Resumes and in-person interviews have always been the quickest ways to evaluate candidates and assess if they are fit for a job. But not anymore. 

As digital transformation creeps into the recruitment process, skills assessment has become the go-to method for hiring managers to find the perfect fit – in the quickest and most unbiased manner. Skills assessment platforms are not only capable of assessing candidates for their technical or niche skills, but they can also evaluate them based on their critical thinking and cognitive capabilities – which is just as important to drive outcomes. 

Strategies that matter 

With recruitment teams taking almost months to fill a new position, its time HR organizations tweaked their approach to recruitment and embraced strategies that help them quicken the hiring process. Here are some strategies that you can use to transform your recruitment process: 

1. Focus on assessing the skills: No matter how big or small your organization is or at what level you’re recruiting a candidate, skills are the most important assets employees possess.  It is the skills that help them perform well at their jobs; this makes skills assessment a crucial aspect of recruitment. Given how competitive the job market has become, and how the dearth of qualified candidates is plaguing organizations across industries, pre-employment testing is increasingly becoming an essential part of recruitment. While traditional pre-employment testing methods mostly comprised asking candidates a series of questions through in-person interviews, modern testing requires them to take online tests that assess them on a range of skills – technical, communication, problem-solving, business acumen, decision-making, aptitude, language, and more. While recruiting candidates, make sure to –

• Find the best suitable skill evaluation method: Choose one that fits the needs of your organization and evaluates candidates fairly and accurately. A variety of methods can be used while assessing the skills of applicants such as observation, simulation, Questioning, and online technical screening. Whatever method you choose it should be valid, reliable, and provide a complete picture of a candidate’s overall skill set.

• Invest in tools to speed up the hiring process: Tools can help improve the precision of your hiring decision. So, make sure to invest in tools that not only make assessment easy but also speed up the process. 

• Customize each skill assessment test: Based on the needs of your organization, customize skill assessment tests so you can hire the right candidates as per your specific needs. 

• Pay attention to job-specific skills: Since every job requires a specific set of skills to drive the intended outcomes, pay attention to job-specific skills. Test employees across those skills while also testing them for their soft skills. 

2. Strengthen your employer brand: A strong employer brand plays a vital role when it comes to hiring a good candidate for your organization. To design a successful hiring strategy you need to create, sustain, and nurture a strong employer brand. It attracts top talent by communicating the organization’s values, mission, and culture to potential candidates. You can get a competitive advantage in the recruitment game and reduce marketing cost with the help of positive and strong employer brand. Here’s what you can do to strengthen your employer brand: 

• Create your brand evangelists: Identify employees who speak positively about your company and empower them to talk about your brand – through blogs, recruitment drives, social media posts, and more. 

• Customize your career page. Don’t just focus on current openings; make it a point to talk about your company culture and work culture. Showcase why your employees love working for you, what they enjoy about your brand, or what drives them to be associated with you for the longer-term. 

• Eliminate the long application process. In recruitment, time is money. The longer your application process is, the higher the chances your competitors will skim the job market off talented resources. Make sure to eliminate the long application process. Embrace modern assessment platforms that reduce hiring time by a large percentage. 

• Ask for feedback and act on it. There’s a lot you can learn from your candidates, so make sure to ask for feedback from them to understand what they liked about the recruitment process, and what they didn’t. When you get all the answers, make sure to act on it and revamp your recruitment process so you can come up with one which truly impresses candidates in the future. 

3. Stay in lockstep with your recruiting team: A lot of times, the primary reason for a shoddy hiring process is the misalignment between the hiring manager and the recruiter. While hiring managers look for candidates who can complete projects on time, recruiters pay more attention to bridging the skills gap. As far as hiring a quality candidate is concerned, the hiring manager and recruiter have to be on the same page. 

• Establish recruitment objectives: Make sure to clearly document various aspects of your recruitment needs: the number of open positions to be filled,  date by which positions should be filled,  cost-per-hire, the number of applications desired,  type of applicants sought which include level ad type of education, work experience, knowledge, skills and abilities, diversity and more.

• Develop a recruitment strategy: Also, make it a point to develop a robust recruitment strategy. Get insight into what type of candidates you need to target, what recruitment message you need to communicate, how you can best reach the targeted individuals, when and where your recruitment campaign should begin, and what should the nature of your site visit be, among others. 

• Carry out recruitment activities: For maximum results, make sure to standardize your recruitment process. Once you decide how to assess the job skills and create a positive employer brand, it’s essential for you to plan your recruitment activities well in advance. Quality candidates are out there, it’s up to you how you are carrying out you recruiting activities effectively. You can post the requirements on job portals, company website, and social media, conduct pre-employment testing and in-person interviews- you have endless options. But you need to identify your potential candidates and discover where they might be. You need to keep a track of where your activities are best suited, where improvement is needed, and from where you are getting a good result.

• Measure and evaluate recruitment results: No recruitment process can ever be successful if you do not make metrics an integral part of it. Measuring metrics like time-to-hire, cost to fill the position, new-employee retention rate, etc. and assessing them over time is extremely important to unearth insight about your recruitment efforts, identify challenges and opportunities, and tweak strategies to optimize the quality and cost of new hires. 

4. Re-design candidate sourcing methods: Finding the right candidates from hundreds or even thousands of job applications is never easy. Matters get worse if your sourcing methods are not up to the mark. Since attracting top talent is extremely important to achieve business goals and stay ahead of the competition, it is essential that you revisit your candidate sourcing strategies, and drive proactive efforts in searching for and engaging qualified candidates.

• Build the ideal candidate personas: Start by building the right candidate personas – that clearly enlist your typical candidate’s background, goals, challenges and more. 

• Start sourcing with former applicants: If you constantly receive applications from the same candidates for new positions that open up, make sure to consider those applications first. 

• Create and maintain your talent pipeline: Make sure to always have a list of people who may want to hire in the future – as replacements for critical positions or as new positions open up. This makes it easy for you to have a handy list of people to approach, once the position opens up, while dramatically reducing the time to hire. 

• Include offline sourcing channel: Although online sourcing channels make things easier, once-in-a-while, it makes sense to meet candidates face-to-face. Make sure to participate in job fairs, attend conferences, or host meetups to understand their needs and aspirations and revive your sourcing strategies. 

5. Re-visit your onboarding strategies: Continuous learning goes a long way in enhancing the outcomes of your recruitment initiatives. In addition to drive efforts in improving your hiring process, make it a point to also revise your onboarding strategies, and identify challenges and opportunities to make the candidate experience flawless. 

• Make an employee onboarding checklist: Creating an employee onboarding checklist is a great way to set foot on the right note. From submitting job requisition forms to feeding candidate information into systems, completing hire forms to prepare their work environment, plan a training program, and more – having a checklist in place can play a great role in improving the candidate experience. 

• Set up the work stack: Once new hires are comfortable in the new setting, familiar with their responsibilities, their team, and the work environment, it is important to get them working as soon as possible. So, make sure to set up the work stack in advance, so new hires can contribute to the goals, and help drive value faster. 

• Assign an orientation partner: To make the onboard process as efficient as possible, you can also assign orientation partners who help new hires in getting accustomed and comfortable with their new setting. By being an informal point of contact, the partner can offer the required information about the new job, department activities, culture and more, while assisting new hires with their day-to-day tasks. 

• Define expectations and goals: It is also important you define goals and expectations as early as you can. This will enable candidates to know what to expect from their job, and also understand what they’re required to do to achieve goals. 

Are you ready for the transformation?