While the average job opening takes about thirty days to fill, top talent rarely stays in the pipeline that long. If you're going to attract the best and most qualified candidates before taking on other opportunities, you'll need to create a hiring process that is both thorough and efficient.
This hiring process checklist will guide you through the essential tasks and techniques to follow when sourcing, screening, and ultimately hiring the top candidates for your open job role.
For an effective and thorough hiring process, all employers should follow these hiring process steps in this order:
The first step of the hiring process will always begin with answering the question“What does your business need most when it comes to acquiring new talent?” Depending on the situation and your business needs, a new hire can achieve multiple things.
Some reasons you may want to consider hiring new talent include:
Once the need for hiring has been identified, it’s time to develop a recruitment plan that ultimately aligns with your need for hiring.
A recruitment plan is an organized strategy that details how your business plans on finding, attracting, and finally hiring the candidate that best suits your needs. Creating a recruiting plan to fulfill your hiring needs is a crucial step in the hiring process, as it will act as the definitive driving force and plan to follow when hiring candidates.
A recruitment plan should include the following in detail:
Now that you have developed your recruitment plan and have set your hiring goals, you can begin configuring your job listing for the role.
The next big step in the hiring process is to create the job description. The job description is a vital entry point for prospective candidates.
Depending on the job role you’re looking to fill, your company standards, and regulatory requirements (such as Pay Transparency Laws), you will want to optimize your description with eye-catching yet clear and concise information that will leave an impression on candidates.
While there’s no right or wrong way to create a job description, generally, it should include the following:
Once the description is finished, it's time to advertise the job. Leveraging the many job board options to list your job will help you broadly communicate and fine-tune your candidate pool.
Popular job board websites your business should consider include:
To truly leverage your use of these job boards, consider using a talent acquisition software that integrates with some of these popular job boards for a streamlined head start in your search for a new hire.
To attract the best-fit candidates, you will need a fast and efficient way to get them into your pipeline. This will take you to the next step in the hiring process checklist: sourcing and evaluating candidates.
A strong talent pipeline doesn't come naturally: It results from your recruiting plan and strategies that focus on engaging potential candidates and vetting them early.
There are two phases to this step that require you to actively engage with your candidates: sourcing and evaluating.
Talent sourcing refers to actively searching for qualified candidates. While this phase of the hiring process will naturally involve engaging with people who are actively searching for work, it can also include targeting talented individuals who are currently employed but, for various reasons, may be open to hearing about an open position elsewhere.
Effective sourcing methods will include some combination of the following approaches:
As quickly as you're sourcing potential hires, you should also be evaluating them.
To make the most of your time within the hiring process, communicate directly with those who demonstrate that they're the best candidates for the job. You're best able to identify those individuals via a series of automated screenings.
Early in the process, you can send screenings or assessments to potential candidates that ask them to answer a series of questions or demonstrate certain skills or abilities. These screenings could be text or video-based, and with the right software doing the heavy lifting on your behalf, you and your team can evaluate answers as time allows, sending only the most likely candidates on to the next round.
Only after these screenings have helped you identify the most likely hires will you turn your attention to structured interviews.
Arguably, the pivotal step in the hiring process requires you to interview your candidates to see if they’re the right fit for the role and the company. The interview process can be conducted either synchronously or asynchronously, which is especially important if you're focusing on high-volume hiring.
Early on, as you're moving from screenings to the first round of interviews, consider conducting a one-way video interview to make the best use of your time. This strategy allows candidates to record videos of themselves answering set interview questions.
In these interviews, in addition to hearing the specifics of their answers, you can evaluate:
After you've reviewed sufficient asynchronous video interview responses, select just a few candidates to move on to live interviews.
Synchronous interviews are generally the standard interview format for most employers: a live peer-to-peer interview that can be performed online, on the phone, or in person.
The overall goal of a synchronous interview largely overlaps with asynchronous interviews, as both are means of evaluating how the candidate demonstrates themselves and their commitment to the role and the company.
In general, this means you're looking for candidates who:
For those who decide to use asynchronous interviews and follow them up with synchronous interviews, by the time a candidate arrives at the final, live interview stage, you already have a fairly good idea of their skills and qualifications. At this point, it's more a question of which candidate is the best fit, both for a particular team and your company as a whole.
Putting those concepts together, you and your HR team should collaborate on designing a set of questions that will help you determine each candidate's qualities and evaluate who ultimately seems like the best fit.
Once you determine the best-fit candidate who’s ready to move on to the final steps in the hiring process, waste no time in conducting a pre-onboarding method.
There are a few processes your pre-onboarding system should include:
A simple but very crucial and effective step in the hiring process is extending a job offer to the candidate of your choice. The job offer is essentially the contract of employment outlining the terms and conditions of the position and the company.
Generally, the job offer should include the following items:
Building a concise yet all-encompassing job offer is important for every new hire, as it helps clarify the final terms of employment and is a formal way to engage them to take action to accept the job.
It's imperative that you establish a pre-boarding process that begins the moment a new hire signs their offer letter. This step will go a long way toward increasing a new hire's engagement in company life and, over time, lead to higher levels of employee retention, creating a more stable work environment for everyone.
Between the day employees start and the day they show up for their first day, they should be busy completing paperwork, learning more about the company, being filled in on expectations about their day-to-day experience on the job, communicating with key members within the company, and growing in excitement for their first day.
After the employee accepts the job offer, background checks are usually performed as part of the pre-onboarding process.
As part of a thorough background screening process, your team should conduct these key checks:
Properly vetting your candidate before they begin their new role is a crucial step in the pre-onboarding process. Overlooking this step in the hiring process can result in a costly hiring mistake if an unqualified individual passes through the checks and balances.
Lastly, you’re ready to begin fully onboarding your new employee, complete with the necessary training and company information they need to succeed in their career.. From the moment they walk in the door or log into their company workspace on Day One, they should know exactly where to be, what to do, and what's expected of them.
You’ll want to make sure your company follows these best practices for establishing an engaging employee onboarding process, including:
Through it all, reassure new employees that you're excited about their addition to the team, interested in seeing what expertise they bring to the table, and that you can't wait to get to know them better and see their skills develop as their employment journey continues.
Following each step in the hiring process checklist as closely as possible is ideal; however, there are bound to be many questions that can arise to ensure the process is quick and thorough:
Identify common indicators, including the need to fill a vacant role, wanting to reduce the workload on existing staff, or expanding into new areas that require outside expertise. Identifying these needs early allows you to develop a more targeted recruitment strategy.
Background checks commonly include a review of criminal history, employment verification, credit history, drug testing, driving records, and reference checks.
Revisit your job description to ensure it’s clear and compelling. Expand your sourcing strategy to new platforms or networks, and consider whether the qualifications set are too restrictive or unrealistic.
Given the fast-paced nature of today's job market, it's more important than ever to have systems and structures in place to source, interview, hire, and retain top talent. Optimizing your hiring process may require talent acquisition software, compliance management systems, and employee onboarding tools to help finalize your overall hiring strategy.
Want to learn more about creating a thorough hiring process or need assistance with acquiring talent? Contact us today to receive recruiting and onboarding insights.