Attention recruiters: In today’s ultra-competitive job market, the pressure to stand out from the competition, attract new talent, and keep your pipelines rich with active and passive job seekers—both for open positions today and emerging positions tomorrow—is greater than ever before.
In fact, the pressure to meet your recruiting team’s key performance metrics and ensure that your company’s staffing needs are well met may feel so intense that you may extend yourself to the point where mistakes become more common—not a good place to be!
The dangers of making recruiting mistakes could be significant to your organization—in today’s era of corporate transparency, word regarding a flawed recruiting experience could spread fast and repel talented job seekers from taking your organization seriously when making employment decisions.
Here’s the bottom line—there’s simply too much at stake and on the line, both for your team and your company, to leave recruiting mistakes and errors to chance. The following 3 common recruiting mistakes should be avoided at all costs.
3 recruiting mistakes to avoid
Not making the process easy and streamlined
We’ve all had this experience before—we applied for a job at a company whose recruiting and hiring procedures were more like navigating through a maze without a map. Every step of the process was mired in confusion, from a job posting with unclear application directions to a corporate hiring website or portal that was difficult to navigate, hopelessly clunky, and outdated—not to be outdone by unclear follow-up procedures after interviewing. Did you leave the process with a good impression of the organization? We didn’t think so, and we all know the lasting power of first impressions. Make sure your company’s procedures for recruiting and onboarding new talent is as simple and clear as possible—not only will potential employees appreciate it, you’ll reduce the volume of questions you’ll get from candidates, making your life easier.
Expediting processes
When the heat is on and you and your team have gotten the mandate to recruit and onboard someone for a key position ASAP, you may feel the need to “expedite” your typical processes in an effort to find someone fast. This is almost always a bad move—cutting out key steps from your recruitment process may mean than your new hire wasn’t properly and thoroughly vetted (you really don’t want to discover serious issues with a new hire that you should have uncovered during the hiring process). You may also overlook strong candidates. When you’re in a rush and the pressure to deliver is strong, resist the urge to cut corners—you’ll be glad you didn’t in the long run.
Not keeping in contact
When it comes to recruiting new candidates, thorough and consistent communication—at every step of the process—is absolutely mission critical if you want to keep candidates engaged and informed. Don’t forget that recruiters are often the first face of the companies they represent, and giving candidates the impression that your company is non-communicative may leave potential recruits with a lasting vibe that your team is disorganized, disinterested, and unhelpful—not a good look.
To compound the problem, failing to keep candidates informed and updated about current processes and next steps as they move through each part of the hiring process may lead to an avalanche of emails and phone calls from confused candidates who are tired of hearing crickets while waiting to hear what’s next. If you’ve ever been on the other side of the hiring coin and experienced poor communication while applying for a job, you know how frustrating it can be—don’t do it now that you’re on the other side.
Do the 3 recruiting mistakes mentioned here sound familiar? If so, then recognize the errors, diagnose the problems, and take active steps to fix the issues!