The longer your hiring process drags on, the more expensive and stressful it can be for your company. Did you know that businesses spend an average of $4,000 to find a new employee? If you’re filling a C-suite position, your expenses can climb even higher. Simply put: It pays to hire more efficiently.
You need a gameplan to find the perfect candidate fast. Learn how to hire employees quickly without sacrificing talent.
Strategies to Hire Employees Quickly
In a candidate’s market, when there are more job openings than there are people to fill them, hiring fast is important for a few reasons. First, it allows you to cut your hiring costs. Second, hiring quickly means you scoop up the top talent before your competition has a chance to make them an offer.
Here are seven ways to abbreviate your time to hire and get your new employee on board fast.
1. Prioritize specific skills vs. years of experience
Using a Boolean search to identify candidates with applicable experience can often lead you to the right person for the job. However, when you’re learning how to hire employees quickly you may want to hunt for skills over experience. In other words, it’s more important that a graphic design employee can use the software you use than that they have 5 years of senior status under their belt.
Forbes recommends that employers embrace case-based interviews, in which the candidate is given a situational problem and are asked to solve it. Assigning a candidate a project, task, or realistic problem to resolve lets you witness their actual skills — no matter what their resume says. However, if your goal is to hire an employee quickly, this project shouldn’t take more than a couple hours to complete. Giving candidates a demanding, time-intensive project could lead to significant drop offs.
2. Get referrals from current employees
You can also shorten the hiring process by turning to your most valuable talent well: your current employees. In one study, 88% of employers said that employees have been their best source for finding quality new hires. You may want to consider offering a financial incentive. Giving your staff a finder’s fee for referring someone who is successfully hired may just convince them to contact their talented former colleagues.
3. Consider internal promotions
Internal hires tend to have better performance during their first two years of employment than outside hires. And, they’re far less likely to be fired from the position. When you’re looking for someone to stay the course, you may want to hire from within.
Promoting from your internal team may also foster a better workplace culture. When business owners and managers acknowledge excellent results and company loyalty via promotion, it shows that you’re willing to invest in and reward your staff. You may have less turnover if you prioritize internal promotions.
4. Use working interviews to give candidates a trial run
You may be able to shave off one of your interview rounds by implementing a trial run. Paid trials give you a good idea of whether the person has the right technical skills, is able to communicate, and fits into the company culture.
Instead of back-to-back panel interviews, consolidate a few of those meetings into a single working interview. During working interviews, make sure the person will interact with multiple team members and have the chance to showcase their work style.
5. Write very clear and specific job descriptions
If you use the right search terms on job boards and when culling LinkedIn for talent, you’re more likely to find the right person faster. Use Boolean modifiers like AND and NOT when you search for resumes. Get to know more advanced Boolean tools like the *, which shows you all variations of a word. For instance, if you search “manag*”, you can find all candidates with “manager, managing, management” and other related terms in their experience.
Likewise, you want to make sure the top talent can find you. Consider what the ideal candidate might be searching for from their side. Make sure your job description is as specific as it can be and includes the exact software programs, responsibilities, and benefits associated with the role.
6. Reconsider past applicants or previous employees
An applicant tracking system (ATS) allows you to keep track of anyone who has ever been in your hiring funnel. If you need to hire someone fast, take a scroll through your previously active candidates (someone who submitted a resume and/or application). You may find that someone who was previously not the right fit for a role can find a home in a different one.
You may also want to circle around to previous employees, who can also be tracked in your ATS. If someone talented left on good terms and has more experience now, perhaps they’re ready for a management position. Someone who used to work for you may be able to adapt more easily to your processes and company culture — since they already know what they’re walking into.
7. Streamline your hiring process
Finally, learning how to hire employees quickly may boil down to changing your entire hiring process. Do applications tend to bottleneck with a single person in your hiring process? Do you end up with a lot of irrelevant resumes any time you post an opening? You may need to eliminate these obstacles. Make sure no one individual can stymie an application’s process and find new sources for posting available positions.
Ideally, HR will work alongside team leaders to craft job postings and identify the most important skill sets. Then, you will have an established framework for how to move a candidate through the hiring process. Follow-up with candidates fast at each stage to make sure they don’t drop out of the pipeline.
