How to Simplify Your Hiring Process For New Employees

When it comes to finding the right employee, it can sometimes feel like the world is against you. There are dozens of different platforms that you can use to post advertisements, and it’s hard to know which ones actually reach the people you want to get. There’s the option of hiring a headhunter to find someone for you, and you can always hope that Jeff’s nephew is as hardworking as Jeff claims he is.

Once the resumes start rolling in, there’s another level of difficulty—yes, you can toss out the ones with spelling mistakes to narrow the pile down. However, it’s hard to know what are simply well-chosen words with no substance behind them and what is a genuine and truthful representation of someone’s skills. Yes, you can call the references—but let’s be honest—all a good reference means is that the person in question has at least one friend that will lie for them. Of course, references can be legit, but there’s no way to know for sure that they are.

Then there’s the interview process. It can be just as awkward for us as it is for the potential employees—and again, it’s impossible to know who is just saying the right things at the right time because they really need a paycheck and who is legitimately in love with the position. At the end of the day, we’ve really only got our gut instincts to go on. Does the person seem honest? Are they likable? As in, do we want to work with them? Do they seem authentically enthusiastic about the position? Do they appear capable?

Yes, the traditional job application process does help eliminate those who can’t show up on time to an interview or iron a shirt or spell grandmother, but that’s a shallow bar, and it’s a system left open for gaming. The majority of us aren’t going to call up a university to check if the degree mentioned is legitimate or present potential employees with tests to see if their qualifications like hardworking and attentive to detail are accurate. How can we even measure these sorts of things?

After selecting the employee, we still have to go through the negotiation process where we discuss money and other elements of the job, hope they say yes, and then deal with the dreaded onboarding process. We need to make sure they’ve had all the health and safety training necessary to protect everyone in the work environment. We also need to train them on their actual job and duties, get all the essential information to HR, deal with contracts, NDRs, and make them feel welcome.

Yes, remote hiring new employees can be a challenge. There are many ways to tackle the multitude of problems associated with it. The following will break down one of these ways—simplification. The goal is to give you all the information you need, as well as some tips and tricks, to help you simplify the process of hiring a new employee.

Get Clear On Your Needs And Expectations

Before you begin searching for that perfect employee, take a moment to get a firm grip on your needs and expectations. Develop a plan that makes sure each of your needs is met throughout the process. This is the point at which you decide whether you want to find a hiring or recruiting manager and whether onboarding software is needed for you to reach your goals.

A Solid Job Posting Can Make Or Break The Hiring Process

Highly qualified people looking for jobs can sometimes be applying for as many as ten to fifty jobs each day. If your posting is vague, unclear, or convoluted, you might miss out on the right candidate because they couldn’t tell by looking at your posting that they were the right person for the job.

Sell Your Company To Potential Employees

Make sure to include in the post a little bit of information about the company and why it’s a great place to work. One of your advertisement goals is to show potential employees that your business is an excellent option for them—this can help draw in the higher-tier of applicants.

Make The Onboarding Process Easy

Once you’ve selected the right candidate and they’ve agreed to take on the position, you need to go through the onboarding process. This is one of the most manageable parts of hiring to simplify as there are tools and platforms designed to help companies out with it. If you’d like to have all the paperwork sorted out digitally before your new hire’s first day, look into some of these programs.

Outline Daily Duties And Expectations With Clarity

You’re also going to want to make it abundantly clear what the position is and what is expected of the person who holds it. Break down the duties clearly and be as specific as possible. This will really help you out in the long-run as there won’t be any deal-breaking surprises for your new hire. A well-written job posting can slow down your turnover rates. This, in turn, can mean that you need to spend less time recruiting and onboarding new hires in the future.

Consider A Freelance Writer For A Punchier Advertisement

You can simplify this process by having the person who is leaving the position write down their daily duties and hiring a freelance writer to make it sound snazzy. Never underestimate the power of a little flair in the voicing of your advertisement. Hiring a professional can also reduce the risk of spelling and grammar mistakes, and many freelance writers have a deep understanding of the ideal formatting for the human eye.

A Simplified Application Process Is Good For You

You want to keep the application process straightforward. State expressly what a potential employee needs to submit, in what format, and on what platform. No matter how many sites you use to advertise the position, all applications should be forwarded to one location. You can include an email address in all your postings or provide a link to the only page from which people can apply. If you have several different locations where you might find people’s resumes and cover letters, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. Everything should come to one place. No exceptions.

Straightforward Application Process Is Great For Applicants

Not only does this make your life easier, but with a simple application process, you can avoid the potential problem of someone deciding the application isn’t worth their time. One huge benefit that many people are discovering at the moment is making applications mobile-friendly. Ensure that it is optimized for mobile phone viewing and tablets if there’s a landing page for applicants. At this point, you should be optimizing every digital part of your business for mobile—more than half of all internet searches are now done with a phone. People are going to be searching for a job on their phones. Keep things simple by allowing them to complete the application on their phone as well.

Don’t Ask For Things You Don’t Need

It should go without saying, but sadly it doesn’t—don’t ask for things that you don’t need in the application process or posting. This will only slow down applicants and slow down your team that will be reading through submissions. It might be cool to have someone with a university degree, but if someone doesn’t need one to do the job, don’t ask for it. Don’t ask for ten years experience when five would do. Don’t ask for a portfolio or collection of case studies if you don’t need this information to make your choice.

You’re limiting yourself and might end up creating bitterness in your new hire when they realize they don’t need that hyper-expensive degree. Again, part of a great hiring process is reducing turnover later on.

But Do Ask For Their Attention

Many employers have developed a nifty tactic to immediately cut down on the number of applications they need to consider. In your posting, you can include a code word at the end of the write-up. Something like: to show us that you’ve read through the entire posting, please include the phrase salsa somewhere in your cover letter. You’d be surprised how many people don’t actually read the whole job posting but submit their materials hastily to anything with a title that seems to suit them and their experience.

Review Applications

Read through the applications you’ve received and look for an alignment between a person’s work experience and skills and the position’s needs. A good cover letter should address, point-by-point, your posting—acknowledging that the candidate has exactly the knowledge you’re looking for or that they have an experience similar enough for them to feel confident that they could adapt quickly. For example, different companies use different task planning software. A candidate might say: I’ve never used Slack before, but I have used Monday or Taskrabbit, which I expect is similar enough for me to pick up pretty quickly. At the minimum, going point-by-point like this will help you know who read your advertisement carefully and who didn’t.

Do A Social Media Search

So few of us take a moment to look up potential employees online, but this can save you so much time and energy in the long-run. Ensure there’s nothing offensive or unprofessional accessible to you as a stranger related to this person online. You’d be surprised what you can find.

Batch Your Interviews

Do your best to batch interviews together so that you lose out on only a day or a few days in your busy schedule. Beyond being an efficient use of your time, you’ll have a better understanding of your options as everyone will be fresh in your mind, which will make for easy comparison.

Be Aware Of Interview Biases

Did you know you’re more likely to give someone a low score if they come after a few candidates that got high scores? This is because you don’t want to have too many high scores—it doesn’t have anything to do with the candidate. Likewise, you are more likely to give earlier interviewees objective assessments and more likely to be subjective with later candidates. We have an inherent bias for the more recent information, so we tend to weigh that more heavily.

Enthusiasm Trumps Experience

This is a slightly controversial point, but we feel it’s important to state. It doesn’t matter if a person is the most-qualified they could be for the position if they don’t seem excited or interested in the opportunity. Just because they have the right experience, it doesn’t mean they’re going to put their all into the work—far from it. However, a highly-enthusiastic employee that doesn’t fully meet the experience requirements will be far more likely to put in the time and effort to figure out how to do something well.

Focus On Employee Satisfaction

One of the biggest things you can do to simplify the hiring process is to make sure that you don’t need to be doing it all the time. If you put time and effort into managing and improving employee satisfaction, your turnover rate will be lower, and you’ll find yourself with fewer people quitting. This will also make your daily work experience better as you’re more likely to be interacting with cheerful people who are happy to be at work than grumbling folk who are doing as little as possible to get by.

The above information should help you simplify the hiring of a new employee. To summarize, a substantial posting is what sets the process off in the right direction—keep it clear and informative. Ensure that all of your applications are sent to the same place and that it’s easy for people to apply, especially from mobile devices. Analyze applications by looking for evidence that the candidate was attentive and read the entire post carefully. Make your choice with someone’s enthusiasm in mind. Once you’ve chosen someone, make the onboarding paperwork as simple as possible and do what you can to keep them happy in their new position.