An organised and thorough hiring process can help you to attract a good selection of applicants and make the right decision when it comes to recruiting your next employee. Here are just a few improvements that you could consider making to your hiring process. 

Advertise on Multiple Platforms

When advertising a vacancy, most employers shove an ad on Indeed and are then done with it. Online job boards like Indeed can be effective at attracting applicants, but they shouldn’t be your only form of advertisement – advertising elsewhere will help you to gather a much bigger range of applicants. Other places to advertise online include social media and via PPC ads on search engines. As for real-world advertising, there are countless places in which you can post and advert. As well as posting an ad outside your shop/office, consider printing off flyers to pin to public noticeboards and consider getting an ad published in your local newspaper. Try to target specific locations and platforms used by your ideal applicant.

Use Software to Keep Track of Applications

To help organise all the applications you’re getting, it could be worth using an applicant tracking system. This will prevent you from overlooking an application and will help you to reply to applications in an organised manner. There are multiple types of software out there to use for this purpose.

Consider Using a Recruitment Agency

Paying a recruitment agency to help find applicants could be worthwhile. Such agencies can help actively scout for talent, approaching the best candidates rather than letting these candidates come to them. Whilst you can use a local general recruitment agency, more niche companies may want to use a specialist recruiter related to their industry. There are recruitment agencies that specialise in certain industries such as IT, construction and finance – they may have more knowledge of where to look to attract your key applicant.

Allow Time for Reading Applications and Conducting Interviews

Many employers rush the application process – you may currently be understaffed and you may be juggling lots of tasks, leaving you little time to focus on recruitment. However, it’s vital that you make time for this application process – rushing it could result in making a hasty decision and taking on the wrong applicant. Allow time to read through every application and consider sparing an entire day for conducting interviews.

Consider Offering a Trial Shift/Make Your Interview Hands-On

Interviews aren’t always good at judging someone’s competence. Consider making your application process more hands-on in order to truly test each applicant’s ability. Many companies hold a trial shift, which allows them to assess how well an applicant gets on in your company environment before making the decision to hire them permanently. You do need to pay employees for trial shifts, so bear this in mind. Another option could be test their knowledge or skills during the interview with various activities. You could try to see how well they work under pressure or implement an activity to test their creativity or problem solving skills.