How to Optimize Your Hiring Process for Specific Hiring Needs?

Everyone struggles

Frequently, organizations struggle to create the optimal hiring plan with a well-defined recruitment process that would help hiring managers to be as efficient as possible while at the same time thinking of candidate experience. In addition, since recruiters and hiring managers often hire for entirely different positions that require different approaches and hiring stages, it is difficult to find a universal way of approaching the issue. 

While the difference between hiring processes for a software engineer and a warehouse worker is quite the obvious one, if you adopt the same mindset to other more similar positions, you'll see that there is a lot of space for tailoring each of your recruitment processes! 

Two different perspectives

Instead of giving you obvious solutions and typing down the list of the most common elements of each recruitment process, in this article, we will offer you two more radical approaches to hiring to make you rethink your entire candidate journey!

Imagine a recruitment process with only one step! 

In the past couple of years, recruitment processes have become increasingly complex, and more and more companies are creating long, exhausting strategies that don't always give excellent results. The average cost per hire is around 4000$, and it is still challenging to get a straight answer as to whether a specific hiring process was particularly successful or not. Moreover, with the job market speeding up and candidates switching jobs every four years, on average, it becomes highly inefficient to spend months assessing candidates' cultural fit, psychological fit, and other famous tactics. 

For that reason, one innovative way of recruitment, called Open hiring, has emerged. Since 1982, Greyston Bakery in Yonkers, New York, which produces millions of pounds of baked goods annually for customers like Ben & Jerry's, has used this approach while building a successful business with 70 open-hire employees. The company has created a list where everyone interested in joining the company can sign up, and as soon as the position opens, they get a job offer. This approach gave the company a competitive advantage by reducing its hiring costs to almost nothing and left space for investing in employee training! And they do it - they spend 1900$ on each new hire to get well equipped for the job. 

The Body Shop, another globally successful company, decided to follow in their footsteps to fill some positions. No interviews, no background checks, no assessments. The candidates get three knockout questions initially, and if they give the correct answers, they are hired. Within the questions, they ask candidates if they are legal to work in the US, and whether they can work for 8 hours and carry 50 pounds. And that's it if all your answers are yes, you are hired!

The company decided to adopt this approach due to a high demand for seasonal workers around Christmas. Recently, they decided to extend the system to some office entry levels, such as internships. (Source: Harvard Business Review)

So, how can this work?

Yes, we know most of you will think that this approach is too simplified and inapplicable for your company. And we can assume why. You're probably wondering where the background check is and why so few companies use the approach if it is that simple. 

Well, it isn't simple. As, Greyston's CEO, Joe Kenner, said: "Open hiring does mean no accountability," and continued, "This job is not a guarantee, it's an opportunity." And we agree, as long as your accountability system is in place and everyone has assigned responsibilities and expectations, the system can work. (Source: Harvard Business Review)

Ultimately, not every position can be filled in this way. If you're looking for a specific skill set or years of experience doing a particular job, the method cannot be entirely implemented. However, you can always start from somewhere - is it essential to check which university your candidates attended? And, do they have to go through several interview phases for you to make an informed decision about their qualifications? Think twice and maybe you'll find a way to shorten your current process.

Focus on the assessment

If you're still not convinced that your company should entirely transform its hiring practices and eliminate all standard hiring stages, maybe the following paragraphs will encourage you to implement a slightly different change. 

Though open hire policy may be more suitable for entry-level positions and blue-collar jobs, maximally shortening your hiring process can be a way to go for hiring at almost any position. More specifically, big corporations with established hiring practices, or small companies figuring out their recruitment process, can both leverage by creating a hiring process that only takes up to a few days. 

How to implement the change?

Contrary to a common practice of a hiring process taking up to several weeks or even a month, more and more companies are trying to shorten the process making it more efficient and giving their candidates a satisfactory candidate experience. 

For instance, Glassdoor reports that Sephora, a global beauty brand with over 20000 employees worldwide, takes less than a week to hire its employees. According to the same report at Tata Consultancy Services, it sometimes takes only a day for the entire hiring process. Starbucks is taking just below two weeks on average for their recruitment process from start to finish. 

But how are they doing it?

There are multiple ways in which a recruitment process can be completely transformed to become more efficient. However, the switch in the mindset makes these companies leaders and so effective at hiring. 

In addition to adopting the right mindset, companies are also focusing on substantial training for their hiring managers to become well-skilled and knowledgeable about which questions to ask and answers to look for to find the right fit for the company. If you ask the right questions for a specific position and learn to see through what is essential for your candidates to know and determine if they possess desirable traits, you'll become highly successful at hiring suitable talent. 

In addition to good training, you can also consider group interviews. A group interview setting allows you to question multiple candidates simultaneously and see their differences and qualifications on the spot. If performed correctly, with your assessors highly competitive at what they do, this method can help you become faster at making hiring decisions and ultimately provide a better experience for your candidates. In addition, this can eliminate several interview phases or lengthy assessments and help you hire within days of opening the position.

Have technology helping you

Optimizing your recruitment for all your hiring needs is not an easy task which is why we listed these alternative ways to approach your recruitment. Ultimately, it is up to you and your company to find the right way to approach the issue. However, even if you think that none of the strategies offered in the article could entirely suit your needs, you can always find a way to incorporate at least some elements of it and improve your recruitment process.

While adapting the process, one thing to keep in mind is; that leveraging the technology allows you to keep the process agile and experiment with the changes. If you wish to try out several approaches until you find the right one, or you think that using different strategies for different processes is what your company should be doing, make sure to have the right technology assisting you along the way.