidates in your network who can fill roles when needed. This also helps keep you attuned to the changing workforce and learning trends.
Much of the stress around hiring, at least from what I’ve noticed, comes from unrealistic expectations. I’ve heard plenty of other CEOs say they want to hire role X within a month. A month? That’s not realistic. The more you can align hiring with your growth plan, the more able you’ll be to create realistic hiring timelines.
Time management is crucial for a small business owner. Delegate where you can to free up time for the important matters, like hiring.
Hiring should be at the top of your priority list. Selecting the wrong candidate for the position can be very costly and can impact your entire team. On the other hand, top-tier talent can help take your business to the next level.
I schedule time to review applicants and update hiring priorities, as well as set interviews or research applicants. Putting these things on my calendar helps me get them done like any other project that needs my attention regularly.
For a startup with a small pool of employees, it is more efficient to get your entire team involved. Give each employee a role in the process, such as evaluating or asking specific questions about one skill. Make sure all candidates get similar questions. Then, have your employees rate each candidate and provide a bit feedback based on their evaluations. This streamlines the process and ensures you get the best candidate.
Setting benchmarks on when you want to hire allows you to stay on top of it since you know it’s on a schedule. You can also plan other growth around hiring as well, such as the operations planning that needs to take place. It’s all about planning how and when you want to grow so that when you hit certain benchmarks you know exactly when it’s time to hire, as opposed to hiring being something impromptu.
There are many great HR software options that can help you organize and simplify the hiring process. These tools can be especially helpful at a small startup where multiple people are in charge of hiring. Dedicated software will help you keep all the resumes in one database so you don’t make mistakes — like interviewing the wrong person or accidentally inviting someone for the same interview twice.
You should have two goals with hiring: Be efficient and get the best people. Starting from scratch takes a long time, and you won’t be sourcing from the widest pool of candidates. We set specific goals for every member of our team (not just the senior folks). Everyone must identify at least one prospective colleague weekly. This builds our pool of talent across all levels and makes hiring faster.
Hiring is never easy, and sometimes, the person doing the hiring isn’t really aware of the day-to-day tasks the new hire will need to accomplish. To speed up the process and make sure the right person is hired, the hiring team should consult with someone from the same division or working on similar tasks. This will make sure both parties are on the right track and looking to find the right person.
This may appear to be a relatively expensive option, but finding the right recruitment agency for your business will save you time and money in the long run. The agency will have the experience and network to connect you with the right individuals who can contribute to your company. Spend some time with the agency and ensure you are on the same page in terms of requirements. Then you can focus on growing your company.
There are a number of tools available that can automate your resume screening. Instead of spending hours looking over resumes, you can use that software to do the work for you. That way you’ll weed out the resumes that don’t fit and you can focus on the best ones.
