Hiring? Forget Your Calendar; Grab a Stopwatch Instead

May 1, 2017 in HR Best Practices

 

 

Tick, tock.

Every day that national account manager position goes unfilled hurts your bottom line.

Tick, tock.

Every day that promising quality assurance management candidate waits to hear back from you is another day a competitor has to poach him.

Tick, tock.

Every day that plant manager position remains vacant slows your manufacturing operations down – and prolongs the stress on your other employees.

In a full employment economy, effective hiring requires precision and speed.

Hire slow, and you’ll lose opportunities, talent and profits. Can your food & beverage organization afford that? Prevent candidate drop-off and hire the right professionals, faster, with these tactics:

Get rid of time-wasters.

Is your recruiting process costing you talent? Examine every step to identify culprits which slow progress and undermine effectiveness:

  • Get specific in job postings. Catch-all postings that merely list a handful of responsibilities and requirements are easy to create. In the long run, however, you may just wind up with a glut of unqualified applicants bogging you down. What’s more, humdrum job listings won’t catch the eye of discriminating high-performers. Get specific about whom you need, what you have to offer, and why your opportunity is unique.
  • Never “post and pray.” Instead of just blasting your posting all over the internet, track the sources that yield the best candidates. Drop the boards that yield volume, but not quality. Identify a recruiting firm that specializes in your industry and can quickly recommend the best talent working in your market.
  • Eliminate unnecessary interviews. Quality, not quantity, matters in interviewing. If your food & beverage organization typically has more than three interviews, look for ways to eliminate redundancy. Panel interviews are a great way to obtain the information you need without dragging out the interview phase. If you interview a great candidate, don’t wait another week or two to turn up potential comparable talent.  Make your hiring decision based on whether or not this candidate can be successful at your company in the role.

Accelerate timetables.

Where in your recruiting process do you experience the most candidate drop-off? When do your processes stall? Where does communication with candidates break down? The more time you spend sourcing, interviewing and vetting applicants, the greater your chances are of losing the exceptional ones. Look for ways to maintain momentum and prevent candidate drop-off:

  • Leverage technology to expedite candidate intake and reduce initial response time to under 48 hours.
  • Specify potential interview dates and a realistic start date with your hiring manager as soon as a new job search opens. Consider upcoming vacations, business trips, audits or budgets that dictate a different timeline than either of you expected. (If you’re unsure about available talent, a Kinsa Account Manager can help guide you.)
  • Use phone or video interviews for initial screening.
  • Schedule intelligently, combining multiple interviews into a single event.
  • Limit interviewers to key decision makers or stakeholders (rather than everyone who may come in contact with the new hire once on board).

Once you eliminate time-wasting activities and bottlenecks, you’ll have more time to spend on high-value recruiting activities that can dramatically improve your results.

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Protect What’s Yours! Prevent Candidate Drop-off and Poaching

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Experts in national executive food & beverage recruiting, our team has the resources, proven process and talent network to make every search shorter – and more successful. There’s an ideal out there; let Kinsa help you find it.