How to Develop an Effective Hiring Process in 2021

Almost a year had passed since the pandemic started. We’ve seen how the crisis has changed the landscape of how we conduct business. As a response to these challenges, companies have developed different techniques and strategies to operate in these extraordinary times. We’ve recognized that all aspects of the business operations are not immune to the effects of the pandemic, including recruitment. HR Managers are going through extra lengths to develop an effective hiring process that fits with the needs of this time.

But with social distancing and health protocols in place, it can be challenging to conduct the usual recruitment process. However, these challenges should not stop you from getting the right candidates to join your company. Here we round up the top 5 tips to create your effective hiring process this 2021.

5 Tips to Hire More Efficiently in 2021

Tailor employee benefits for the needs of the digital economy

Free lunches, a hip lounge, and an office gym used to be cool perks that every employee wanted to have. But when you’re working from home most, if not all, of the time then these cool perks won’t work anymore. The reality is remote work is here to stay. More employees will look for flexible working arrangements having experienced almost a year doing productive work in their own homes. 

As recruitment managers, you need to rethink the benefits you’re pitching to prospective hires. Think of what will help them perform their best and still enjoy a conducive work environment from their homes. Some benefits to kick off your brainstorming include Internet stipend, home office setup allowance, wellness programs, and more.

Assess for remote work readiness

Although remote work is not a pandemic-born concept, the crisis highlighted the need for businesses to operate in a remote setup. Employees were forced to work from their homes and collaborate with their teams remotely. When looking to develop a more effective hiring process this year, put extra focus on assessing remote work readiness. Read our guide on testing for remote work readiness and other tips to avoid the common mistakes recruiters do when hiring remotely.

Highlight soft skills

Working remotely will require effective communication, organization, collaboration, and critical thinking skills. An effective hiring process takes into account specific measures to assess candidates for their soft skills. You need to attract people who are self-organizing, effective communicators, and collaborate well despite geographical distances. Apart from work experience and technical skills, pay close attention to candidates’ resumes and how they conduct themselves on their virtual interviews and inject questions or problem-solving scenarios that will give an insight into their soft skills. 

Go digital but stay personal

Digital recruitment tools will help you develop an effective hiring process. Contrary to what most would think, AI isn’t out to replace recruiters and hiring managers. All these tools will ever do is make hiring more efficient. Digital recruitment tools will help you screen and test candidates much faster and more effectively. You can make more informed decisions on the candidates you want to move forward with.

With AI doing the repetitive and manual parts of the process, recruiters and hiring managers can focus on developing connections with candidates, especially during interviews.

Leverage on technology to get the best hires

With virtual hiring becoming the new norm for recruitment, you need to ensure you have your tech stack in place. An effective hiring process is optimized for digital. There are many recruitment tools you can explore like job aggregators, recruitment tests and assessments, applicant tracking systems, and video conferencing for interviews. 

But before you go full speed ahead on digital tools, you need to review your recruitment process and ensure that it’s optimized for virtual execution.

Kanban for Recruitment

Developing an effective hiring process and optimizing it for virtual setup is more than using recruitment software and online tools. Video and phone interviews will be more common than ever. Recruitment teams should feel more comfortable collaborating with everyone online. But it doesn’t mean that recruitment teams will have to work through chaos. Recruitment teams won’t have to live through not knowing what their teammates are working on or how their candidates are flowing through the process. Working with a virtual recruitment team will be much easier if the system is more visual and accessible to everyone on the team.

Imagine a process where you can see where the candidate sits in your workflow. You can see which candidates are ready for a job offer. You can see what your recruiters are working on at every moment. These are just some of the things that an effective hiring process should have. Fortunately, a Kanban recruitment process will help you achieve it. 

Using a Kanban recruitment process will help keep your hiring standards in check. It will also provide a central place where all your team members can see what’s going on in the pipeline. Here we share some best practices to create an Agile Recruitment process with Kanban. And if you’re ready to map your hiring process, you can use our Hiring Process Kanban Board template. 

Improve Your Hiring Success in 2021 and Beyond

The pandemic didn’t only force companies to go remote. It also showed them the benefits of going remote. Whether you like it or not, remote work will be staying with us even long after the health crisis is over. Technology is empowering us to thrive digitally and it will be a disadvantage if we go against the current. 

Companies must look to future proof operations and going digital has a big piece to play. Applicants will pay closer attention to how a company operates in the digital world and the remote work culture they are cultivating. An effective hiring process will need a strong virtual hiring component. If you want your recruitment team to go to the next level and thrive in the talent game, you need to develop an effective hiring process with a remote-first mindset.