How to be more productive when recruiting

Recruitment takes a long time. It can take a long of time, money and resources to find the right candidates. This is because candidates need to be available, have required skills and be a strong culture fit. However, there are ways to be more productive when recruiting. First, you must identify where you may be wasting time and resources to fix these.

Ways to be more productive when recruiting

1. Be more targeted in your approach

When considering a new position, while it may be important to some people whether the role is at an early stage startup or at a well established company. What should always be one of the main deciding factors is whether they can do their job effectively. If you’re looking for new talent, this suggests that you’re already in a position where you’re achieving effective results with your current staff, so in order to find new people who can replicate those successes and propel the business forward, you need to know where to look.

Understand the exact skills that your best staff possess and make an active effort to look for these skills. You can include this in your job description or filter during the interview process. This will make you more productive when recruiting.

2. Leverage people you know

When looking for candidates, look no further than the networks of associates and friends you already have in your life. However, don’t stop there. Look to the people you have met at events, been through your recruiting process or can be introduced to. From here, you can cull through the pool of applicants yourself to find those people who seem especially qualified. This eliminates the need for an external resources and costs for finding candidates.

3. Streamline your process

When you talk about streamlining, you might not have thought of the recruitment process. There’s no doubt that finding the right people for your business can be a difficult task if you’re doing things manually. Nowadays, though, there are plenty of systems that replace paper or spreadsheets and allow you to keep track of candidates more easily. Some contact management systems even let you keep track of information like where people applied from and when they receive notifications. Tools like Smartrecruiters and Lever can help.

4. Recruit passively

Passive candidates are those who are not actively looking for a role because they already have one and are content with where they are. Ensure you have good passive recruiting set up, which you can read about how to do here.

5. Do not hold on to unsuitable candidates

Do not hold on to candidates that do not fill your criteria. This is a waste of your time and resources. Recognise lack of culture fit and skills as quickly as you can.

What is stopping you from being productive

• Inefficient recruitment pipeline – You may be taking too long to interview or get back to a candidate. This may be as a result of processes in your company or long decision times. This will impact their acceptance and impression of the company.
• Inefficient sourcing of talent – Using a non-targeted approach can waste a lot of time reaching candidates that do not suit your needs. Use tools such as Triggr or look to your existing database to reach candidates better.
• You are not recruiting passively – Passive actions can help a lot when you actually need candidates. Savvy employers know how you must have a recruitment strategy that delivers high quality candidates to maintain business success. With the appropriate staffing strategy in place, recruitment teams can fill a position fast. They can also fill it with the right candidate at the right time.