Recruiting & Hiring Blog for HR Professionals

We all know the importance of writing a job description properly. If you fail to have a top notch job description, you can attract the wrong candidates to your position, which does not benefit your company.

Let’s face it, recruiting is a race. You have to pace yourself so that you don’t fall behind at the beginning and don’t lose your steam at the end.

Humans are creatures of habit, we all have heard it before (and definitely will again). We tend to lean on the side of continuing the same old processes, even if we know it is not necessarily the best method. Why? Perhaps it could be because we are better at being reactive rather than proactive.

The workplace tends to move (at what seems to be) a hundred miles per hour. Since we are moving so quickly it can be easier to do damage control rather than take time to plan how to avoid mistakes. The good news is the proactive steps have already been taken - especially when it comes to streamlining your hiring process.

The recruitment process is generally thought of as applicants competing to get hired by an employer. This is usually the case, but there is another competition occurring behind the scenes: Employers facing off against one another to attract top talent. 

When openings become available in your company, you want to shout: “We are hiring!” far and wide. But before you start yelling from the mountain tops, take a step back and ask yourself: “Where should I start looking for candidates? Should I look internally or externally?”

After so many unqualified applicants and several unreturned phone calls, you may find yourself losing the faith you will come across your “diamond in the rough”. Don’t pack it in after a papercut or two! An Applicant Tracking System can bring the joy back to filling your next vacancy.

Spoiler Alert:  An ATS won’t give you a papercut!

Millennials are a generation that have been fascinating marketers for years. They behave differently than Generation X and Baby Boomers, but why are marketers interested so in Millennials? Answer: Now they have buying power! How do they have buying power? They are entering the workforce (and some have already been in the workplace for years), so marketers are definitely onto something by paying attention to them.

Generation Y (aka Millennials) were born between 1977 and 2000, and they tend to be more pushy and demanding than their parents, which is why YOU may need to update your hiring process to appeal to them.

So you’ve finally found the candidate of your dreams! Now what…?

That’s the question that every hiring manager faces when they find their perfect new employee. They know that they’ve found “the one” but then the question becomes: What’s the easiest way to get my new hire started as soon as possible?

The candidate experience is something many organizations overlook during the recruiting process. Yet, a positive experience can have far-reaching business consequences. A survey by the Talent Board found that more than half of candidates (61 percent) who had a positive applicant experience would actively recommend an organization to their peers for employment opportunities. While half of the candidates who have a positive experience share that information with others, close to a third (32 percent) of those who have a bad experience communicate negative word of mouth about the hiring organization.

We know your job isn’t easy, and 2014 only brings more hiring challenges. You and your HR colleagues must be wondering …

• Is my organization prepared to attract and hire top talent this year?
• How will I expand my sourcing efforts to build a robust talent pool?
• How will I increase speed of hire to win over the most qualified candidates?
• Which HR tools will help or hinder my hiring processes?

These are some of the most critical questions you have to answer for your organization. Are you prepared to answer them?