You know that saying “you get out what you put in”? Most times it’s used in relation to data, but it also applies to lots of other things; your job, cooking a great meal, relationships…
But not just personal relationships – the ones you have with your professional partners too.
While the outside partners you engage to do a job are working for you, there are many ways you can ensure that relationship goes smoothly.
Like in recruitment. While at Solutions Driven, we do everything in our power to get the job done for you as well and as fast as possible, there are some ways you can help to speed up the process and to ensure candidates are as engaged as possible.
It’s a Candidate Market…
We feel like we’ve been banging on about this for a really long time but candidate engagement is absolutely vital right now. Candidates are moving jobs more than ever before and the job market is hot.
The pandemic changed a lot of people’s priorities and they’re looking to be wooed by recruiters and hiring managers, as much as they used to have to work to get jobs. If companies want the best people for their critical roles, they need to be ready for an engaging, fast hiring process that won’t repel the best candidates.
Here are a few…
1. Get Full Buy In
First up, you need to make sure that all the stakeholders in the business are bought into this hire.
You, as the hiring manager, might be 100% sure that you need to make the hire, but does your boss feel the same way? Does the rest of your team? If they don’t see the value, you need to make sure you convince them before you begin the hiring process.
Otherwise, you’ll end up with a team who aren’t behind the process. They won’t be bought in to what your recruitment partner is trying to do and this can cause delays and changes to the hire.
And it’s much harder to get everyone aligned if they’re not bought into the hire…
2. Get Everyone Aligned
Even if you get everyone bought into the idea that you do need to make this hire, you still need to align the team on what the skills and qualities you need are.
Our COO, Walter Speirs, recently wrote a piece on hiring team alignment which you can read here. His main 5 ways teams can align are:
- Introduce your whole team to your recruiter
- Get everyone who will be involved, involved at the beginning
- Discover everyones’ ideal traits right at the beginning
- Get the team to complete a job profile
- Educate your team on your value proposition
By getting everyone aligned, you can ensure that your hiring process goes off without a hitch and your hiring team and external recruitment partner can work well together, getting you the best results.
3. Organise or Improve Your Candidate Value Proposition
CVP: Candidate Value Proposition
Your CVP sets out to candidates exactly the reasons why they’d want to work for you. It’s similar to an employee value proposition, but instead of highlighting why they should want to stay with your company, it shows candidates the positives of joining.
CVP includes the standard EVP areas like salary, benefits, and culture, but it also tells them how they’d be inducted into the business, what career prospects are available to them, and what the interview process will look like.
You also need to get your team on the same candidate value proposition page. One of the best ways to engage candidates is to introduce them to some of your team during the interview process. That way they know first hand what working in your company is like and get to hear it from people who actually work there.
After all research from Beamery shows that 69% of active job seekers are likely to apply to a job if the employer actively manages its employer brand.
However, if your team all say different things about the culture or the company’s ethos, it shows everyone isn’t on the same page. That can be bad for your employer brand and turn candidates off during the process.
4. Organise Your Company Branding
Part of our process at Solutions Driven is providing candidates with a candidate information pack. This sets out what the job is, what the company is like, the benefits, and the perks. And making that pack look as professional as possible is a great way to help interest and engage candidates.
But many businesses don’t have that information to hand and spend a lot of time digging out logos, colour codes, brand images, and pictures of their people.
That slows down the process and causes delays in getting the right people into your business who can help you improve and grow.
Here are some examples of the things that can help embody your brand:
– Your brand colours in Hex Code and Pantone
– Various iterations of your logo. (It’s always good to have it in colour, and black and white, all with transparent backgrounds.
– Pictures of your team
– Pictures that represent your business. (Sometimes you have to use stock photos but real ones are best.)
– A short blurb or boilerplate, explaining what it is you do, along with any corporate social responsibility and mission statements.
– Links to videos that help show your company’s day-to-day operations or culture.
– Links to your social media
5. Organise an induction plan
Starting a new job is scary. You might have a job description and have met the team, but no amount of talking and induction packs will prepare you for what life is like in a company.
So having a structured induction in place for new employees is vital. It tells them what their first few days will be like, what they’ll be expected to do, and allows them to plan their week and know what’s going on. Having this as available as part of the offer process will help candidates see your business is organised and ready for them to join.
Things like regular check-ins and meetings with various stakeholders should be part of this. It allows the candidate to see that they’ll be a meaningful part of the business and lets them get to know different people at the start of their employment.
One of the biggest benefits of induction to your organisation is that a great induction improves employee retention. In fact, CIPD reported in 2020 that 42% of companies were looking to improve their induction process to help improve retention. With the rise of the candidate market and candidate options, it’s likely this number has grown.
