Recruiting Best Practices: Improve Your Hiring Process and Land Top Candidates

Recruiting is an ever-evolving process. Finding exceptionable candidates can be like trying to hit a moving target. How should HR and recruiting managers handle this daunting, but essential task? Here are our recruiting best practices to improve your process and land top candidates. 

Set and manage candidate expectations

Establishing an open and honest line of communication is essential. During the hiring process, things are bound to come up—timelines change, expectations evolve, etc. Be sure to keep candidates in the loop.

By setting clear expectations from the beginning, a recruiter can maintain a proper relationship with an applicant through the hiring process.

• Provide a complete, accurate disclosure of job requirements and responsibilities
• Include a specific target compensation range
• Inform candidates of the next steps in your hiring process and provide feedback 
• Establish a timeframe for follow-up and hiring

Improve candidate experience

Candidate experience encompasses everything from sourcing and screening to interviewing and onboarding. Candidates who experience a positive experience are far more likely to continue on through the recruitment process, apply, and accept, if an offer is extended.

• Make the job listing easy to find, detailed, and easy to apply
• Utilize mobile-accessible job applications
• Follow-up early and often
• Be personable and invested
• Inform candidates of the specifics of your hiring process
• Give candidates your full attention during interviews and respect their time
• Be open and respectful giving feedback
• Inform candidates when they are no longer being considered

Invest in recruiting and onboarding technology 

Like most HR functions, technology continues to make recruiting easier. Applicant management tools help recruiters streamline and automate much of the complete recruitment process—from prospecting and interviewing to hiring and onboarding.

A comprehensive applicant tracking system (ATS) will help you find the best candidate for the job more effectively and enable you to hire with confidence. An ATS streamlines recruiting into a faster, more efficient process. Filter applicants and screen resumes automatically to move applicants through the hiring funnel quicker—plus, make admin tasks easier. 

With analytics, data can provide great insights into your hiring strategy—including time, cost, and quality of hire. This empowers you to know what works well and what areas of your process need improvement. 

Create attractive benefits and perks package

When it comes to hiring and recruiting best practices , many companies think more money is the only way to win top talent. While important, there is so much more that businesses can bring to the table. While many organizations offer traditional benefits, today’s employees expect more—a lot more.

When revamping your employee benefits program, reach out directly to your employees for feedback around the benefits, perks, and growth opportunities they desire. Flexible work schedules, remote and hybrid work, incentive-tied bonuses, and continued learning opportunities are likely to place high on the list. 

Expand your talent pool

If you want to land the top talent, your search needs to be as encompassing as possible. This includes in-house promotions, referrals from current employees, previous applicants, and passive talent that may not even be actively looking for a job.

By developing and maintaining strong candidate pools, you are able to foster relationships and groom candidates ahead of demand. This proactive approach enables you to build a community showcasing your company and keep your candidate pool engaged.

Utilize recruitment marketing

Just as marketing is integral to the sales process, marketing strategies—such as awareness, consideration, and engagement— can be used to attract and nurture the right candidates to your organization. Recruitment marketing consists of:

• Employer branding and awareness
• Creating and targeting candidate personas
• Content creation and engagement
• Social media recruiting
• Digital advertising
• Analytics and reporting

Seamlessly transition from recruiting to hiring to onboarding

Once you have made your selection, the hiring process is still not yet complete. Just as candidate experience was important, the onboarding experience must be top notch as well.

The onboarding process begins as soon as a job offer is accepted. Lasting for several months (at least) after hiring, will help your new hires better understand their role, feel more valued, and increase their engagement.

Discover how Netchex can help you maintain recruiting best practices and improve your overall recruitment process.