Why does the new hire experience matter? If you are asking yourself this, think back to the last time you started at a company and how it set your expectations for what working there would be like. Were you made aware of your expectations? Did you understand what you needed to do, both from a paperwork and also to get up to speed in the new position? And how did your interactions with your team affect your success in the early days of the new job?
And, even if you had a good experience, there is a good chance you’ve also had a bad one, so don’t forget to think about that, too, and how it may have set the stage quite early for your decision to move on.
Some of the common frustrations of new hires when they come into the work space stem around a few areas: too much paperwork, nothing is ready, and everyone is too busy to help them. There are solutions you can put in place in both cases to alleviate these concerns and make the experience positive for everyone.
Too much paperwork
There are so many forms a new hire has to complete, it is not uncommon to spend a significant amount of time with HR or alone at their desk on their first day filling them out – and this isn’t fun for anyone. Where ever possible, you should make these forms available for the new hire to complete before their first day on the job – an online onboarding portal is the perfect place to capture this information. Definitely make sure to include government forms, employee manual, and code of conduct, but also make sure that this new hire portal is welcoming to new employees by sharing a written message or welcome video.
Nothing is ready
Part of making the new hire feel welcome is having things ready for them when they get there. Having a desk is great (especially if that desk is already assembled for them), but there are many other things – such as laptop, phone, email, and office supplies – that should be ready for them day one. This can be done quite easily by letting others know ahead of time that the new hire is joining. Once you’ve had that offer accepted and are ready to move forward it is time to let others know that your new hire is coming so there is no delay and no sitting twiddling thumbs on their first day.
Everyone is too busy to help
While it can be hard to have everyone stop what they are doing and help the new hire get adjusted, you should have at least a few people in their corner to help them succeed. At a minimum, HR and their manager need to make an effort to meet with them their first few days – HR to wrap up any outstanding paperwork and answer questions, and their manager to introduce them to their new team and make sure they know and have what they need to perform their job duties. But you should consider adding a third person to this mix – a buddy or mentor is a great way to build a relationship between employees and make sure they have a good example to follow. This buddy can be involved earlier than the first day, too, by including them in interviews and welcome aboard messaging. They will also be a great resource for the new hire (especially if the manager is busy as is often the case) as a helper, keeper of knowledge, and coach in special skills needed for the job.
New hires and their experience matter, so make sure you take the above into account to plan for success. Engage the team and mentors in a new hire’s success and work together to win for both the new hire and the team. To get more insights watch our webinar: Enhancing Onboarding for Shorter Time to Productivity
For some companies and for some types of jobs, it is not uncommon that as soon as a job is posted online, applications come flooding in. But what about the times when that isn’t the case? Or when you need a highly specialized hire that may not be looking for a job at this time? This is a perfect opportunity to take a look at other options, and one great resource to pursue is working with external recruiters or recruiting agencies.
LinkedIn has a great list of how staffing firms can help you excel and some of the advantages of working with them. Some of the biggest reasons that companies start working with recruitment agencies include:
When the types of applicants they want are in high-demand and probably already in a job (and possibly not looking at this time).
When they have a hard to fill job that is not getting enough qualified applicants through their normal channels.
When they have already looked on job boards and not located resumes that fit their requirements.
When their company has grown significantly and the current team is overwhelmed with the number of job openings and the time required to fill them.
When you make the move to work with recruiting agencies, there are some considerations you will need to keep in mind in regards to the terms of your agreement as well as the responsibilities and expectations of the external recruiter.
What payments terms does the recruiting agency have? In most cases, this will be based on the hires annual salary and paid after the employee is on the job for a certain number of days. For example, you might end up paying out 20% of the employee’s annual salary to the recruiter after the new hire has been with the company 90 days.
What is the recruiter’s warranty period? Many will offer you a timeframe during which, if the hire doesn’t work out of leaves, they will find you a replacement hire at no cost.
What additional services will the vendor complete for you? Make sure that you work with an agency who, at a minimum, will pre-screen and meet every candidate that they send your way and that they will verify the qualifications before sending to you. Also, depending on the recruiter’s field and specialty, some may offer additional services such as skills testing, background checking, drug screening, etc.
Keep in mind that these things can be negotiated – especially if you are making multiple hires through the same agency. Make sure you discuss and come to agreement on the terms and price. Also, make sure you shop around and thoroughly review each recruiting agency you use. You may end up sending out to multiple agencies, but sometimes you can get competitive pricing if you work exclusively with a single vendor.
Additionally, there are some terms and scenarios you might want to review with a recruiting agency that may or may not be a part of their original agreement.
Do they offer a lock-out period? This would be a time during which the recruiter cannot place your candidate in another position at a different company, necessitating you filling the position again.
At what point do you have to pay for the resume? For example, what if the recruiter sends you a resume for someone that already applied through your website? Or what if the same resume is submitted by multiple recruiters? Make sure this is clearly defined and easy to document.
What happens if the recruiter sends unqualified candidates? This doesn’t seem to be the norm, but it can happen, so make sure you have open lines of communication to address this situation quickly.
With all of this in mind, our last piece of advice is to make sure that everything about the relationship and the resumes you receive and hire is well documented. Take steps to ensure you are able to find and report on the information about the resumes that have been sent your way. Utilizing tools such as applicant tracking solutions and vendor management systems can help ease some of the burden of tracking this manually. Also, having this as a part of your ATS makes it easier to track the resumes sent from recruiting agencies and house them in the same place as external or internal candidates which will help ensure consistency in your own hiring practices.
The recruitment process is the process of hiring the right people in the right place, at the right time. This is a critical activity which allows companies to conduct proper and effective workforce planning. This process is important because it involves all stakeholders, to make sure they are well equipped with the appropriate knowledge and skill
set to hire. Where there are several well-known candidate sources to look for future employees like the company website, job boards, vendors etc., this blog we will instead focus on the internal employee transfer employment.
Saratoga Institute reports that, the average cost of finding and hiring someone from outside the company is 1.7 times more than an internal hire ($8,676 vs. $15,008). What’s more, in the Business Times research shows that between 40% and 60% of external hires aren’t successful, compared to only 25% for internal hires are unsuccessful. This is good news for employees who typically leave firms due to lack of career opportunities, yet its bad news for job seekers who may have fewer jobs to apply for as internal hiring rises. According to Business Times article
Advantages of Staffing Internally:
Money: Rather than going through the whole recruitment cycle from scratch and paying investment money in different sources to find the right qualified external applicants; internal staffing allows you to easily find the right nominees for the position.
Culture Fit: When you promote or transfer an internal employee, you know that he/she already fits in with the corporate culture, which is something that is often a risk with external candidates; for example many candidates can say the right things in the interview but that does not mean that they can fit as part of the team. So as an employer you already know the work ethics of your employees which reduces this risk factor when hiring external candidates.
Motivation: Motivation is key because it allows companies to retain their talent and reduce turnover. When employees know the career path that they can achieve as a result of hard work then they are tempted to stay and work harder resulting in a happier staff and higher revenue generation.
Time: As we know time is money. So rather than spending time in publishing an open vacancy in different sources and going through the whole interview process and waiting for the new hire to submit his resignation from the other company and join yours; you can reduce the recruitment time in half by hiring internally.
How is that Accomplished?
Finding the right people internally starts by having the right tools that allows you to assess employees on relevant competencies and skills. Running their gap analysis and create career plans for them while giving your employees the relevant training programs to help them grow. Allowing the employee to have access to update his/her competencies and skills profile gives your organization the ability to always have up-to-date information for future leaders’ planning.
Few other important items to take into consideration while performing internal transfers are:
Make sure your internal transfer policy is clear and followed consistently.
Give internal employees clear feedback if you select someone else so they don’t look elsewhere because of miscommunication.
Make sure their current manager is a part of the process.
Don’t make them feel like their current job is in jeopardy because they applied to a different one.
The recruitment process is one the key building blocks that helps define a company’s workforce level of competitiveness in the market and generate revenue. There are many benefits to hiring internally for vacant positions, however, doing this efficiently requires a full well planned and organized process of identifying top performers, their level of qualification and the development options.
While looking at your current employees and their referrals is a strong way to fill open positions, many times external applicants are going to make up a large percentage of your applicant pool. So how can you best attract these applicants to your company, and once there, how can you make sure to build a relationship with those applicants? And what is the downside if you don’t get this right?
Attracting Applicants
When it comes to getting applicants to visit your career center and apply to jobs, you cannot just rely on the job description to get them through the door. There are many other factors that you need to consider to make sure that it is easy for applicants to learn about your company and find a job that interests them.
First, make sure you are advertising your jobs in the right places to attract the right applicants. This could include local universities, job board, social media, the newspaper or emails to previous applicants. Every company may have a different strategy on how to best get information about your jobs out there – take a look at where your previously successful hires have come from and start from there to attract similar applicants.
Also, don’t assume a one-size-fits-all approach with your career center. Different applicants have different needs, and your career center needs to cater to those. Be able to direct applicants to corporate jobs to a career center specific to those jobs, and do the same for your hourly workforce. By breaking this up, you make it easier for applicants to find jobs that they are looking for and qualified for, and improve their user experience.
Finally, don’t forget to make your site mobile friendly. According to Beyond (http://about.beyond.com/infographics/mobile-job-search-apps) 77% of job seekers use mobile devices to search for jobs. So, if your career center doesn’t support this capability, you might end up missing out on some really good applicants.
Application Experience
Once you’ve made your jobs easy to find and learn about, make sure it is easy for applicants to apply. The process, the rules, the requirements – it is important that each one of these items is clear and easy for the applicant to follow.
Over the years, one of the number one complaints I hear about the application process is that it is too hard, too long, and too repetitive. Really evaluate your current process and get rid of the things you don’t need. If you are asking every applicant to submit a cover letter, but you never read it, remove it from the application. Having extra steps that don’t provide value to your or the applicant just makes the process longer and increases the odds that the applicant won’t finish.
Communication and Follow Up
Feedback to your applicants is one of the best ways to ensure you develop a good relationship with potential talent. After someone applies to a job, it is really important that regular updates are provided throughout the entire hiring cycle. Whether it is good news that you are reaching out for an interview, or the more dreaded news that they aren’t qualified for the opening, applicants need to be apprised of the status of their application.
Also, you may have heard of the resume black hole, and you probably know this isn’t a good thing. Providing follow up and communicating with applicants can help alleviate this issue, which is so prevalent that there are many articles and videos on how to avoid the black hole.
So What If You Don’t?
The cost of dissatisfied applicants is more than them giving up and looking elsewhere – it can leave applicants with a negative perception of your company as a whole. Whether the process is too rushed, too slow, or lacks any meaningful feedback, there are repercussions with how that potential applicant views the company, and whether or not they will share their experience with their friends or elsewhere on the internet. And don’t forget that studies have shown that job seekers are less likely to buy or use services from a company that is unresponsive when they apply to work there.
Posting jobs and hiring new employees can be a huge time investment, making it a big disappointment when your favorite candidate doesn’t accept the offer or leaves after being on the job for only a short time period. There can be many underlying reasons for this shock to the system, and one thing that it helps to keep in mind is that your hiring processes cannot always be a “one size fits all” tool. Your candidates may come from many different sources and backgrounds, and how you interact with them during the hiring process can influence their decisions to join or stay at your company long-term.
This blog series will focus on several different groups of candidates and considerations for working with those groups. For example:
How can you attract external candidates to apply to your openings?
How might you adjust the hiring process to meet the unique needs of candidates referred by your current employees?
Are there any special ways to keep in touch and market new job opportunities to respected alumni?
How can you get and keep the attention of the millennial workforce?
How can you make applying to jobs fast and easy for hourly workers?
Over the next couple of months, join us as we provide some best practices when accounting for the diverse needs of today’s workforce. Our focus will be on the candidate sources below, and we would be happy to receive further suggestions from our readers on additional groups you might like us to focus on.
