14 Recruiting Tips for Finding Better Candidates
Talking about Recruitment, a successful recruiting strategy helps companies find and hire new talent. Whether your company is experiencing normal turnover or adding new positions because of growth, you probably want to find the most qualified candidates possible to help your business succeed.
When used well, intentional recruiting strategies can be one of the best assets in your company's growth and development. By finding highly qualified new hires, you might increase the efficiency and productivity of your team. Recruiting new employees that are a good cultural fit can help support morale on your team.
In this article, we offer 14 tips for recruiting new hires for your company.
Tips for recruiting
Evaluating and improving your recruitment strategies can help you find the best employees for your organization. Here is a list of 14 tips to help you with your recruiting efforts:
1. Emphasize employee referrals
One of the most effective and affordable hiring strategies for growing companies is the employment referral, which uses people's professional networks to find quality talent. Consider improving your employment referral program using a stipend system for successful hires or other tangible benefits. Developing a culture of respect toward referrals can boost networking connections as well. Be sure to purposefully value the personal investment of both the referring employee and referred hire when using this strategy.
Examples of the types of referral bonuses you can offer include:
- Financial bonus
- Social bonus
- Prize bonus
- Vacation bonus
- Additional benefits bonus
Anyone can refer an applicant to a job by informing them of a job opening or sharing an applicant's resume with a hiring manager. Employers rely on referrals to learn about quality candidates who have already been vetted by a trusted employee.
Referrals can also come from former employees who had a positive experience with your company. Implementing positive offboarding experiences can help ensure former employees will refer highly qualified new candidates to your company.
2. Create a positive candidate experience
How a prospective employee perceives and feels about the hiring process is based on the interactions they have with everyone at the company, from recruiters to hiring managers and human resources professionals. The candidate experience also includes other interactions that may take place without another person involved, like an online application process, job advertisements and automated responses to application submittals. Their experience can determine how much they want to work at the organization and what they tell others, which can contribute to the reputation the company has among job seekers.
Consider following up quickly about any rejections so the candidate can feel free to apply for other positions that fit them better. It may be best for a rejection to come from a real email rather than a generic one from the company, so the candidate still feels valued even if you didn't select them. Also, request an interview with a candidate as soon as you know you'd like to move forward with them in the hiring process.
3. Look for internal recruits
If you are not doing so already, consider recruiting internally. Promoting from within and encouraging lateral moves can help boost employee morale. Internal recruiting can also show that your company is interested in helping your employees advance in their careers, which can help with finding and keeping quality employees.
Hiring internally reduces the time it takes to hire, onboard and train an employee and reduces costly external recruitment charges like advertising on job boards or paying for background checks. Plus, when hiring internally, you're usually dealing with a smaller pool of candidates, which saves time when screening and interviewing. Internal hiring also reduces the amount of paperwork you'll need to complete, as most of the employee's information is already on record.
4. Prioritize diversity
Diverse background, experiences and ideas can help maximize your team's effectiveness and drive innovation. Prioritizing diversity in hiring is an important way to ensure a wide representation of staffing, which can help work toward the best outcomes in workplace equity. Try building diversity, inclusion and belonging initiatives into your recruitment processes.
Hiring bias often causes recruiters to overlook qualified candidates or consider candidates who aren't good matches. While some companies use automated platforms to mitigate hiring bias, algorithms can also replicate human prejudices. You can ensure a fair recruiting process by implementing measures like:
- Training hiring managers and interviewers
- Creating a standard interview protocol
- Implementing blind hiring, a practice that omits irrelevant information, like race and gender
- Using assessments and data evidence instead of assumptions
- Facilitating a transparent recruiting process
5. Use a rubric
Clear expectations can be a cornerstone of the recruitment experience. Using an interview rubric or checklist to evaluate candidates might communicate transparency in your hiring process and ensure that the most qualified candidates apply to join your team.
An interview rubric is a scoring tool that defines expectations and helps determine who to interview, who to invite to interview again or who to offer employment to. This type of rubric is used to objectively measure both tangible and intangible information, such as relevant experience and demeanor.