Are You Using These Recruiter Training Tips To Optimize Your Hiring Team?

Filling a position can be a tough task. You have to find the right talent, but you don’t want just anyone to sit at that desk. You need fresh talent that is going to take your company to new heights, and be a great asset to your team.

While you may be busy, you might delegate some of your recruiting tasks to other recruiters. At the same time, they probably have their hands full, and might not be taking the time to bring in best and the brightest to review. That being said, Hiring Managers have a lot of power.

If they can provide candidates with a positive, individual experience during the recruitment process, they can bring in excellent new hires and make you look like the great employer that you truly are. However, if your Hiring Managers are making some common recruiting mistakes, you will have a hard time finding those superstar hires.

The good news is that there is any easy way for you to help your Hiring Managers avoid these pitfalls and end up with the best talent the job market has to offer…

Recruit for Department Needs

There are three cardinal sins that recruiters can be guilty of:

1. They don’t know enough about the position they are trying to fill.
2. They don’t follow up with a candidate at the end of the screening process.
3. Their recruitment process is slow.

For many candidates, when a recruiter or Hiring Manager doesn’t know enough about the position, it can be detrimental to creating candidate interest. It is especially risky for your company’s brand when a recruiter, who is unaware of the job’s intricate responsibilities, interviews a highly-skilled candidate.

The best way to sort out all three issues is to provide internal recruiters with proper training.

Think about this:

You are already saving resources by using an in-house recruiting team. Spending time on recruiter training is an investment that minimizes the risk of error and maximizes your potential to acquire valuable employees. It’s a win-win situation.

Recruiter training should start with teaching recruiters how to gain insight into the specifics of each department, the type of candidates sought by a department, and the role that the candidate will be required to perform. A meeting with the team leader can also provide insights into the candidate they want.

With enough training and insight, HR specialists and Hiring Managers can provide candidates with a much more individual approach to the recruitment process.

Recruiters should start out by observing the best employees in a given department. They also should also take the time to analyze results and evaluate the department to get to know what type of employees contributed to the success and work best in that environment.

Next, they should learn what type of candidates they should avoid. By reviewing rejected candidates, recruiters gain valuable insight into what they should watch out for during the recruitment process.

Think about this:

Recruiters that work for external agencies specialize in headhunting people for specific positions. They know both what the position will require, and they know how candidates want to invest their time.

If you can enable internal recruiters to exchange information with the head of the department, they will have the same edge as external recruiters. Training your recruiters to understand who they are looking for and what that person will need to do will lead to interviews with higher quality candidates.  

Successful Recruitment Equals Significant Revenue Increases

There is a direct relationship between acquiring talented employees and the overall profits of a company. Boston Consulting Group reports that companies that actively source talent show 2.4x revenue growth over those who don’t.

Recruiters who can pinpoint which candidates are the right fit are the recruiters who will reap the revenue rewards. That being said, beyond understanding the role that a candidate will need to perform, recruiters should also be able to analyze an employee’s performance in a given role.

Nine out of ten CEOs would like to see HR professionals provide smooth performance analyses. And analytics from an Applicant Tracking System helps get HR professionals that coveted “seat at the table.”

When a recruiter can analyze the performance of a potential candidate, they will have the ability to gauge that candidate’s capacity for future performance in their new role. If that candidate had a direct impact on the growth of income, logic follows that they will do the same for you.

Also, you shouldn’t necessarily restrict measurable monetary success to positions that directly generate profit. For example, if a candidate who is up for an Office Manager position can effectively negotiate purchases with suppliers, you can count on savings that boost profit margins.

The second thing you should train recruiters to look for to increase ROI is innovation. Analyzing the past performance of employees who are innovative also helps reduce business costs in the long run. Have recruiters ask what fresh ideas and optimizations candidates brought to the table at their previous workplace. Checking for innovation is especially important for fast-changing industries like e-commerce and IT.

Recruiters should also focus on an innovative candidate’s efficiency. Candidates who can implement innovative ideas faster will save you time and money. Train recruiters to focus on references, skills, and the candidate’s ability to acquire new skills.

Finally, HR professionals should know the cost of a failed recruitment process. Their end goal should go beyond filling a vacant rolly chair.

A successful process should equal the retention of the talent they’ve recruited. It’s not a bad idea to reward recruiters who extend contracts with their hires.

Pro Tip: Candidates who have lower pay expectations are not always a good choice.

While you save money on their salaries, it’s not likely they will increase overall profits.

Earnings should not be the only criterion for recruitment, and recruiters should present talented candidates with higher offers when they can offer the company an interesting set of skills.  

How to Find the Best Candidates Using Only LinkedIn

You should also consider training HR specialists to search actively for candidates via LinkedIn.

When we put together our IT team at Zety we based our entire strategy on leveraging LinkedIn. Why?

If you want to attract the most talented candidates, it is not enough to place a job offer on a popular job board or website. Anyone not actively looking for work will not check a job board, and they will not pay attention to job offers elsewhere unless they are attractive.

Fun fact: that’s why many companies turn to recruitment agencies in the first place. In some cases, you can reduce your agency spend with candidate friendly recruiting software.

So, where are all of the cool, talented kids with jobs hanging out? LinkedIn.

To find passive talent, it’s a good idea to get your HR department engaged with the platform.

Afterward, your HR team will be able to:

• Identify profiles that use keywords for specific positions well.
• Reach out to candidates with niche skills and specific knowledge.
• Look for profiles of candidates within specific networks.
• Build a database of candidates for a job.
• Create an eye-catching recruitment message for candidates.
• Headhunt valuable candidates among competitors.

Encourage your HR staff and Hiring Managers to be active on LinkedIn. Yes, that means giving your staff time to fiddle around on a social media platform. But candidate references are just as important as sourcing.

Giving your internal recruiters free access to LinkedIn and training will, in return, allow them to remain open to valuable candidates, and that will pay off in the future.

Shorten the Recruitment Process to Catch Valuable Candidates

Here’s some food for thought:

The average recruitment process lasted 3.5 days longer in 2015 than in 2009.  On the other hand, recruiters have approximately ten days to snag the best talent before these candidates leave the job market.

Bottom line? The early bird with a shorter recruitment process gets the worm.

So, what can you do to shorten your recruitment process?

• HR specialists and Hiring Managers should check on received applications daily. Recruiters should treat an application for an outstanding candidate like a hot sales lead. The longer it takes to follow up on that lead, the less likely it is that it will result in a conversion, or in this case, a talented candidate joining your organization. So, it is crucial for recruiters to be on the lookout for new applications as they arrive.

• Recruiters should schedule interviews or the first telephone conversation for the day after accepting a candidate’s resume. Recruiters should be flexible enough to adjust their time to meet the scheduling needs of a talented candidate. It should never be the other way around.

• An offer should be prepared for a candidate and presented the same day or the next day after the line manager makes a positive decision. Extending the time it takes to pitch an offer raises the risk of receiving a counter offer from the candidate.

• The candidate should always know what phase of recruitment they are in and when they will most likely enter the next phase.

If your company uses multiple sources to search for candidates, using different tools to help you stay organized can also help you save time.

For example, you can manage your relationships with candidates in an Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which can also help sort through massive piles of resumes based on keyword relevancy.  

Key Takeaway

A good thing to keep in mind is that candidates talk.

Let’s say your HR team is being less than mindful about active candidates they interview. Perhaps the recruitment process is slower for less desirable candidates, and recruiters don’t make an effort to communicate well. Active candidates will talk to the passive candidates that you’ve headhunted. And if your recruitment process isn’t satisfactory across the board, it will reflect badly on your business.

Running an efficient recruitment process is important regardless of how enthusiastic you are about a given candidate.

Because recruiting isn’t just about finding a new employee, it’s also about building a positive image of your company and allowing candidates to feel that your company depends on their talent.