Business leaders agree that proper hiring is crucial in meeting their overall mission and bottom line. To find good fits for their organizations, employers must develop solid approaches to hiring as well as tactics for adapting to changing labor markets. Here are several hiring practices that will help your organization achieve strong results in attracting and keeping great employees:
- Focus on your company mission. Create job descriptions that list essential functions and required knowledge, skills, and abilities to support that mission. Draft job postings that are based on those qualities and accept only those candidates who possess them.
- Develop a standard hiring process. Having an organized and regular approach to hiring is critical. This not only provides your team with a trackable plan with steps, milestones, and structure, but it helps maintain compliance with state and federal labor laws, and there are many. A typical hiring process might include job posting, resume review, phone screening, formal employment application, application review and final selection, reference checks, on-site or virtual interview(s), panel interviews with multiple managers, hiring discussions and decision-making, and of course the employment offer. Note that the hiring process can vary depending on the type of position you’re hiring for, e.g. executive, manager, or entry-level.
- Background check and probationary period. If the job offer is contingent upon a successful background check, ensure that is begun as soon as the candidate accepts the offer. Consider enforcing a probationary period, whereby expectations are set, and performance is reviewed at a certain milestone, e.g. 90 days. At this point, a formal review should be conducted by the supervisor, and a decision made about whether to continue employment at that time.
As changing national and regional economies might dictate, the labor market creates hiring challenges for employers. True to the principle of supply and demand, a hiring approach that might work with a surplus of job seekers and few job openings will generally not work with an abundance of jobs yet few workers. Therefore, business leaders are wise to adapt their standard hiring processes in each of the following scenarios:
Tight Labor Market. Here, low unemployment means that people are working and making good money. Because many employers are competing for a limited pool of talent, hiring in this market requires quicker action by the hiring team, and generally higher starting wages, benefits, and all the bells & whistles.
Loose Labor Market. When jobs are few and the candidate pool is large, employers are in a good position to be more selective. Here, hiring becomes more discretionary and greater attention can be paid to candidate selection, interviews, and reference checks.
Effective hiring requires planning, resources, time, and money, but provides a consistently high return on your investment. One of the best ways to ensure sustainability of your workforce is to meet your organization’s hiring needs in any labor market. Engage with your HR professionals today to begin planning for your future workforce needs.
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