Competition for local qualified candidates is steep in today’s market. This means jobs are left unfilled longer, increasing your cost-to-hire, straining your existing staff, and negatively impacting morale.
It’s crucial for your business’s overall health to fill jobs quickly with qualified candidates who have the skills and staying power to succeed — but how?
Sometimes, it requires an overhaul of your current hiring process.
How to Get Qualified Candidates
Don’t let the word “overhaul” scare you. Your industry and the labor market is always changing, so evaluate your processes often. Look for ways to improve and stand out in the local market so you can attract the best candidates.
Use these strategies to ensure a quicker fill of your open positions with reliable talent.
Be Proactive
Don’t wait until someone leaves or you get approval to create a new position before looking for great people.
Networking is still a valuable tool for proactive recruiting. Attend community hiring events and high school student career fairs. Partner with vocational schools and community colleges for strategic sponsorships and exposure to fresh talent.
These are all opportunities to educate people about your company and increase brand awareness. Make connections, have conversations, and build relationships with the people you meet along the way. Keep those leads warm so when you need to hire, you have talent primed and ready to interview.
It’s crucial to forecast your long-term hiring plans so that you can be ready when the need arises. Your HR team should have ongoing communication with managers in every department to stay on top of their needs and demands, so that action can occur quickly.
Alternatively, partnering with a local staffing agency who has an established talent pipeline to draw from — like Bonney — can ensure faster access to qualified candidates.
Streamline Your Hiring Process
36 working days.
That’s the average time it takes a company to hire talent.
67% of employed Americans say that job interviews influence their decision to accept a job. If your hiring process drags on for weeks or even months at a time, you’re going to lose good candidates to competitors.
Shortening your time-to-hire allows you to act quickly when a job opens up.
Make sure that every manager who needs to be involved in the hiring process shows up for interviews so you don’t have to bring candidates back in, and make decision meetings non-negotiable.
Treat hiring decisions as a priority, not something managers squeeze into their schedule when they have time.
Working Interviews
Consider implementing a “working interview” as part of your hiring process. This allows you to assess a job candidate by bringing them in to perform work before you officially bring them on board.
The benefits of a working interview include:
- Expediting the candidate selection process, eliminating the chances of losing a candidate to another opportunity
- Allowing you to see how they perform the job’s duties and responsibilities
- Observing how they interact with your other employees
- Shadowing one of your employees to help them learn what good looks like
A working interview does not need to last a whole day or shift. It can be as short as an hour, and held immediately following a formal interview.
Bonney offers the option of a working interview at no charge to clients.
Know Your Market
If you want to hire great people, you’ve got to offer a competitive salary and benefits package.
All of your time and effort spent on the aforementioned strategies will likely be ineffective without also staying financially competitive.
If you don’t know the going rates for the positions you’re hiring for in your geographic area, you run the risk of pricing yourself out of the local market. If you can’t compete on pay, work with your company’s leadership to provide perks that can make up the difference.
Things like bonuses/profit sharing, flexible scheduling, additional PTO, continued education reimbursements, and/or allowing hybrid or fully remote opportunities could make a big difference in attracting talent.
Quick Hire
Our last recommendation for getting qualified candidates is specific to our staffing services.
Most employed workers will not leave a full-time job for a temporary or temp-to-hire assignment, but not every employer is able/unwilling to pay a large, one-time direct-hire fee to staffing agencies.
That’s why we’ve designed a new hiring approach called Quick Hire.
Quick Hire could be right for you if you lose good temporary employees before you’re able to hire them permanently, and finding top performers is a struggle in today’s tough labor market.
Benefits of Quick Hire:
- You’ll still receive Bonney’s strengths in sourcing, interviewing, and screening candidates, plus increase your applicant pool to include people currently working
- You will interview only the most qualified candidates and make a job offer directly
- The employee is more committed to your company because they have a permanent full-time job
- You are billed weekly — billing stops if the employee leaves the position before payments are completed
Is Your Business Prepared to Adjust Its Hiring Process?
There are many simple, cost-effective ways to build a talent pipeline, forecast future needs, streamline and innovate your hiring process, and ensure competitive wages.
If these strategies sound overwhelming, or make you realize you’ll have to overhaul your process from end-to-end, don’t get discouraged. Start small and be strategic.
Another option? Form a staffing partnership with a local staffing agency (like Bonney Staffing) that can help you build a qualified workforce without the effort and cost of recruiting and onboarding.
Bonney has access to tools and resources that deliver a superior customer experience and faster access to qualified candidates. In fact, we’ve been serving employers with reliable talent in the east coast and North Carolina for more than 45 years.
Clients especially love our Bonney Guarantee: If you’re not satisfied within the first 8 hours of the associate’s assignment, we won’t charge you.
Ready to unleash the difference great people can make? Contact us today to learn how we can help you achieve your recruiting and retention goals.
