Recruitment process can take months, but with this tip to speed up, your business can save a fortune and focus more on the candidates’ quality.

 

1, Be clear about the requirements

Some might have mistaken that the recruitment process starts when the job opening is posted on recruiting platforms. But in fact, it dated way back to when you had the first thought of hiring new personnel for one particular position.

Normally, for the employer part, the recruitment process involves the recruiter and the tech manager. The ideal procedure would be for the tech manager to provide the recruiter with crystal clear requirements of the job, and then let the recruiter handle the hiring.

 

That is just the case of the “ideal” procedure, but more often than not, these requirements have either an unrealistic description of what the job should entail or vague notes of what soft and technical skills are needed.

The answer to this can be the comprehensive checklist of what should be included in a job description. This should clearly note out the technical skillsets, programming language, soft skills required within the job, hence better equipping the recruiter with the information needed to find the candidates that can fulfill these expectations.

To speed up the recruitment process, the prioritized kill sets should be clearly indicated so that the recruiter can sort out the most suitable candidates for further interview rounds.

Salary is also a very important yet subtle matter that both the recruiter and the tech manager have to figure out. It is often the case that the tech manager wants more of the candidate than the salary budget can afford. Facing this problem, it is a must for you to choose whether you should hire for experience, which, of course, can raise the salary range, or you should hire for good learning and teamwork skills. After settling the priorities for one position, you can proceed with the recruitment process without stumbling on any inconsistencies of the tech team and recruitment team.

 

2, Use an application form with ‘knock-out’ questions

Prior to any direct interview with the HR manager/Technical manager, one can save a great deal of time sorting out suitable candidates with an array of application forms, especially those with “knock-out” questions.

By saying “knock-out” question, we want to refer to the vital questions that can generate answers which later on will act as the deciding factor whether you should hire these candidates or not.

These questions can be categorized into three types:

• Questions about legal, logistics and basic function matter: These should mention the candidates’ attitude towards working overtime, their willingness to relocate and other legal matters.
• Questions about qualifications & competency: Simple as it sounds, all you have to do is to check the authenticity of the qualifications provided. Sometimes, to broaden the range of candidates for one job opening, you may want to stay open to the qualifications of the candidates. It’s possible for a candidate to not have a university degree, but since it’s technology-related, the things that need to be carefully considered is the certificates and qualifications of technical courses.
• Questions about culture preference: Culture fit is one important factor. The work culture preference of the candidate should resonate with that of the company, hence boosting work morale and productivity.

 

3, Recruitment Process Optimization

The recruitment process is often deemed the trivial feature of the HR department, despite the fact that this process is crucial for one organization to find the right fit within a fixed time frame. In the case of IT industry, the role of the human resources department, especially the talent recruitment division, has gradually gained its credit, under the circumstance of talent shortage in recent years.

“With a comprehensive recruitment process in hand, qualified candidates, no matter they choose to go with the job offer or not, can help you form the enriched talent pool full of professionals and experts in this tight job market.

This well-crafted talent pool acts as a tool that can minimize time involved in the recruitment process.

The perspective of a comprehensive recruitment process varies within industries and even companies, but the most crucial features remain:

• Clarification of job requirements from tech managers
• Well-devised Job DescriptionsTalent Search on multiple channels
• Screening and shortlistingInterviewing
• Evaluation of Employment
• Job Offering

By creating an efficient recruiting process following these steps, you not only facilitate a consistent application of recruitment to ensure stability in staff proficiency but also streamline the staff culture in accordance with your visions.

No candidate would want to engage in a lengthy and dragging recruitment process. To make it as convenient for candidates as possible, you can consider shortening the recruitment process by following these tips:

• Keep the process short. Instead of dragging the candidates into a ten-day assessment, the recruiter can announce the interview results after two to three workdays. This requires a systematic operation among involved parties in the process.
• Devise a tight and optimal schedule for departments to follow. With a tight schedule, the time spent on recruiting is well-managed. Every department involved is a cog in the machine that can work effectively with no hiccups.
• Resort to the recruiting agency. With the help of an agency, all you have to prepare is the job descriptions with specific requirements on the job, no matter they are technical or soft-skill-related.

 

4, Invest In Your Interview Check List

Recruitment is a complicated process that requires the recruiter to know not only about the on-job knowledge but also the soft skills critical for the job.

To make sure your candidate can meet up all the requirements, prepare an interview checklist. For different jobs, there have to be different checklists. For example, checklist of a tester would be different from that of a developer. While an interview checklist for a developer must entail programming language, project portfolio, Github account, etc., the checklist for test engineers must include domain experiences, testing tools, test environments and so on.

Another aspect many recruiters and tech managers want to get to understand about their candidates is their work attitude. The best way to do this is to place some work scenarios in which conflicts arise. Through the way candidates would handle the situation, you can grasp the idea of their behaviors and work attitude.

Please be noted that the questions to determine work attitude should resonate with your business’ culture. This can help the candidates imagine the upcoming work environment that they might work with.

 

5, Build a comprehensive training program

Perhaps the IT training is the most effective option for upskilling IT staff.

Internal training for IT staff has always the win-win advantages for both the employees and employers. For business owners, by conducting training programs, the technical managers now can address the skill gap that their employees are missing, hence being able to find the solutions for a more well-rounded team.

The IT world is evolving with unprecedented speed, which in turn sets up high demands for the IT worker to catch up with the technologies. Any employer that can provide them with intensive training, as well as a learning-encouraging environment will have a higher employee retention rate. Under the form of tuition reimbursement, the nurturing and training programs go quite a long way, but it will eventually sow a sense of loyalty in your employees, which is a very good sign for retaining talents.

Conducting training programs may be cumbersome and costly for long-term operations, leading to business hesitance towards this approach. To reduce the cost burden over this, businesses can consider sharing the training cost with employees. In exchange for an inclusive and comprehensive training program, many tech engineers, no matter junior or senior, are willing to pay a small fee to gain more on their knowledge.