5 Ways to Immediately Improve Hiring Outcomes

Teamwork makes the dream work—that’s what they say. It’s difficult, however, to make the dream work and the teamwork during the hiring process when HR leaders, recruiters, and hiring managers are all on different pages with conflicting goals. 

The result of a disconnected hiring team? A clunky, inefficient, unpredictable recruiting program that makes top candidates walk away—leads to poor hiring decisions which hurt the business in the long run. 

Companies that want to make better hires need to create a streamlined, structured, positive experience for candidates that showcases the company and its culture in a positive light. And that’s only possible when HR, talent acquisition, and hiring managers are working together on a regular basis. 

Provide Culture Training 

The first step to getting everyone on the same page is to provide training to recruiters, hiring managers, and interviewers that helps them all speak the same language when it comes to company culture—including what to highlight and what to avoid. After all, 88% of job seekers say a healthy workplace culture is vital for their success. 

HR should already have a good idea of what the company’s employer brand looks like and how to talk about it, and they should help hiring personnel learn that messaging, too, in order to present a united front. 

Develop Clear, Shared Hiring Goals

Often, recruiters will have different goals from hiring managers. For recruiters, it might just be about pipeline (increasing the number of qualified candidates who make it past the initial stage of recruiting), while interviewers might care more about thoroughly vetting a good culture fit with specific leadership skills. 

In order to avoid conflict over hiring decisions, recruiters and hiring teams should get aligned on hiring criteria, processes, timelines, and feedback ahead of the search. Not only will proactive alignment streamline decision-making, but it will also help the company show up as a true team when interacting with the candidate, improving brand and culture perception. 

Create Designated Channels for Communication

Recruiting and hiring cycles demand constant communication between HR, recruiters, and hiring managers to keep everything organized and on track. As part of that initial planning and alignment, hiring teams should agree on the appropriate channels for providing candidate feedback versus tracking candidate touchpoints versus logging communications, and so on. 

Some companies, for example, opt to funnel interview feedback through their applicant tracking system (or other recruiting technology), while others do candidate reviews live via video calls. HR and recruiters should also make sure there’s a more casual line of communication open via email or chat so hiring managers and interviewers can ask questions and resolve issues as quickly as possible during the process. 

Use the Right Tech Stack 

On that note, things can get messy with all the various tasks completed, data collected, and documentation needed during the hiring process. Thankfully, today, there are some pretty sophisticated recruiting, hiring, and screening tools designed to keep everything organized and keep everyone (internal employees and external candidates) on track and on the same page. 

Be sure to build an HR tech stack covering the hiring process from beginning to end (from first touch to interviews to background screening to onboarding). Not only does good tech encourage alignment amongst the hiring team—offering one source of truth that everyone is operating from—but it can also provide key data and analytics that the team can learn from together after a successful (or failed) hiring process. 

Recognize and Share Successes

Hiring the right person is a difficult job that requires immense coordination, planning, and time. Often, hiring managers and their interview panels are evaluating candidates on top of their regular job duties and recruiters are juggling multiple searches at once. It’s heroic work that deserves some recognition.  

Employee recognition is about highlighting high-performing individuals and giving positive feedback based on results or performance when an employee does something that drives key company goals (in this case, improves hiring outcomes or locks in a strategic hire). It can come as a formal, public dedication, like an award or a bonus. Or it can come in a more informal, private way, like a verbal thank you from an HR manager or a handwritten note from a C-suite executive. 

Ninety-seven percent of employees say that being recognized motivates them to do their best work, meaning that acknowledging hiring team members that drove a successful hiring outcome could cultivate a positive feedback mechanism that improves hiring decisions over time. 

For more ways to drive collaboration among HR, talent acquisition, and hiring managers to improve hiring outcomes, check out this week’s episode of America Back to Work. 

We sat down with Nancy D’Onofrio, a talent expert with fifteen years of experience helping companies build a successful talent acquisition function, to get her expert tips for streamlining the hiring process in the context of the current labor market. Click here to watch or listen to the episode––and be sure to subscribe to America Back to Work while you’re there so you never miss another expert update. 

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