How you treat potential employees during the hiring process tells a candidate a lot about your company. In fact, a bad interview could cause the candidate to rethink your company, and perhaps even the job field they are interested in. A bad interview could cause a candidate to dissuade their peers from applying to your company too.
The hiring process is where the candidate gains their first impression of your company. If you think your company’s greatness is self-evident and you treat talented candidates as if they should be lucky to be considered by you, potential hires could feel like they won’t matter to you.
You need to put your business’s best foot forward during interviews. Otherwise, you will have trouble hiring great employees. It’s important that you cut out anything that might cause talent to avoid your business.
Reasons you aren’t hiring talent
The following are five ways you may be damaging your ability to source great talent.
#1. Your job listings aren’t mobile friendly
Much of our lives happen through the frame of those little screens in our pockets. We use our phones for taking and making calls, sharing social updates, sending emails, and, at least according to a 2014 Glassdoor survey, hunting down new jobs.
People increasingly consume information on their mobile devices, and consumption will keep rising into the foreseeable future as more people own devices. If more and more job candidates are going to seek jobs through their phones, it stands to reason that your company’s job board postings should be mobile friendly. A candidate should be able to see a job and apply for it through a mobile device.
You don’t want candidates to suffer through an unoptimized, ugly web page. In today’s digital age, few things make a bad impression quite like a site that is not mobile friendly and can’t keep up with users. Make sure your business’s website is responsive for mobile devices, and use job boards that are mobile friendly too.
#2. Your job application is a mess
Applying for a job is essentially a job. It can take job applicants hours to write essays, punch in information, fill out tedious questionnaires, and track down information your hiring department might never use. You might miss out on hiring the best talent because they can’t get through your arduous application process.
If you’re trying to make your company look prestigious by making the application process a grueling slog, think again. There are better ways to weed unqualified applicants out than application attrition.
Only put the necessary questions on the application. Sure, put questions on the application that will highlight the unqualified applicants, but don’t be excessive. You can vet applicants more during a phone or in-person interview.
#3. Your hiring process takes too long
You know the importance of hiring the right employee. You want to be certain that a candidate is a good fit for your business; otherwise, there might be problems and turnover. You probably want to know everything you can about a candidate’s behavior, experience, and expectations. If that means doing extensive interviews and background checks, so be it. But, you need to understand that there is a trade-off between the length of the hiring process and your ability land applicants.
Glassdoor research from 2015 found that the average interview process, from start to finish, is 23 days in the U.S. When you take a long time to make hiring decisions, you create more opportunity to miss candidates. Candidates probably applied to other businesses, so the longer your hiring process takes, the more time other businesses have to take your candidates.
What companies should strive for is hiring efficiency. Cut out any extra time in your hiring process, such as taking a long time to reach out to candidates. After all, the longer it takes to place talent, the longer it will take to train and onboard new employees. And, you lose productivity in the workplace as you conduct a lengthy hiring process because your attention is removed from your usual tasks.
#4. You don’t know what you want
You probably have qualifications and personality characteristics in mind that you want candidates to have. But, before you can put those in a job posting, you need to make sure those qualifications are what you actually want.
The cost of hiring an employee is too high for you not to find exactly what your company needs. You might say you want a “self-starter” or a “continuous learner,” but what does that really mean to you? Think about who you are trying to attract.
If you are going to put things like a “self-starter” or “continuous learner” on a job listing, make sure you can come up with an example of what it means. What skills or actions would show the characteristic to you? Be clear.
For example, a self-starter might mean you want an employee who will find work to do without being told. Share examples of what the qualifications look like at your company. Ask the candidate how they show the qualifications and characteristics. Then, you can see if your ideas match up.
#5. You don’t get input from others
If you want to know if a candidate will be a good fit for your business, don’t rely only on your instincts. You might think a candidate is qualified for a job, but the candidate might not fit well with the rest of your team.
Before you hire someone, have the rest of your employees meet them, especially if the employees will often work with the potential employee. If the team doesn’t get along with the candidate, the candidate probably isn’t a good fit. You will miss out on the benefits of hiring the right employee if the candidate doesn’t mesh well with your existing team. The team might lose productivity with a bad fit.
Also, your employees are working in your business every day, whereas you must spend more time working on your business. Your employees might have a better idea of what qualifications are needed for the open position. They can give you insight on additional qualifications a candidate needs that you haven’t thought of.
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