Given the competitive hiring market and low unemployment rate, most of today’s top talent is already employed. And those who are looking for jobs get taken off the market quickly. In fact, Hireology data found that 33 percent of recent job seekers found new roles within two weeks of starting their job search, and another 26 percent secured new roles between two weeks and one month after starting the search.
If you don’t have an efficient hiring process in place, you’ll risk losing top job seekers to other opportunities – including offers from your competitors. And any time you have open roles, this leads to lost profitability at your business. According to Hireology data, the average business loses $1,000 in gross profit each day a profit-driving role is open.
By partnering with a recruitment CRM platform like Hireology, you can follow a proven hiring process and speed up overall time to hire, helping you secure top talent before the competition. See below for several ways you can streamline hiring steps with a more efficient process.
Incorporate Prescreen Surveys into the Hiring Process
Hireology data found that employers take an average of 10 days to review and respond to job applicants. If you did the same for customer leads, you likely wouldn’t close any business.
A top reason HR and hiring managers often take so long to review applicants is that they spend a lot of time manually reviewing applicants who aren’t a fit. To avoid doing this and instead only focus time and resources on quality candidates, your team can incorporate prescreen surveys into your hiring process. With prescreen surveys, once an application is submitted, the applicant will receive an automated survey that gauges his or her fit for the role. Prescreen surveys can include knockout questions, so job seekers who don’t meet the basic requirements of the role can be eliminated from the process before your team spends time reviewing their applications.
Once complete, prescreen surveys are automatically scored, so only the strongest applicants get moved to the candidate stage of the hiring process. Hireology customers who have incorporated prescreen surveys have seen the average time to review decrease from 10 to three business days.
Communicate with Candidates via Text Messaging
Your team has many options when it comes to communicating with candidates. If you call candidates, you might end up playing phone tag trying to schedule interviews. Or if you email candidates, most people receive so many emails each day that messages can easily get overlooked.
If you face challenges when it comes to candidate communication, an effective ways you can improve is by tapping into text messaging. Hireology data found that users who leverage our candidate text messaging feature see an average response rate of 56 percent. And while 82 percent of text messages are read within five minutes, the average person only reads one in three emails they receive.
In addition to helping you engage candidates sooner than phone calls or emails, text messaging can make your hiring team’s jobs easier and more streamlined. Hireology’s candidate text messaging solution gives you the option to create and save templates, so you don’t have to start from scratch each time you send a text. Your team can also send mass text messages using dynamic fields, saving your team time if you need to reach out to several candidates with the same message at once. And all text messages are sent from the Hireology platform, helping you centralize communication, rather than having your hiring managers text from their personal phones.
Automate Background and Reference Checks
Even if a candidate stands out following a prescreen survey and interviews, it’s critical to verify his or her background and work experience before extending an offer – as your business needs responsible and trustworthy employees to offer top-notch customer service and drive revenue.
If any red flags show up on a background check – such as a suspended driver’s license for a candidate applying to a role that requires driving – you can move forward with another candidate who has a clean record. On the other hand, a clean background check report will provide peace of mind that each prospective employee has a history free from negligence or other activities that may put your customers – and business – at risk.
Background checks can be automated with the right hiring process in place. Candidates submit the required information and the rest of the process is taken care of automatically. Hireology’s platform helps you select the required background checks, obtains candidate authorization, and verifies results. It also emails candidates if they need to take any action, and you’ll be notified as well to cut down on manual task management. This results in accurate and timely turnaround of applicant screening results and eliminates errors.
Another verification step than can be automated is reference checks. Many employers might consider skipping this step because it can be frustrating and time consuming. With automated reference checks, candidates provide their reference contact information and surveys are automatically sent to each contact, saving time that would have otherwise been spent scheduling and completing reference calls.
Each day you decrease your time to hire, you can save up to $1,000 a day in gross profit. Not only can speeding up your hiring time help you secure top talent and drive profit, but it can also help you keep candidates engaged – rather than making them wait around between hiring steps. For additional tips on keeping candidates excited about joining your team throughout the hiring process, download our resource, “The Hireology Candidate Engagement Playbook,” below.
