5 Improvements You Can Make to Strengthen Your Recruiting Process
Welcome to Recruiter Q&A, where we pose employment-related questions to the experts and share their answers! Have a question you’d like to ask? Leave it in the comments, and you might just see it in the next installment of Recruiter Q&A!
Today’s Question: What one simple thing did you do to take your recruiting process to the next level?
The answers below are provided by members of FounderSociety, an invitation-only organization comprised of ambitious startup founders and business owners.
1. Use Software to Streamline the Process
At Socialfly, we invested in JazzHR in order to streamline our recruiting process. Jazz allows us to push out our current job openings to all of the major job boards and allows team members to collaborate with one another on the hiring process.
One of the best decisions we made when it came to recruiting entry-level candidates was to go to universities that other companies were overlooking because they weren’t “big name” schools. A graduate in the top 5 percent of their class at a smaller school is as good as – if not better than – someone who was in the bottom 50 percent at a more well-known program. We’re able to hire the better person because we’re there and other companies are not.
At Aligned Signs, we are focused on people who share our vision. We like to ask questions like, “What is one thing you believe could be improved? How would you go about improving it?” If the candidate is hired, we like to make them a lead on implementing the change they suggested. This way, the new hire is integrated into the company quickly, takes leadership early, and can see their thoughts into fruition.
During the recruiting process, there is always talk about things like health insurance, paid time off, and schedules. However, businesses often fail to share their cultures with potential employees. On all of my recruitment pages, I make sure to share how the startup culture makes us different.
One issue I have with how a lot of businesses recruit is that it just feels mechanical and impersonal. I prefer to add a more human touch to things – personalized recruitment ads and messages, reaching out to my candidates with updates on their applications and, most importantly, showing genuine thanks for the work my prospective hires have put in.
