Employees are the fuel that keeps your business thriving day after day, year after year. No matter how much of an advantage you have in your particular industry, without high-performing workers, it’s only a matter of time before your growth starts to slump. Finding and hiring quality talent for your organization is no easy task, though. In fact, a recent study found that it takes companies an average of 38 days to discover, interview and eventually hire a new employee—and in an economy as fast-moving as the one we’re in, every minute spent away from your core business gets amplified.
There’s good news, though: thanks to the great technology available today, there are proven, actionable steps you can take to automate the bulk of your recruiting and hiring process. Here’s how to get started.
1. Invest in recruiting software.
Posting to countless job sites, sifting through piles of applications, selecting viable candidates and reaching out to set up interviews are all part of the time-consuming hiring process. This usually falls on the shoulders of a company’s recruiting department, who’s responsible for scoring candidates and setting up interviews with promising prospects. With HR software solutions like an applicant tracking system (ATS), you can automate almost all of this process.
What does an applicant tracking system do? An ATS is a software solution that automates the otherwise manual processes of recruiting and hiring. For instance, using the ATS offered by Arcoro’s very own BirdDogHR, users can post to over 1,300 job sites—from Indeed to Monster—with the click of a button. Companies can also use BirdDogHR’s set of winning email templates to streamline communication between themselves and applicants, speeding up the interview process as well.
2. Get set up with onboarding software.
Studies show that new hires typically decide within the first six months of a job whether they plan on staying with a company for the long term. That’s why it’s important to make the best first impression with new hires by having your onboarding process be organized, airtight and highly informative—from HR paperwork sign-offs to initial training.
Smooth onboarding is crucial for another reason: today, workers are leaving jobs more frequently than ever. In fact, 91 percent of millennials claim they don’t plan on staying at their current jobs for more than three years. To combat the negative effects of high turnover, it’s important to get employees onboarded and trained so they can become productive members of your company as quickly as possible.
Rather than printing dozens of onboarding packets and other paperwork, you can use one of the many HR software solutions on the market to automate your employee onboarding process—making it an electronic process that’s accessible directly from any laptop.
3. Create videos and articles to handle job training.
Another way to speed up your hiring process is streamlining job training, which is notorious for being drawn out and inefficient for both the trainer and trainees. Traditional, in-person training takes time away from current employees who’ll be conducting the instruction for new hires. Instead, why not create videos and written content that new employees can watch and read on their own time?
This can be done by investing in an LMS (learning management system), or by taking a more manual approach. By recording tutorial videos or writing articles that give new hires step-by-step instructions on their daily responsibilities, you’ll save yourself time and money in the long run while also giving workers the freedom to learn on their own terms. Plus, digital training has never been easier with screenshot recording capabilities available on most computers, in addition to cloud storage apps like Google Drive, One Drive and DropBox.
With an LMS, you can create, customize, track, deliver and record employee training. This is beneficial for the employer because it gives them the ability to measure the progress of a new hire in real-time. The software is also helpful for employees because it grants them access to the online training from any device as opposed to only being viewable while in the office.
Effective employee development doesn’t need to be all virtual, though. Instead, start by automating the most repetitive aspects of a particular job and save the rest for face-to-face. Then, check to see how the digital training is going after a few months, and double-down or scale back from there.
4. Use Performance Management and Succession Planning systems.
One way to save time spent on hiring that companies often overlook is internal hiring, which has a handful of big-time benefits. First, internal hiring gives employers the peace of mind of knowing the position will be filled by someone who is a good fit for the company culture—they can find out simply by asking colleagues already working closely with the individual. Second, internal hiring saves substantial amounts of time that would otherwise be spent training and onboarding an external hire on even the most basic tasks or organizational processes. Lastly, promoting current employees will let your workers know your company rewards dedicated employees, which can help boost team morale across the board.
Internal hiring can be made more efficient and effective by implementing performance management and succession planning strategies. Simply put, performance management and succession planning is the process of providing feedback to employees regarding their performance and then using that documentation to identify and develop new leaders in a company to replace senior leaders who are moving on or retiring.
By doing so, you’ll be able to show employees the potential career paths available to them if they capitalize on the opportunity. It also makes the hiring manager’s job easier by helping them assess which employees are most equipped for a particular job opening. With succession planning software available through Arcoro, you can easily compare candidates based on their competencies from performance reviews, scorecards and 9-box Talent Matrices to determine who fits best for the position.
Scoring applicants, interviewing candidates and eventually hiring the best fit for your company may feel like a long, tedious process—but it’s absolutely essential to the long-term success of your company. By taking advantage of the many tools available today and installing some winning processes, you can streamline your hiring from beginning to end.
