CHIEF OF STAFF FIVE: A company’s hiring process is already a strong indicator of the organisation’s overall work culture. It gives applicants or potential talents a glimpse into the company’s management style, efficiency, and treatment of employees.
As talent shortages grapple businesses around the world, it is as important for employers to make a good impression on applicants by streamlining the hiring process, being transparent and accommodating to questions and requests, and respecting job seekers’ time, effort, and the value they are offering to the company.
Here are five hiring practices HR professionals absolutely must stop doing in this current pro-candidate talent market.
1. Not disclosing the salary
There are many cases where applicants go through a tedious hiring process only to find out that the salary offering was below their expectations. This only leads to disappointment, resentment, and negative feedback towards the company, and is a clear waste of time and energy for both parties.
This can be prevented by immediately disclosing the salary or salary range for the position in the job description and advertisement. This way, only applicants who are comfortable with the given amount will apply, filtering out those looking for higher compensation.
In line with this, HR professionals should also refrain from asking salary expectations in job interviews. It is better to be transparent about what the company has to offer in terms of compensation and benefits and leave it to the applicants to decide whether or not to apply for the position, or accept a job offer.
2. Long application forms
Asking job applicants to send a comprehensive curriculum vitae, only to ask them to fill out long application forms which basically ask the same things is another major turn-off for would-be recruits.
This pushes many of the best candidates to discontinue their application and apply elsewhere. HR professionals can further streamline the application process by choosing the most important information or questions that should be included in the application form. Furthermore, employers can thoroughly review each résumé and ask tailored questions via email or interview only about details not found in the document.
3. Long, multi-layered interview processes
Interviews are crucial but they are also time-consuming for all parties involved. Each session, regardless of the stage, takes a lot of preparation, particularly for candidates looking to impress. Applicants give a lot of time studying the company profile, preparing answers to possible questions, choosing what to wear, and other means that will help present themselves in the best light. In-person interviews can also be costly for job applicants, with most preferring to take private transport to the company site.
There are cases where an applicant goes through more than two interviews, only to be rejected in the end.
From the get-go, HR leaders should identify who are the key people that must be part of the interview process and let go of those who are not really needed. Forming a panel of interviewers, instead of doing interviews one-on-one, or by sub-groups is a better way to save everyone’s time. Try also to limit interviews to two stages at most and communicate the process to job applicants from the beginning.
4. Not responding, or ‘ghosting’ job applicants
Feedback is actually the best thing that HR teams can give to unsuccessful job applicants. After all, they deserve to know the result of their performance, and why their application was ultimately unsuccessful, especially if they went through a long process that involved skills tests or more than one interview.
Offering an explanation and words of encouragement to job applicants is a great way to let them know you value their time and experience.
Responding to every, single job application email can be another story. We get it. Sometimes, the HR team receives large volumes of applications, often from candidates conducting their own “scattergun” approach. But, applicants still want to receive an acknowledgment from companies. It is best to automate an acknowledgment receipt of application, and use that to inform candidates they will be contacted only if they are shortlisted.
5. Not keeping a talent pool and engaging with them
Sometimes, no matter how promising a job applicant is, they are still not the right fit, at least at the current time. But there are often opportunities that will open sooner or later that might better suit them. The HR team can save tremendous time in looking for future candidates if they have a pool of top talents whom they can easily reach out to for new job openings.
But simply keeping a database of talent is not enough. The connection built between these former job seekers should be maintained and even built further upon. Keep them engaged through invitations to company events open to the public, company activities in need of volunteers or participants, and updates about job opportunities, whether they are part-time, full-time, or project-based engagements.
