Most organizations have a formal hiring process in place to recruit and hire new employees. However, a majority of HR managers do not have enough time to get into the nitty and gritty details of every applicant tracking process.
Having a step by step hiring guide can help streamline the entire hiring process and find the best candidates for the company.
Why HR managers need to devise a hiring plan
Strategic hiring practices help HR managers and business leaders in understanding their organization’s talent acquisition needs. It acts as a qualifying guideline for recruiting new employees which in turn makes the end to end recruitment process smoother.
It helps HR managers ensure that they are recruiting the right candidates with the ideal skills and qualifications that are needed for the job. It acts as a timeline for the company’s hiring efforts and it also allows you to a set budget for hiring and onboarding activities.
The essential steps of every hiring process
1- Finding applicants
You can post a job ad and wait for the active candidates to get in touch with you and you can even reach out to passive candidates in your internal talent pool who are suitable for the vacant job position.
2- Resume screening
Filter through CVs that you have received and shortlist candidates. While you can easily do that manually if you only have a few applicants, things can quickly get out of hand if you have hundreds of applications to go through. That is why, it is best to use a recruitment software that can automate the resume screening process.
3- Interview scheduling
The next step is to schedule interviews with shortlisted candidates to get a more thorough understanding of their skills and experience. An applicant tracking system can automate the entire scheduling process to make sure there are no calendar clashes.
If you have multiple interviewers, a recruitment management system can also provide a unified platform where everyone can share their feedback in order to zero in on the right candidate.
4- Sending job offers
When you have finally found the perfect candidate after a well-organized recruitment and selection process, it is now time to provide them with a job offer and close the deal. You should make sure to discuss the employment terms well in advance and make an informal verbal offer before the actual formal job offer letter gets delivered to the candidates.
The features to look for before buying a hiring software
1- Automation
Over 59 percent of recruiters state that they have a shortage of manpower and they are always strapped for time. By using a recruitment tracker that can automate manual, repetitive, and time consuming tasks like posting job ads and scheduling interviews, the recruiters can actually focus on more important parts of the hiring process.
2- Building and managing an internal pool
Over 70 percent of the total workforce comprises of passive candidates. The hiring system that you pick for your organization should allow you to create an internal talent pool of passive candidates that you can easily filter through and contact when there is a suitable job opening for them.
3- Third-party integrations
Your hiring software should seamlessly integrate with other third-party business applications that your recruiters use internally in the organization to make it easier for them to manage their work and collaborate with other members on the team.
4- Analytics
Based on the recruitment data, the right hiring software can generate custom reports to make it easy for you analyze the recruitment patterns within the company. After all, it is only possible for you to streamline and optimize your hiring process when you have the right numbers with you.
The top five hiring software to streamline your recruitment process
1. Zoho Recruit
Zoho Recruit is a hiring solution for small and medium-sized businesses. The tool can automatically post job ads on different portals, customize the company’s career page, perform resume parsing, and automatically schedule interviews.
There is a free plan available, but it only has a few features. The paid plans definitely have more features but even the highest-paid plans only offer 24/5 support.
2. Kissflow HR Cloud
Kissflow HR Cloud streamlines the entire hiring process by offering complete talent management solutions. This HR tool helps in automating job postings, scheduling interviews, collaborating with other interviewers, onboarding new hires, managing existing employees, and even offboarding.
By giving you access to all the candidate and hiring data through a single dashboard, it makes the entire hiring process more seamless and effective. You can also create customized workflows and automate repetitive parts of the recruitment process.
3. BambooHR
BambooHR lets recruiters post job ads on multiple job boards with a single click, track applications, share feedback, and send automated emails to the candidates. Though the company doesn’t offer transparent pricing. You have to directly share your recruitment requirements with them in order to get a quote.
4. iCIMS Recruit
iCIMS Recruit has features like candidate marketing, application tracking, sourcing, interview scheduling, and onboarding. Although the tool has a lot of features, its clunky interface makes it difficult to leverage its power and that in turn leads to a longer learning curve. iCIMS also doesn’t have transparent pricing either and it only offers quotes on request.
5. Workday Recruiting
With Workday Recruiting, you can track and manage candidates easily. You can also shortlist resumes and filter candidates according to their skills or experience. The pricing for the software is only provided by the company upon request.
Best practices to streamline the hiring process
1- Monitor the performance of job ads
It is important to optimize your job ads with the right keywords, tags, and categories to make sure the right candidates are able to find the job ad and apply for it.
You can use an applicant tracking system to post job ads automatically and monitor the total number of views and applicants. If the views are lower than usual, you can quickly change the job description or make other changes to make the job ad easily discoverable by prospective candidates.
2- Make the application process seamless
The application abandonment rate among candidates is as high as 95 percent and yet, most companies don’t pay enough attention to it.
A hiring suite can help you decrease the chances of application abandonment by making the entire process quick and easy for the candidates. You can also identify the places where the maximum abandonment happens and fix the issue to provide a better experience to candidates.
3- Provide an ideal interview experience
The hiring process is the first interaction candidates have with the company and they often use this opportunity to understand the company culture and determine whether it is the kind of place they would want to work at.
That is why, it is paramount for hiring managers to provide a positive interview experience to the candidates.
The importance of automation in recruitment
Automating the hiring process improves consistency and quality. Most importantly, it helps save time and ease the workload of your recruitment team. By introducing recruitment automation, you can filter out applicants automatically that don’t meet the criteria so that the HR managers don’t have to waste their time in manually checking resumes of candidates that aren’t even suitable for the job position.
You can also automate application tracking, interview scheduling, and even the employee onboarding process which won’t just help free up the time of your HR team, but it will also lead to a better candidate experience and lower your overall recruitment costs.
Find the right software to streamline the hiring process
With the right hiring software, you can streamline your organization’s hiring process, decrease costs, and improve transparency. Kissflow HR Cloud is an intuitive and completely customizable tool that allows you to digitize the entire hiring process and helps your HR team find better talent.
Its user-friendly interface allows HR managers to create and manage automated recruitment workflows on their own without any assistance. Sign up for a free trial of Kissflow HR Cloud to better understand how it can make your company’s hiring process more effective.
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