Having an effective hiring process impacts your company’s success. Your hiring process affects employee engagement, performance, and productivity. It also impacts retention rates and your bottom line.
Following best practices helps increase the effectiveness of your hiring process. This includes knowing what to do and not do when hiring. These tips can help.
Implement these dos and don’ts to create an effective hiring process:
Do: Regularly Communicate with Candidates
Ongoing communication with candidates encourages them to remain engaged in your hiring process.
- Make your hiring process as short as possible.
- Share accurate job descriptions.
- Use an applicant tracking system (ATS) to screen resumes.
- Let candidates know where they are in the hiring process, the next step, and how to prepare.
- Quickly answer questions and resolve concerns.
- Share your company culture.
- Talk with candidates about their long-term goals during interviews.
- Clarify the job duties, responsibilities, salary range, and benefits.
- Point out how the opportunity and company fit with the candidate’s career objectives.
- Ask for feedback to improve your hiring process.
Don’t: Ghost Candidates
If you fail to respond to a candidate promptly, they likely will lose interest in the job and leave your hiring process. Or, the candidate may believe you hired someone else and move on to other opportunities. Having fewer candidates to choose from decreases the likelihood of hiring the best person for the position.
Do: Conduct Effective Testing
Candidate testing provides more objective information about job performance than other assessments. Effectively created tests measure specific information relevant to the job duties and responsibilities. These tests are reliable because they produce consistent results.
Administer standardized tests in the same way to all candidates.
- Developing these tests in line with job-related criteria provides all candidates the same opportunity for success.
- Assessing candidate traits through testing saves time on interviewing.
- You can talk with candidates who can carry out the job duties and responsibilities.
Don’t: Conduct Excessive Testing
Avoid administering multiple tests. Candidates likely will become upset or exhausted. They could stop providing honest answers or completing the tests. This reduces the number of qualified candidates to choose from.
Do: Engage in Fair and Ethical Practices
Minimize unconscious bias in your hiring process:
- Remove personally identifying information from resumes to reduce the likelihood of assumptions or preferential treatment.
- Conduct structured interviews using the same questions in the same order for a role.
- Include a diverse interview panel to make hiring decisions.
- Use a scoring system based on job-related criteria to determine which candidates would be successful in the position.
Don’t: Engage in Illegal and Discriminative Practices
If you use drug screens in your hiring process, ensure you follow any relevant laws and regulations. Many cities and states have guidelines regarding screening for certain substances where marijuana is legal.
Avoid making hiring decisions based on instinct. You may make the wrong choices due to unconscious bias. This can lead to lawsuits based on discriminatory hiring practices.
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