As you know, one of the things we do at Soaring + Company is work with you and help improve and implement your internal processes. Better processes make it easier for you to be effective. And attracting the right talent is crucial for your organization’s success – a policy worth taking a good look at.
When you have a vacancy, you obviously want it filled quickly, and with the most suitable candidate. There are multiple ways to do this: you can go and find candidates yourself, use an internal recruitment team or outsource your vacancies to specialized agencies. But you may have the perfect candidate working for you already.
Successful companies have implemented procedures to make use of the resource pool inside their organizations. It is important to have a formal process around internal recruitment. It helps with managing expectations, creates a level playing field and ensures that employees are aware of opportunities, and know how to use them.
5 Tips to Improve your Recruitment Process
Let’s dive into our list and see how you can improve your recruitment approach.
1. Design a Process and Procedure
A good start to improve your recruitment process, is to formalize what you currently have in place. In it, you will set boundaries, rules and exceptions. Think of a minimum period that an employee needs to be in the current role before being eligible for applying. Whether and how the employee needs to inform the manager of his or her intent applying. Some questions appear to have simple answers, but I can guarantee they will instill discussion and debate. Iron it out beforehand and with that, manage expectations.
There are more aspects you ought to think about. A process will include a formal repository to announce vacancies. Will you use a notice board, an intranet or your external board? Are there positions you will not post? What are the steps and timelines employees and managers can expect?
Creating clarity on these elements and having a procedure in place that suits the policy will help drive the efficiency of your recruitment efforts. But you may still expect discussion. Employees or managers may disagree with the policy or the criteria. You may be involved in discussions around them. However, being consistent will at least help focus these discussions around the content of the rules instead of the reasons behind the lack of consistency.
2. Ensure Employees and Managers are Aware
In order for your internal recruitment efforts to be successful, employees and management need to be aware of it. They need to know if and when vacancies appear, where to find them, and how to apply. It will be a source of frustration if not everybody is aware of the existence of open positions, and employees miss applying as a result.
You can help maximize this by reminding your employees and managers of the process, and doing that often. Make it a part of your onboarding information and let new candidates know what the company policy is immediately. Remind managers and employees in company communications, meetings and communication methods.
3. Be Open and Post as Many Positions as Possible
Where you can, post positions to employees to apply to as much as possible. Appointing people, having a process where managers appoint behind closed doors or select specific employees can create risks for employee engagement, transparency and hiring bias. Opening up the process and going through the steps of allowing employees to apply, interview and select does cost more time, but in the long run, it will help strengthen your organization’s culture. In addition, if you normally have an open process, there will be more understanding in those cases you do have to appoint or select in smaller committee.
4. Drive for a Formal Interview Process
Executing your policy consistently is important, we already mentioned. Don’t think that knowing who you’re dealing with because you worked with them can replace having a formal, structured sit-down.
Having formal interviews is an important element, for a few reasons. One of them is that you are able to ask all candidates standardized questions for each position. That makes it easier to compare answers and notes. That, as a result, helps limit bias and the hiring manager making assumptions. Asking the question begs an answer – literally.
A formal interview also helps the employees. They have an opportunity to get exposure to company leadership, managers and other employees. As a rule, the interview panels include managers senior to the role, so the employee has a chance to interact in a different way, and truly present their skills, experience and ambitions.
5. Build your Employer Brand
Apart from it being the right thing to do and it’s smart to hire employees that you have effectively trained in the company processes and brought up in the culture, it can help you establish and build your employer brand. It is a successful way of telling your employees that you listen to their career aspirations and are open to their ambitions.
In certain cases, especially in countries where you deal with employee representation, it can be a good bargaining chip when making organizational changes, that you agree to first and foremost look within and preserve employees for other positions. Again, this is a good thing to strive for anyway, but you can show and build goodwill by doing it.
About Us
Soaring + Company helps companies be more successful by improving their employees, processes and systems. We examine your current practices, identify areas of improvement and implement these to create a sustainable effect on effectiveness and efficiency. We can help improve your recruitment process. Find us on Twitter and LinkedIn, or reach out to us directly, and let us help you reach new heights.
