Jun 14 2019
The current job market with low unemployment rates means that it can be difficult to source and recruit quality candidates. If a current employee has left your company without the required notice, procedures and processes should be in place to replace the person fast.
Even if no one has left, you may need to make a lot of hires within a short period of time. For example, if you use contingent workers as part of the gig economy, you need to know how to source, recruit and onboard the best workers quickly.
Additionally, employees who are tempted to stay with your business for job security are more likely to leave because they realize they can secure alternative employment easily.
All these factors make it crucial to have the right processes to find and hire great employees in a short period of time.
How to Find and Hire Great Employees
If you need to speed up your recruitment process, the tips below will help make sure that it does not come at the expense of quality.
1. Create a recruiting strategy to find and hire great employees
If you create a recruiting strategy to detail your hiring process steps, it will save you considerable time when it comes to sourcing the right candidates. Even though searching for employees starts when a vacancy becomes available, you should have planned well ahead of time to reduce the time to hire. Your recruiting strategy should include different ways to find, hire, and manage your talent pipeline. Ensure that everyone who takes part in the recruiting process knows what their roles are as well as the timeframe needed to complete their tasks.
2. Utilize the right technology to find and hire great employees
If you need to hire great talent fast, you should have the right technology to manage candidates. Manually sorting candidates or using an Excel spreadsheet is not only inefficient, but it also wastes time and makes the process prone to errors. You need to utilize the features of modern hiring software to sort and communicate with potential candidates.
At the very least, you need an applicant tracking system or ATS to manage the recruitment pipeline. However, you should go further than an ATS by using software, like Fountain that helps to significantly reduce the time to hire with features, such as automation.
When figuring out how to recruit great employees fast, factor in as much automation into the hiring process as possible. For example, Fountain automates different parts of the hiring process like communicating with candidates and scheduling interviews.
Some recruiters fear that automation will replace their jobs. We’ve found on the contrary, automation makes recruiters’ jobs easier and speeds up the hiring process.
Find out how automation makes recruiters better.
3. Have an integrated recruitment process to find great employees
Your recruitment process should move quickly because candidates won’t hang around for long. Your competitors are out there hiring for the same positions and if there’s any unnecessary delay, you will lose potential prospects. The process should be effortless and seamless.
From the time, your candidate sees your application to when they’re offered the job; they should experience no delays. For instance, an integrated recruitment process should secure the right documentation for potential employees. When thinking about recruiting, you have to consider the full recruiting life cycle.
So, for example, your hiring software should enable you to send candidates the necessary forms and they should be able to sign and return them as soon as possible. Fountain integrates the different partners in the recruitment process. We partner with HelloSign so candidates can view and sign documents quickly. We also partner with premium background checking companies, like Checkr to carry out pre employment screening quickly and efficiently.
4. Be clear in your recruitment adverts to find and hire great employees
When thinking about how to recruit great talent, ensure that your advert grabs and keeps the attention of potential candidates. Review the job description if the job has been filled for a considerable amount of time. Speak to the current person in the role to make sure that the description is updated and that you have listed the essential requirements.
Be clear on the type of candidates you are looking for and define the qualities and skills required to do the job. In addition, you need to write a clear job description when recruiting people for open positions. This will help your HR managers filter applications if it is done manually or it will help your ATS to filter resumes.
Get 11 tips for writing a good job description here.
Don’t have time to write the perfect job description? No problem.
We have designed and created job description templates to drag and drop into your job roles.
You have a variety of job descriptions to choose from, including:
- Cashiers
- Baristas
- Delivery drivers
- Human resources and much more.
Get your free and easy to use job description templates here.
5. Choose the right platforms to find great candidates
When recruiting great employees, you need to figure out where your potential candidates hang out in order to make the hiring process quicker. For example, if you’re looking for hard-to-fill positions, you may want to source candidates from specific platforms like LinkedIn; or if you’re looking for developers, platforms like GitHub.
If you are looking to hire gig economy workers at scale, free job boards are still a good way to hire candidates. However, there may be times when you need to extend your job search to paid platforms. One way to seriously reduce the time spent posting and reviewing applicants from free and paid job boards is by using Fountain Boost.
With Fountain Boost, we post your jobs to 80 free platforms at no charge. Then if you want to expand your search, you just let us know your budget, and we will post your job to the relevant paid platforms. You save time and effort because we do all the heavy lifting and you are able to manage all your candidates in one easy-to-use platform.
Sign up for a free trial to find out how you can boost your search for candidates and save time using Fountain Boost.
6. Use social media recruiting to find and hire great employees
Social media recruiting should definitely be part of your recruitment strategy. It’s likely that potential candidates will be hanging out on social media or may know people who are interested in your job vacancy. Even if you don’t normally use social media to source candidates, you should definitely think of using it to publicize your job openings.
Recruiting ideas for social media needs to start way before you even have a job vacancy and are ready to hire. It’s easy to show followers your company culture and why your company is the best place to work. When a job vacancy comes up, your followers will be eager to apply. You can use video testimonials of employees talking firsthand about their experience with your business.
If you want tips on how to use social media for recruiting, read our blog about the five companies who get social media right.
7. Look internally to find great employees
Consider using current employees as a way to find and hire great employees. Use your employees as brand ambassadors on social media and start an employee referral program. This is where you let employees know they can refer someone who would be a good fit for the position. If you hire the person recommended, provide a reward or incentive.
Incentives can range from discounts and gift cards to new equipment. Employee referral programs reduce the time to hire because employees want to make a good impression on managers and will, refer people who would be a good addition to the team. They know the company culture and will refer only those they believe will fit in.
As well as offering employee referral programs, you can also train existing employees to take on the open role. Some employees may want to improve their prospects and speed up their progress up the career ladder. However, depending on the role, training the new employee may take a lot of time. While the employee is being trained, you can hire an independent contractor to fill in and carry out the duties left vacant. It’s easy to access contractors with different levels of expertise because of the growing contingent workforce. Make use of this on-demand economy while you train your current employees to fulfill the requirements of their new role.
8. Be more careful about candidates that you invite for interviews
One time-consuming aspect of recruiting great employees is the interview process. This is especially true when you have more than one round. Your screening process should be robust and include factors like phone screenings. Take the time to scrutinize resumes to ensure that only the most qualified people are invited.
One way is to conduct pre screening video interviews. With Fountain, you have the technology where potential candidates can answer questions using their mobile phones. It’s simple. You ask questions in advance, and candidates record themselves responding.
Questions can include “why do you want this role?” or “what attributes do you think you can bring to this company?” Using one way video interviews as a screening technique helps to collect more information than phone screening alone. You will be able to determine whether the candidates’ responses to your questions match up to what’s on their resumes.
However, bear in mind that depending on the demographic, candidates may not feel comfortable communicating by video. If you’re hiring millennials, then this would be right up their street. But if the generation is older, they may not feel quite as secure when recording their videos, so keep this in mind when making a decision to invite for a face-to-face interview, after a video pre-screening interview.
9. Keep your interview process structured to identify great employees
According to research, structured interviews produce better results than unstructured ones. This is good news because structured interviews take less time. Having the same set of questions for every candidate will make it easier to sort out applications and determine the best answers. A structured interview process saves a lot of time while reducing the chance of bias. You will be able to judge answers on a more objective basis because everyone is answering the same questions.
10. Use temp agencies if necessary
There may be times when you need to use temp agencies. They have a large number of candidates on their books and can suggest the best fit for your company. Not only can a temp agency help recruit great employees fast, but it can also help reduce the administrative burden and some of the costs involved in hiring. This is especially the case if you have a franchise with different locations.
11. Review your application process for bottlenecks
You need to constantly assess your application process to see if and where delays exist and formulate a response to clear them up. The technology you use should provide deep and clear answers as to what is holding applicants up from moving through the pipeline quickly.
With Fountain, our analytics dashboard provides you with high level insights and detailed analysis of the different aspects of your hiring process, including:
- Stage metrics
- Dropoff factors
- Hire rates
- Team performance
- Interview attendance
- Applicant conversion
You will be able to collect and use this data to improve your hiring process and reduce the time it takes to recruit great employees, fast.
Conclusion: How to find and hire great empoyees
There are many strategies to help you to recruit great employees, quickly. The first thing is to decide on the right technology to support a quick and seamless hiring process.
With Fountain’s mobile-first software, the different processes, such as scheduling interviews, uploading documents and communicating with candidates are simple and easy.
Our modern hiring software helps you not only post your jobs across different free and paid platforms, but it also filters and tracks applicants. Your candidates are always up to date on what’s happening and you have the flexibility to tweak the hiring process according to your needs, after reviewing our detailed and thorough analytics.
