Struggling to Recruit Top Talent? Your Recruitment Process Might Be the Culprit.

Jan 5, 2023

Finding, hiring, and retaining top talent is one of the most pressing challenges facing companies worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic only exacerbated the problem, as it forced hiring managers to modify their recruitment methods. At the same time, candidate expectations began to shift as well, and with the changing dynamics of the workforce, the market has begun to favor job-seekers rather than recruiters. In response, companies have had to reassess their own offerings, processes, and internal systems, which proves to be a difficult task.

If your company is struggling to hire new talent, the first place you should look is your recruitment process. By reviewing and revitalizing your own workflows, you may be able to overcome the new challenges posed by the changing market and stay ahead of your competitors. Here are a few things to look for when looking to improve your hiring and recruiting process and adapt to the new workforce landscape.

Inefficiencies

According to the Society of Human Resources Management, from start to finish, the average time that it takes a company to hire a new candidate is 42 days. That’s a month-and-a-half of working hours spent on searching, vetting, interviewing, testing, analyzing, and negotiating with potential hires, with no guarantee that a contract will be signed at the end of it. And trying to expedite the process by cutting out steps may result in unqualified candidates being hired.

Luckily, hiring managers now have a wealth of tools at their disposal to speed things up without increasing the likelihood of mismatched candidates slipping through the cracks. Artificial Intelligence and online talent marketplaces can present recruiters with pre-vetted candidates whose skills match your posted openings. This reduces the average time to fill a position from 6 weeks to less than one week. Even before you open their resume, you will know that they at least have the necessary experience to fulfill your open role. This will trim your hiring process down tremendously by weeding out unqualified candidates on your behalf, giving you a much better pool of talent to pick from.

Wondering how online talent marketplaces work? Learn more about how they can help your business succeed.

Data and Data Gaps

Traditional recruiting methods often rely on intuition, interpersonal connections, and guesswork when hiring new employees. Yet, even when resumes look tight and references check out, companies are far too often left in a lurch when it turns out that their new hires are unqualified for their roles. In an era of “Big Data,” this should never have to be the case.

Data-driven recruitment processes rely on statistics, facts, and tangible snippets of candidate information to inform hiring decisions. While analytics don’t always provide a complete picture of a candidate’s fitness—character and personality are still important—they can help you zero in on qualified people. For example, a candidate experience score may reveal how a candidate’s skill set and job experience matches with your open roles. Adopting a data-driven approach to hiring, therefore, will enable you to find better candidates and ultimately make better hiring decisions.

Cost Per Hire

Most organizations are well aware of how much a person costs to employ, but many are unclear about how much it costs just to hire them in the first place. In the United States, the cost of recruiting a new employee can set a company back anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000—and that’s before they even collect their first paycheck!

Why is this figure so high? While hiring may seem simple on the surface, there are many factors involved in bringing an employee onboard. Consider the salaries of each team member involved in the hiring process. Add those to any learning, development, or training hours that your talent acquisition needs to spend in order to grow in their discipline. And of course, you may need to pay for external expenses such as jobs boards, background checks, drug tests, career fairs, employee relocation, and more. All of those costs add up quickly, and before you know it, you’ve spent a considerable chunk of money just to hire one new employee.

Fortunately, lowering that expense can also help you streamline your entire hiring process. By spending less time searching for new talent, you will ultimately spend (or waste) less money. Take advantage of online talent marketplaces and AI to slash your overhead while still locking in top talent.

Keep your hiring costs low and your success rates high with Remote Symphony.

Brand Image

Many companies are unaware that their own brand is one of the most powerful tools in their hiring arsenal. Since 75% of job-seekers consider a company’s brand values before even applying for a job, organizations should ensure that they are communicating their brand message properly on all channels. Remember, while you’re interviewing candidates, they are also interviewing you. Make sure that you are conveying an accurate, powerful, and unique message on your website, social media channels, and any affiliate publications such as Glassdoor.

Candidate Experience

Even after you’ve tightened up inefficiencies within your hiring process, incorporated data into your decision-making, cut down hiring costs, and spruced up your brand messaging, you still need to do one crucial thing: make sure your candidates have a good experience. The candidate experience is far too often overlooked by hiring managers and can ultimately make or break your talent pool.

When a job-seeker has a bad experience with a company, they are likely to share that experience either on social media or their friends and future colleagues. And, even more alarmingly, most of those candidates will even discontinue patronizing that company for goods and services. A poor candidate experience doesn’t only cost you talent, it can cost you customers, too.

To improve your candidate experience, put yourself in a candidate’s shoes. When you’re looking for a new position, what do you want to know about a job opening? You’re probably hoping for clear job descriptions, a simple application process, insights into the company’s culture, and a salary range. By making your application process simple, straightforward, and informative, you will increase the chances of offer acceptances and better word-of-mouth marketing.

Start Finding Talent Today

As the first online two-sided talent marketplace to specialize in Finance, Accounting and IT, Remote Symphony enables companies to overcome even the most difficult of challenges facing hiring managers today. We are here to help you overhaul your recruitment processes, match your company with top talent, and keep both inefficiencies and costs low.

Fuel your business with the best talent available in your industry, and schedule an absolutely free consultation with an expert today. We look forward to helping you grow.