As we move past the Coronavirus pandemic, big changes are coming to the task of acquiring talent for your business. The country has gone from enjoying the lowest unemployment rates in history to near-Depression statistics of people out of work. The economic shutdown left us with more than 33.5 million people out of work. As the business world comes out of hibernation, those folks are anxious to get back to work. Are you prepared to really compete for the best and brightest of these eager applicants?
Is your vetting process going to help you or hinder you?
The Traditional Hiring Process Won’t Work
Before the pandemic hit us, business was booming and fewer employees than ever were looking for work. This isn’t the case anymore, and excellent talent has been at rest, unemployed, for several months in many cases. That means your applicants are anxious to get back into the workplace, which changes things dramatically for hiring managers. Companies that adapt to this changing environment will be big winners, with a highly positive future. Those that don’t change with the times will be huge losers, with an unacceptably negative future.
Talent is going to gravitate to employers that offer a refreshingly positive experience from start to finish of the hiring process. People want to get on with their lives, getting back to work quickly but with companies that show the same urgency to complete the hiring process as they are. Those employers that continue to follow traditional hiring processes, taking weeks to hire people, will be the big losers here.
Speed of Hiring Will Be Crucial
As businesses come out of the COVID-19 hibernation, employee recall won’t be immediate or all at once. Rehiring and recall will be a gradual process, so what are those highly qualified candidates going to do in the meantime? They’re out of work, ready to get back into the labor force, and see little to lose by seeking new employment opportunities. There will be renewed competition between employers for talent. Yes, there will be lots of talent available, but there will also be an unprecedented number of employers offering jobs.
Those employers who can identify, impress, process, and hire employees quickly will be the winners. The talent acquisition process needs to be reinvented to attract, interview, and hire these workers quickly and efficiently.
The Modern Era of Talent Acquisition
The folks you’re trying to entice into working for you expect a modern hiring experience. The company that interviews candidates first, and then asks for their resumes, is on the right track. Applicants visit the position listing, expecting to run into an obstacle course of application forms, resume uploads, and then a lengthy waiting period.
Instead, the business adapting to the modern era of hiring greets candidates with a short video thanking them for their interest. The video outlines the hiring process, which puts the human interaction, the interview, first. Applicants discover a line of questioning that allows them to show off and shine, a real interview instead of a host of forms, and then more short videos that introduce the candidates to the position and corporate culture.
It’s only at the end of the process that candidates are invited to provide their resumes, references, and fill out the applicant forms. They are offered a final interview, or they’re informed that the fit just isn’t there. Suggestions for other openings and other forms of immediate feedback let the candidates know where they stand among the competition.
What’s Wrong with Asking for Resumes?
You might be wondering why this sudden emphasis on waiting until the end of the hiring process to ask for a resume. Don’t resumes let us know how qualified our candidates really are? The answer is yes and no—a resume will tell you a candidate’s experience and expertise, but it won’t tell you anything about the potential employee who passes on submitting their application because the process is too arduous.
For many people, the resume is viewed as a frustrating rite of passage. It’s the gatekeeper to the interview, where the candidate can really stand out from the crowd. Many people have heard the horror stories of HR representatives flipping through resumes, spending no more than five seconds or so on each one. They’ve tried to fit a lifetime’s worth of experience into two pages, guessing at the right content and keywords. Their reward is nil, because that resume can end up in the circular file in seconds.
Even worse, it can take weeks for hiring personnel to wade through a stack of resumes, while the candidate cools his or her heels waiting for someone to reach out to them. With the glut of potential employees anxiously awaiting that precious interview, expecting people to wait hoping that you’ll pick their resume (like picking a needle out of a haystack) is unrealistic.
Interview First, Then Vet Your Shortlist
Instead of collecting several forests worth of resumes, the smart employer is going to take the time to automate the initial interview first and collect paperwork second. The winning talent acquisition specialist will identify top candidates through the automated interview process, then confirm their qualifications, not the other way around.
This more positive, more expedient process will be a refreshing change of pace to those industry geniuses looking to get back into the office, sales floor, or factory. By compressing the six-week hiring process into an hour, using automated interviews followed by in-person follow-ups where warranted, your candidates will be more eager to work for you than ever before. Even better, by shortening the hiring process, your business can get back to making money faster and easier than ever, rather than waiting around for staffing levels to catch up with business needs.
The Promised Land of Hiring
In the future state, employers who fail to adopt new technology to shorten their hiring cycle will have a very difficult time, not so much in terms of finding good talent, but in vetting applicants and making offers fast enough to capture top performers and achieve full staffing. If a business sticks to its old, clunky start, stop, and restart processes, they will find that they simply cannot fill openings in a timely manner. Those companies will fail to enhance their workforce capabilities by being unable to hire the top performers in the industry.
In contrast, the employer who makes it easy for star applicants to apply and get hired will be better able to maintain their workforce. These employers will be able to take advantage of the shift in the labor market and quickly capture the new talent they need. These businesses will thrive in the post-pandemic future state of the economy. The ones who lag behind and stick to what they think of as “tried and true” hiring processes will be the biggest losers, falling behind in an environment that favors a streamlined hiring process with immediate feedback and next steps.
If you’re interested in speeding up your hiring process without reducing the quality of candidates, check out HRMC Acclaim℠.
HRMC Acclaim sm works well, really well. Using various technologies, HRMC has been doing this for 27 years, automatically interviewing and processing many millions of candidates for all kinds of positions at all levels of an organization. We’re here to help you too.
Just send an email to ron.selewach@hrmc.com or give me a call at 800-749-4960 x25
Ron Selewach
CEO/Founder
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