HR Question:

We’ve been struggling to find candidates who are the right fit for our culture. How can we improve our hiring process to attract and retain better talent?

HR Answer:

Do you find it challenging to source and hire quality talent? Are you experiencing a trend where new employees are not the right fit? You’re not alone. As we explored in “What is the Cost of a Bad Hire?”, hiring mistakes can be expensive, disruptive, and frustrating. So, how do you improve hiring outcomes and build a team that sticks?

While adding innovative technology or utilizing the latest assessments to your hiring process may be helpful, quite simply, your ability to hire quality talent starts with the ability to attract and engage candidates in an impactful way effectively.

How do you engage candidates in an impactful way? The foundation of your success starts with having a well-defined employment brand that is visible and can be articulated to job seekers. You must also consistently deliver a structured and highly engaging candidate experience that emulates the brand and culture that you are cultivating.

Our 7-step process will help you identify candidates that are a better fit for the culture of your organization and will help you build a stronger team with higher retention.

Step 1: Define Your Culture

• Help candidates connect with your culture – Clarify your mission, vision, and values so candidates understand who you are, what you stand for, and how they fit into your culture.
• Strengthen your brand to attract the right fit – A strong employment brand attracts the right fit, strengthens employee relationships, and improves retention. It can also enhance your company reputation, making you more appealing to passive candidates and can reduce the time and cost of hiring.

Step 2: Set Clear Expectations

• Make expectations clear from the beginning – Starting with the first interview, outline role responsibilities and success metrics. Candidates should know what “great performance” looks like as they consider the opportunity.
• Improve engagement through role clarity – By clearly defining roles, responsibilities, and standards of performance, you improve productivity and foster a positive environment. A study by Gallup shows that half of all U.S. employees don’t know what is expected of them at work, which leads to employees that are less engaged.
  Source: Gallup

Step 3: Identify Key Competencies

• Define what success looks like – Pinpoint the technical skills, soft skills, and personality traits that lead to success in the role.
• Use competencies to expand your candidate pool – Create competency-based job descriptions and use these as your hiring benchmarks. This will potentially expand your candidate pool and increase diversity and inclusion by prioritizing skills over traditional qualifications, allowing you to attract a more diverse pool of candidates.

Also, using skills to describe a job will make it easier to generate evidence or behavior-based interview questions which will improve your hiring decisions, employee performance, and organizational alignment.

Step 4: Write a Stand-Out Job Ad

• Craft job posts that resonate – Craft a compelling, authentic job post that showcases your culture. When reviewing a job ad, candidates prioritize gaining an understanding of the position. They also focus on your company culture and reputation.
• Go beyond the standard job description – Avoid posting a job description. Include statements that describe your employment brand, giving the candidate a glimpse into what it is like to work at your organization. Add links to your careers page or to other social media pages so that candidates can be a click away from learning more about your culture.

Step 5: Structure the Interview Process

• Ask questions that uncover potential – Past behavior is the best predictor of future performance. Utilize behavior-based interview questions tied to the role’s core competencies and the culture of your organization.
• Align hiring managers with consistent training – Have all hiring managers in your organization trained on behavior-based interviewing. This will create consistency across all departments and ensure that everyone in your organization understands the qualities that make up the ideal candidate.

Step 6: Deliver a Great Candidate Experience

• Create a candidate experience that reflects your culture – Are you experiencing an increased number of candidates dropping out of the interview process or declining offers? If so, it may be directly related to the experience they had interacting with your organization.
• Keep candidates engaged from start to finish – The candidate experience focuses on how candidates perceive and feel about your application process from beginning to end. It includes every touchpoint that the candidate has with your organization. Candidates view it as a direct correlation to your culture. A smooth, informative, and engaging process speaks volumes about how you treat your people.

 

Step 7: Onboard with Intention

• Start new hires off strong – Give new hires a strong start by having a structured onboarding process that provides clear training, support, and feedback through the first 6–12 months.
• Boost retention and productivity with structured onboarding – This will establish a high level of engagement, foster strong communication, boost productivity, and set them up for long-term success. Studies show that organizations with strong onboarding improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by over 70%.
  (Source: Glassdoor)

Don’t Leave Hiring to Chance

Hiring the right person starts long before the first interview. If you’re ready to build a stronger team and avoid costly setbacks, our experts can help. Clark Schaefer Strategic HR offers flexible, full-service recruitment support from job posting to onboarding.

Email info@strategicHRinc.com or call (513) 697-9855 for a free consultation.