Do You have a Recruitment Strategy to Hire Top Talent?

Receiving applications, scanning through CVs and separating the best from the rest, interview rounds and background verification are the obvious and prevalent methods of recruitment processes across companies. But the process is not as simple as it seems. Unless organizations build a strategy for hiring the best talent, they cannot succeed. 

For example, Microsoft’s careers website is visited by 9 million job searchers and draws about 2 million applications each year. From this and other sources, the organization manages to hire the best talent. How does such a large company manage to find the best employees? 

Chuck Edward, Microsoft’s head of global talent acquisition says, “Our leaders and hiring managers are hungry to bring in talent. If employees’ skills match the labour market and our customer base, we are all going to win.” Microsoft has some key factors included in their recruiting process. 

Look for potential, not experience

Assessing if a candidate has potential to grow and develop in the career path could begin through interviews. However, a lot of this knowledge can be gathered from the past employment records of the employee, through reference checks and database checks.

Bring in diversity

Diversity is a key factor in building effective teams. A diverse team is more creative, more successful, more innovation and ranks higher in performance compared to teams that lack diversity. In order to bring in diversity, organizations hire international candidates too. It is important that in the process of hiring international candidates, thorough background checks and international database checks are done. This will assure quality resources. 

Create an attractive organizational culture

The new generation of professionals looks for more than just a good pay package. They want to feel good about working at a company. Organizational culture, values, purpose and goals are as important when they consider applying for a new job. By following a practice of professional reference verification and employment verification, a recruiter can assess whether or not a particular candidate would fit the company and the job profile.

Stephen R Covey, vice chairman of Franklin Covey Co., leadership authority and organizational consultant, has five guidelines to hiring strategically-

Create a long-term strategic plan for the organization 

Recruiting strategically is difficult in the absence of a clear goal and values of an organization. In today’s work environment where things change at a rapid pace, it is important for organizations to define a clear purpose and direction. It is equally important for managers and HR departments to follow this direction in the process of recruiting top talent.

Develop strategic criteria for each job

Define the role and responsibilities of the position by considering the needs of the organization, both immediate and future. Then outline the prerequisites – qualifications, skills and experience. Have clarity about how the particular position will help the organization achieve its objectives. 

Examine alternatives

With the help of the strategic criteria, assess job seekers from different people’s perspectives. Try to know more about patterns in the candidates’ past career and work trends. Have they changed jobs successfully, the reason for their move and other clues. This information can be collected with the help of a background check. This will lead you to gauge where and how the candidate’s abilities and experience could be utilized in your organization.

Be open and relaxed with candidates 

It is important that recruiters share a lot of important information about the company, its values, its culture, its ethics, expectations, purpose and goals of the organization with the candidates. It is also important to seek the perspectives of other members of the team before hiring. Take time and give the candidate time to make a decision. 

Always have a pre-decided trial or probation period

This is a period, which is typically three months to six months for both, the recruiter and the employee to assess their fit with each other. This could also be a time for the employee and the employer to put forward their thoughts, challenges and expectations. Either remedy the situation or move on and look for another candidate.

These are obvious and simple measures to include in your hiring strategy, yet most organizations fail to follow these practices. Lack of time, the urgency to fill vacancies, complacency and the lack of expertise are some reasons that organizations fail to follow these steps. However, some of these steps can be outsourced to agencies that conduct background verification of candidates from across the country and the world. A background verification agency can help in identifying genuine employees for the company. Factsuite provides customized solutions that align with the hiring strategies of organizations. Each component of the candidate background screening service provided by Factsuite addresses various avenues of risk related to specific positions. 

Research reference:

Microsoft: https://www.fastcompany.com/40537738/im-microsofts-head-of-talent-heres-how-to-get-hired

Stephen R Covey: https://www.livemint.com/Consumer/wjz4WHsKXoGZnc9OrnsUKO/Hiring-Guidelines--The-importance-of-strategic-recruiting.html