Recruitment
According to the CIPD, 57% of employers have hard-to-fill vacancies, and 29% anticipate significant problems in filling hard-to-fill vacancies over the next few months. In order to address hard-to-fill vacancies, 43% of organisations have raised pay. In terms of what people want, People Management say that 55% listed money as a top priority, with 20% looking for an improved work-life balance and 13% wanting increased job security. In our recent HR trends survey, we found that two thirds of businesses are using internal recruitment teams to find talent.
When it comes to looking at your recruitment strategy, analysing data can be a huge help to encourage candidates to see you as an employer of choice:
Time to hire
Time to fill
Hiring quality
Length of service
Does it seem to take a lifetime to secure the right candidate for a new job vacancy? Although it’s important for this part of the recruitment process not to be rushed when finding the perfect fit, you equally don’t want it to drag on for longer than necessary.
If it’s taking you longer than anticipated to secure that person, take a step back and look at how you’re capturing people for roles. Are you posting job adverts in the right place and using digital platforms to your advantage? Look at the conversion rate of your careers page from visitor to applicant. You could run paid ad campaigns to target specific groups and use social media platforms like LinkedIn to identify people in your industry. Also think about the content of the advert; make sure it’s concise and engaging to read, outlining some of the key benefits of working for your organisation.
To engage team members, you could even offer a referral fee for employees, making them part of the recruitment process as they may know the perfect person for the job. Don’t dismiss data when wondering why it’s taking you so long to hire. Use it to your advantage to work out how long it takes to sift through applications, how your time to hire compares to competitors in your industry, and how long is spent on each interview.
In order to address hard-to-fill vacancies, 43% of organisations have raised pay.
Another activity to measure is time to fill, which is the number of days it takes to fill an open position, from the date a job requisition is posted to the date a new hire accepts the position. Measuring time to fill will provide you with a quick reference point on how long it would take to fill an empty position and it can also act as a key performance indicator (KPI) or running score for your recruiting operations.
There are different ways of tackling a long time to fill and bottlenecks you can remove from your recruitment process. If you’re struggling with the sheer volume of applicants, consider adding in deal-breaker questions to eliminate candidates who don’t have the required qualifications or experience. Involving too many people can also cause a delay in hiring the right person and puts you at risk of a negative candidate experience. Don’t overcomplicate it by having too many decision-makers and strip it back to the recruiter and hiring manager, for example.
Another way of improving your time to fill is by assessing your job interview process; do you really need a round of three interviews? Or could you hold an initial interview virtually and a second one in person? Consider using software where candidates can choose their desired interview time to cut out the back-and-forth of email communication regarding interview schedules.
Once you’ve reached the next stage of your recruitment funnel and you’ve successfully acquired your new hire, make sure the quality of your hire gets measured. This is essentially the value a new hire contributes to the company’s overall success. There are various metrics you can measure when determining the quality of a new employee.
Firstly, the quality of their work that they provide is the most important assessment of their value. It will understandably take new hires time to adjust to their new position, but this can be another valuable metric in determining the quality of your new hire based on how long it takes them to operate to their full capacity. Other indicators to use when assessing the quality of a new hire include cultural fit and employee satisfaction.
Finding an employee that aligns with the culture at your company helps them to integrate themselves more quickly and effectively. Employee satisfaction is also important as happy, engaged employees are more likely to perform at their best – make sure you check in with new hires about their satisfaction with their job once they’ve settled as it can help determine if your recruitment has been effective.
Finally, the length of service will be an influencing factor of whether or not you have an effective recruitment strategy in place, as your retention rate is a reflection not just of your work structure and culture, but also of your initial hiring process.
A good place to start is by looking at your onboarding process. This is a particularly important process to evaluate as it’s the start of the employee experience for new hires.
Getting the onboarding experience right for new employees is essential as it has an incredible impact on the first few months of employment. This includes familiarising new hires with policies and procedures, getting them prepared for their role, and ultimately instilling confidence by extending a warm welcome and support network.
Integrating an employee into the company culture can be a make-or-break situation, as 69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience great onboarding.
Also, if you’re not asking your employees questions, start now. Conduct pulse and eNPS surveys periodically and be sure to act on the data fast. You can use the data to develop training programmes and development opportunities to help retain top talent.
You could ask your employees questions like ‘What parts of your job do you find most interesting and rewarding?’, ‘What challenges or bottlenecks get in the way of you doing your job to your full potential?’, and ‘Are there any projects or additional responsibilities you’d like to be a part of or take on?’.
69% of employees are more likely to stay with a company for three years if they experience great onboarding.
Attracting and retaining top talent and driving a workforce that just ‘works’ starts with the right people in the right places. Without solid recruitment reports it’s difficult to know where your processes can improve. Here’s a handful of features to look out for in your software HR reports.
Produce visually appealing reports so you can smash recruitment KPIs
Recruitment workflows to speed up time to hire and ensure processes run quickly
Automated onboarding workflows
Automated templates for HR to use
The ability for line managers to see and raise their own job requisitions
Docusign integration for a compete audit trail
Candidate portal for a 10/10 experience
Quick candidate signature to employee profile creation
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