10 Best Ways to Improve Recruitment Process

Improving the recruitment process involves a strategic focus on attracting, engaging, and retaining top talent through innovative methods. Given the high demand for top talent and the competition among companies for the best performers, talent acquisition teams must must utilize strategic and creative approaches in their recruitment processes to continue meeting business objectives.

This includes leveraging technology for efficient candidate screening, building a strong employer brand, and creating a positive candidate experience. Furthermore, emphasizing diversity and inclusion, utilizing data analytics for informed decision-making, and developing a robust talent pool are key.

In this content, we will explore the areas on which recruiters should focus so that their organizations can streamline the recruitment process, reduce time-to-hire, and ensure they attract and retain the best talent available.

How to Improve Recruitment Process?

There are many potential ways to improve your recruiting process, but not all will be ideal for your business. We’ll explore 10 effective, tried-and-tested strategies that prove the most popular for modern recruitment needs.

Prioritize skills-based hiring

Skills-based hiring prioritize practical skills and performance to help companies secure best-fit talent. However, to get the most out of skills-based hiring, it’s crucial to evaluate candidates in the right way.

Leverage an effective, multi-stage recruitment process to thoroughly vet the applicants and minimize bias. This may require going beyond the CV and resume screening, and toward structured interviews and skills assessment tests.

Integrating technical challenges and tests into a technical recruitment process, for example, will help evaluate the full extent of a candidate’s talents. It will also help you pin-point which candidates have the exact set of skills your company requires.

By assessing candidates on the basis of skills, you will not only raise the quality of talent acquires, but minimize bias and discrimination, too.

Check out how you can screen your candidates easily and effectively using WeCP Copilot.

Improve the candidate experience

80-90% of candidates say that a negative experience can change their mind about a job or company. The takeaway? If you’re looking to secure top talent, make sure you’re optimizing the candidate experience.

Some ways to improve your candidate experience include:

1. Making the application process easy - Provide clear instructions, set expectations, and avoiding dragging the process on. 60% of those seeking jobs report that a lengthy or complex application process will lead to them quitting.
2. Being considerate of the candidate’s time when conducting and scheduling interviews.
3. Showing a genuine interest in the candidate.
4. Readily replying to queries and being transparent in communication.
   

Ultimately, the recruitment process will significantly influence how job-seekers view your company. 78% of job-seekers, in fact, see candidate experience as an indicator of how a company values people. It is therefore critical to provide candidates with an inclusive, welcoming experience.

Leverage social media recruitment

Social media recruitment has gained traction in recent years, and its popularity has picked up further with the growth of remote work. Social media helps businesses improve their digital footprint to reach not only more customers, but more talent pools, too.

Leveraged correctly, social media recruitment can help your business strengthen its employer branding, reach more talent, and acquire top talent. But to get the most out of social media recruitment, it’s important to:

1. Understand your goals. Aimlessly using social media platforms without clearly defined goals will make it difficult to justify investments in the platform. So, it’s important to define goals for social media recruitment and a clear path for achieving them.
   
2. Invest in employer branding. According to one statistic from LinkedIn, 75% of candidates review an employer’s brand before applying for a job. Thus, to acquire top talent, it’s crucial to strengthen your employer and talent branding through your messaging and online footprint.
   
3. Be social. One of the advantages of social media is that it allows companies to interact with their audience. Facebook and LinkedIn groups, in particular, allow companies to recruiters to interact with candidates in a more informal way.

Highlight your employee value proposition

Communicating your employee value proposition (EVP) throughout your messaging is crucial to attract the best talent. But to project your EVP, it’s first crucial to define it. It consists of both tangible benefits such as salary and also intangible benefits such as a healthy work culture.

One statistic reports that an attractive EVP can help a company reach 50% deeper into the labor market. Thus, a strong EVP expands your scope for hiring, and is a necessary part of recruitment planning.

A good modern EVP includes:

1. Flexible (hybrid) work models, where possible - One study found that 83% of employees preferred a job model that allowed them to work remotely at least 25% of the time.
   
2. A diverse and inclusive work environment - As we will discuss below, employees today are searching for companies that are inclusive and promote diversity goals.
   
3. Upskilling opportunities and L&D programs - This will not only make your EVP more attractive but it will help retain employees as 43% of workers leave their jobs over limited career opportunities.

Work on your talent and employer brand

One study found that the top 20% of candidates are attracted by a company’s culture. Working on your talent and employer brand can therefore help better showcase your company’s culture, thus improving the quality of talent you acquire.

Some tips to consider are:

1. Demonstrating what makes your company unique. Perhaps your company provides flexible working hours or provides bonuses that your competitors are not.
   
2. Identifying your ideal talent personas (ITPs) so that you know who to market to. This doesn’t only involve outlining the skills you desire in a candidate, but also their values, their motivations, and their aspirations. This will help you assess whether or not the candidate will fit in with your company culture.
   
3. Asking present employees for constructive input. After all, they were the ones who went through your company’s recruitment process. Inquire about what aspects they found appealing and what improvements they think should be made from a candidate’s perspective.
   
4. Outlining KPIs to track progress and help optimize. Metrics such as social media engagements and brand awareness will help you assess the effectiveness of your brand and identify weaknesses.

Commit to diversity and inclusion

As mentioned above, diversity and inclusivity are qualities that candidates are now expecting from employers. One survey found that 42% of candidates will turn down a job offer if they believe the company is not diverse enough.

To promote diversity and inclusion in your company, some steps that can be taken are:

1. Adjusting your screening process to ensure that candidates are being fairly assessed and are not being ommitted on the bias of discrimination.
   
2. Providing diversity training for employees to help remove biases in the workplace and also during the recruitment process.
   
3. Having a complaint system that allows minority workers to express their grievances.
   
4. Establishing cross-training programs. This allows for internal mobility and ensures that certain roles are not dominated by a particular demographic.

Build and nurture talent pools

This year, 75% of companies around the world reported a talent shortage. Proactively nurturing your own talent can serve as a viable method to bypass this problem.

You can source potential candidates for your talent pools from various places including:

1. Your current employees.
   
2. Former employees.
   
3. Graduates-to-be.
   
4. Old candidates who at the time were unqualified.

When building a talent pool, there are a few steps to take such as:

1. Identifying the skill gaps present amongst company employees.
   
2. Arranging programmes and modules that will help employees learn these skills.
   
3. Providing mentors who encourage an environment for participation and growth.
   
4. Implementing a two-way feedback system between mentors and employees.
   
5. Regularly monitoring the progress of employees and auditing strategies.

Tap into passive job-seekers with talent demand generation

70% of the global workforce is composed of passive job-seekers. That is, employees who are not actively seeking new jobs but will leave their current position if a better offer comes their way.

You can leverage talent demand generation – a strategy to ‘activate’ passive job-seekers – to pitch to these potential hires, by:

1. Spreading awareness about your company amongst talent communities (and presenting it as a desirable employee)
2. Seeking referrals from employees.
3. Organizing events and inviting industry members and colleagues.
4. Providing an easy application process.

Implement an employee referral program

Seeking out new talent can be both costly and time-consuming. But employee referral programs have stood the test of time, offering employers the opportunity to acquire better talent at a fraction of the cost.

In an employee referral program, your current employees are asked to recommend candidates that they know (whether that’s a friend or a family member) in return for incentives (such as money).

Not only can this save resources, but referral programs have proven to yield better ROI and lead to greater employee retention.

Tap into your internal talent pool

Internal recruitment can strengthen your recruitment plan in a few ways:

1. Lower turnover rates. 45% of employees who leave their jobs report concerns regarding advancement opportunities. Therefore, providing employees with upskilling and reskilling opportunities is an effective means to raise employee retention.
2. Save on resources that would otherwise be spent on external recruitment
3. Nuture talent that already aligns with your company’s values and is familiar with it’s culture.

Infosys is one example of the effectiveness of internal recruiting. At Infosys, reskilled employees helped the company meet 34% of its digital project requirements.

Improve recruitment process with WeCP

WeCP makes hiring simpler and faster by helping you find quality candidates quickly. It lets employers to prioritize skills-based hiring by assessing candidates on their technical skills, soft skills like problem-solving, communication and performance across more than 12 metrics.

With WeCP, you can understand a candidate's hard and soft skills, making your recruitment process more effective, streamlined and reduces time to hire & cost per hire substantially.

Get started with WeCP for free or schedule a demo with us for more information