Have you ever done something haphazardly? Maybe you thoughtlessly mixed coffee ingredients in a mug. Or perhaps you hired the first virtual assistant you found to help you with administrative tasks.
It’s highly likely that your outcome wasn’t as good as you expected. The brew was terrible; worse still, the virtual assistant wasn’t that good, so you ended up wasting time and resources.
Fortunately, there’s a way to avoid such consequences. For bad coffee, the trick is to adjust the ratio of your ingredients until you find your ideal combination. As for recruitment, you need to add structure to your hiring process.
What exactly is structured hiring?
Structured hiring means your hiring process has defined steps from start to finish, ensuring that all candidates are objectively evaluated using data and evidence – in a manner that can be replicated for every applicant.
The objective here is to get the best possible candidate each time, while reducing recruitment costs and time to hire.
So how do you add structure your hiring process? Here are several suggestions how.
Identify the steps in your hiring process
The hiring process starts when you decide that you need to fill a role in your company and ends when an applicant accepts your job offer. However, what happens throughout the recruitment process varies, depending on the organisation.
But regardless of these differences, companies usually follow these steps when hiring:
- Planning – This step includes identifying your hiring needs, making the job description, and determining the recruitment budget.
- Talent search – This step involves identifying the right talent, motivating them to apply (e.g. job ads, candidate sourcing), and filling your talent pipeline with competent candidates.
- Screening – This is where you evaluate the suitability of candidates for the position they’re applying for. The phase may cover sorting resumes, pre-employment tests, and interviews.
- Job offer – This step usually involves checking a candidate’s references and sending them a job offer. Sometimes, candidates will negotiate certain details or refuse the offer.
After determining the steps in your hiring process, make sure you document everything. This allows you to so hand over the materials to someone else and they can do everything just as well as you.
Customise the process for certain roles
Note that some positions will require different processes. For instance, senior leadership roles will involve several more tests and interviews (including behavioural interviews) than rank-and-file jobs.
That being said, you shouldn’t go overboard when modifying your hiring process, like creating an entirely new procedure from the ground up. This will just waste time and effort.
Furthermore, extreme customisation will make things more challenging if:
- You’re hiring several roles and each of them have different processes.
- You’re trying to develop recruitment metrics from several different hiring processes.
For best results, create hiring flowcharts, develop a comprehensive recruitment policy, or get an applicant tracking system (or ATS).
Invest in technology
Using the right tools will help you structure a more effective hiring process, which is beneficial for your recruiters and applicants alike. Here are a few examples that can help make this happen:
- Videoconferencing software for conducting mobile interviews.
- An ATS to help you a) sort through myriad applications, b) automatically rank candidates, c) schedule interviews, and d) onboard new hires, among other features.
- Survey software for asking recruiters and candidates for feedback, which you can use to improve your structured hiring process.
- Project management software to make it easier to delegate tasks, monitor the status of open roles, and stay on schedule by assigning deadlines to specific recruitment milestones.
Conduct pre-employment tests
You need to measure your applicants’ attributes and skill, which are directly relevant to how well they do the job. This is done through pre-employment tests that vary depending on the role.
The most common types of pre-employment assessment include tests for:
- Skills
- Cognitive ability
- Emotional intelligence
- Personality
- Integrity
- Physical ability
The best practice is to use several tests (not just one) created and validated by experts. It’s desirable to consider multiple aspects of an applicant’s personality, skills, and behaviour.
Hold structured interviews
Your job interviews stand to benefit from structure as well. A “structured” interview is a type of interview where you ask prepared questions. This means you ask candidates the same questions in the same order.
While your questions may be leaked by previous interviewees, holding structured interviews makes candidate evaluation easier and more objective because you can just compare answers.
However, the most effective questions takes time and effort to develop. You need to test them and see which ones work best.
Monitor the right metrics
While adding structure will certainly improve your hiring process, you’ll still need to measure and keep track of data to see what works and what needs to be done better.
Some of the metrics you’ll need to monitor include (but are not limited to):
- Time to hire
- Cost per hire
- Candidate experience
- Quality of hire
- Retention rate
- Applicants per hire
Hiring metrics are important for understanding where improvements are needed. More importantly, the data will show why investments into certain hiring functions are necessary.
Partner with an offshore recruitment specialist
Hiring the right employee is an arduous, time-consuming process. For faster, more effective recruitment, team up with Remote Workmate. We’ll promptly find you highly skilled candidates, and take on the entire recruitment process, except for the part where you choose who to hire.
This means finding your ideal employee becomes so much easier.
You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply click the button below to browse a wide range of profiles on our Hotlist page.
