7 Ways to Improve Your Hiring Practices

It’s always helpful to learn different hiring practices in today’s world, and how to improve your current hiring system. Read further.

 

Are you looking to attract top talent? Then you need to know what it takes to attract top talent. As we approach the final stages of the pandemic, many businesses continue to gear up for growth during the predicted upcoming economic boom. This means that you’re not alone out there, pining for the best of the best – or at least, the best to fit your company’s culture and needs.

 

But what goes into getting the right talent for you? Chances are that you’re already well-versed in the basics of what makes a good hiring process – knowing where to look, weeding out the unserious offers and resumes, eyeing up good potential picks, and setting up the early interview.

 

But what can you do to improve your hiring practices, especially now, as we’re working towards a brand-new post-pandemic environment? Let’s go over some of the basics.

 

Do Your Research on Competitive Compensation

 

If you want to attract the best fit for you, you need to know what they’re looking for. There are plenty of helpful online resources to help startups and HR departments narrow down what professionals in any given field and industry are looking for, especially in terms of salary and benefits.

 

If you can’t match those needs, consider how you might be able to provide a unique value proposition to potential top talent.

 

• • • What benefits might someone get working for you versus another company with more resources at hand?
    • What do you have to excite people who are passionate about the kind of work you do?
    • What prospects does your company have that might excite someone looking to foster growth and innovation in your field?
    • What challenges can you present to someone interested in honing their skills and taking on an opportunity to shake things up through your firm?

 

Compensation isn’t always about money. People need to be able to live, and most people don’t want to compromise on their quality of life, either.

 

But chances are that many top talents would be more interested in the opportunity to continue to finance their lifestyle while making ambitious strides in the industry and learning brand new skills through working with you, versus a minor uptick in their pay.

 

Conduct an In-Person Interview

 

Yes, offices are reopening – but not for everyone. Then there’s the fact that there are many startups and businesses that have had to close their physical locations indefinitely – or didn’t have one to begin with. Does that mean in-person interviews are out of the question? Absolutely not.

 

You can leverage flex spaces and coworking spaces as temporary offices to host hiring interviews. Chances are that you’re going to be looking for the right person for more than a few days or weeks, and most coworking spaces offer month-long leases, at the very least, and can offer isolated spaces for you to conduct interviews under safe social distancing protocols.

 

Leverage Coworking Spaces for In-Person Onboarding Sessions

 

Why stop at the interviews? The hiring process goes past deciding if someone is an initial fit for your company. The true test for any new hire comes with the onboarding process. Onboarding can help your hires figure out whether they’re a right fit for the company, get acquainted with the work style and their coworkers, and get a feel for the company culture they’re becoming a part of.

 

But digital onboarding has severe limitations. If you do not have an office space of your own, and are largely hiring remote forces, you can still use coworking spaces to your advantage to eliminate these limitations, by enabling your new hires to work with your nearest employees.

 

Pour Resources into Targeted Job Markets

 

Expand your search – by seeking out better criteria.

 

The internet offers a large host of established job markets where professionals congregate and look for work in a specific niche, industry, or profession – from ProBlogger for content writers, to ArtStation for art directors and digital creatives. Snoop around YouTube for talented video editors. Don’t rely entirely on UpWork or LinkedIn.

 

Screen for a Cultural Fit

 

What is workplace culture? In a post-pandemic world, finding an accurate definition that doesn’t involve the “feel” of the physical workplace and the people in it can be difficult. But companies can still have culture while working remotely, or in a hybrid setting, via watercooler talks and casual chats, the tone with which coworkers communicate, the language that is tolerated or encouraged, and the way both new hires and established company employees are treated after mistakes are made, or in celebratory moments.

 

What sets a company apart is how it treats its workers, and the behavior it allows or encourages between those workers – and, how well management communicates, engages with, and spends time with the rest of the company.

 

A new hire with great talent but a potentially toxic personality might become a thorn in your side, bringing down morale and causing others in the company to lose faith in you as a leader.

 

Their behavior, words, and opinions might not seem relevant to the work they do, but how they interact with others, and how their beliefs shape their actions within the company do reflect on both you and the business you are running.

 

Someone who continues to be overly informal in a company that demands professionalism or is rude and inappropriate despite doing a great job, should still be considered a bad fit for your work culture. The performance of a single person can never overshadow the accomplishments of a whole team that is in sync and working with high morale.

 

Why Weren’t They a Good Fit?

 

With issues and concerns around discrimination continuing to rise, it becomes more important than ever for companies to assure hopeful hires that they were disqualified from the hiring process for non-discriminatory reasons.

 

Doing so allows you to nip future issues in the bud, establish that any decision not to hire was born out of pragmatism rather than bad faith, and create the necessary documentation to ensure that your company steers clear from controversy if a potential hire takes offense with your decision to pick someone else. Even a simple follow-up is always better than total inaction.

 

How Has the Pandemic Affected Hiring Practices?

 

Finally, think about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected (and will continue to affect) your company’s hiring practices, and whether these changes are positive as a whole.

 

For example, as a result of a switch to a hybrid or mostly remote setup, many companies have massively expanded the geographical pool from which they draw talent. It no longer matters if the person they’re interviewing lives on the other coast of the continent, or even another country.