Improve Your Hiring Efficiency

The current hiring environment is challenging: we’re experiencing the Great Resignation along with the struggles of a tight labor market. Companies are competing for top candidates and can’t misstep in the interview process.

However, you may have seen candidate complaints online: job descriptions are intricately detailed; hiring processes are unnecessarily long; companies require excessive screens, projects and rounds of interviews. How can you improve your hiring processes to secure the best candidates and the health of your organization?

The experts at Marchon Partners recommend you focus in these three areas:

• Prioritize Your Hiring Criteria
• Build a Balanced Job Description
• Streamline the Job Interview

If you can get these three steps right, you have an opportunity to improve your hiring efficiency and increase your competitive advantage in the current market. Let’s take a closer look!

Prioritize Your Hiring Criteria

The best hiring processes begin with criteria for the open position. Your criteria drive every important step in hiring: job description development, candidate screening, interview questions and evaluation, and the decision making. 

That seems like a no-brainer – of course criteria are important. What’s there to discuss? 

In the current market, some companies are creating criteria that are so stringent, no candidate could possibly meet all the expectations. And honestly, they don’t… and that’s one reason why those companies still have open positions. 

Does this sound familiar? If so, perhaps you’re experiencing these breakdowns in hiring:

• Not enough candidates apply for the job because the requirements are too rigid
• Candidates can’t get through the screener
• Candidates don’t measure up in the interview process
• So many interviews occur because you can’t decide on the candidate
• The candidate takes another job while you search for the perfect person

When the labor market is tight, something has to give. We are not suggesting that you accept unqualified candidates for your roles. But we are suggesting you rethink your definition of “qualified.” And more importantly, we recommend you prioritize your criteria for determining qualified candidates.

• Think about the top requirements that will make or break the role. 
• Create a list of “must-haves” and “nice-to-haves.”
• Hone in on the type of person that makes the team successful, and emphasize those skills or that experience alongside technical skills.

At Marchon Partners, we look at technical skills, and we don’t deny the importance of must-haves. We also we emphasize cultural fit.

Internal and external training can improve an employee’s technical skills in the nice-to-have category. But it’s very hard to train attitude or work ethic, for example.

When you focus on the type of person that excels in the role or in your culture, and you hire to that, the candidate and your organization have a much better chance at longer-term growth and success. We’ve seen this approach improve many of our clients’ hiring processes.

Build Balanced Job Descriptions

Job descriptions are a candidate’s first exposure to the job, and potentially to your organization. Many candidates gloss over descriptions quickly when searching online, so you have to capture their attention and compel them to apply in a very short period of time.

It’s simple supply and demand: good candidates are in short supply and you want them. A well-executed job description can make your hiring process more efficient: it can attract more candidates and more of the right candidates.

Rigid job descriptions have become a roadblock for companies in this current environment. This rigidity reduces candidate pools and greatly reduces diverse candidate pools. Diverse candidates tend to use rigid requirements to screen themselves out. Think twice about requirements in areas that already have underrepresentation: previous senior leadership roles, for example.

According to our previous recommendations for diversity hiring: “Unless a specification is absolutely necessary, list it as ‘preferred’ and state that individuals should still apply even without 100% of the requirements.” 

There are now plenty of best practice examples showing more flexible language in job descriptions. We suggest you do some research on job sites and consider a refresh to your previous approach.

If you’ve created a prioritized list of candidate criteria, you’re ready to put pen to paper. At a high level, your description should include the must-to-haves and nice-to-haves as such – some companies use language like “requirements” and “preferred experience and skills.” 

It’s also important to include information about company culture and the elements of cultural fit that you seek. Employees in today’s market want to see your personality in the description and want to know that you care about more than just dollars and cents. In addition, in the post-pandemic workplace, the focus on the whole human being resonates with candidates and fits the tone of the current environment.

Streamline the Job Interview

Best practices in hiring must include short and efficient interview processes. Long, drawn out interviews tire and frustrate candidates and don’t present your organization in the best light. They also create an opportunity for the candidate to stray and be stolen by a competitor!

Again, starting with an agreement on what criteria are absolutely necessary (and what are not) is step one. We suggest you incorporate these criteria into tools that expedite decision making, such as:

• Well-structured screenings
• Focused interview guides
• Effective post-interview evaluations

We also recommend you plan your interview schedule in advance and give it boundaries.

• Determine upfront the number of interviews and with whom.
• Also determine the total time frame for interviews – for example, you’ll allow two weeks total for the process to be complete.
• Prioritize interviewing – having interviewers clear their schedules to meet the time commitment.
• Consider video if that works best for timing. It’s now the norm in interviewing. We have some advice in our previous article on the virtual interview. Check it out!

We realize the job market is tough all over, and we’d love to partner with you to get you through it. Contact us today, and let’s get your hiring process moving in the right direction!