According to this 2018 Careerbuilder survey, 45 percent of employers currently have jobs they can’t fill because they are not able to find qualified talent. If you’re hiring right now, you need to do everything you can to avoid being part of that dreaded 45 percent. Here are five things you can do right now to make sure the best talent accepts your job offer.
Same Day Hiring
This might sound crazy, but have you considered same day hiring? Or at least, interviewing candidates and being ready to make an offer the same day? 22 percent of candidates in 2012 that participated in a CareerBuilder study said that they already had another offer from a different company when they received a second offer. They declined the second offer, and this study took place when the unemployment rate was double what it is today. The slower moving company lost out on the candidate nearly one third of the time.
Understand your process
Do you know how long it’s taking to interview and hire an average candidate at your company? If it’s the standard four to eight week process, can you review which steps are critical to assessing a candidate, and can the streamlining of your current process start today?
Gather all the stakeholders
The schedules of key stakeholders can oftentimes present the biggest hurdle to getting a candidate on site for interviews. However, can you mandate that interviewing is the number one priority right now, and all schedules need to be open to accommodate candidates? Is having that weekly status update more important than filling that open position? 45% of small businesses report they have been unable to find qualified candidates to fill job openings and 60% of all employers have job openings that stay vacant for twelve weeks or longer, which costs them $800,000 annually in lost productivity and advertising fees (according to The National Federation of Independent Business).
Lead with your best offer
It seems counterintuitive to throw out your best, most generous offer to the candidate on your first attempt, but most candidates are in a position to interview with more than one company right now, and are getting multiple offers. -This is one area when you’re working with an external recruiter that you have a little more of an advantage. The external recruiter has already had the “salary conversation” with the candidate, and should be able to advise you on an offer level that will let you avoid the guessing game of what the candidate will happily accept.
Keep communication open
A survey of 1,200 professionals (candidates & employers) by CareerArc.com indicated 65% of candidates NEVER received any notification whatsoever about their application, and for those who do receive notice, 51% cited it was a month or more to get feedback, likely an auto-generated response. If this sounds like the kind of communication that applicants are getting from your company, a strategic meeting with your HR and IT departments might yield a more personal, frequent, and better crafted communication.
While it might feel like we’re asking you to turn your hiring process upside down, you don’t have to adopt all five suggestions in order to get the best talent to join your team, and stop losing candidates. If you can find a way that works for you and your team to cut time out of the process and move when you meet a great candidate, you’ll increase your chances of being the first employer to make and offer and get the candidate you want nearly 66 percent of the time.