Optimize Your Hiring Plan: 5 Tips for Employers

Around 1/3 of new hires leave by the six-month mark. That's a dismal statistic considering the effort and expense involved in the hiring process. The culprit here is often the hiring plan itself. Companies often rely on a generic process, rather than optimizing the plan for their needs. So let's jump in and look at some ways you can optimize your hiring plan.

1. Get Specific in Your Job Descriptions

Hiring the right person depends on getting the right candidates through the door. That starts with knowing what job you actually want to fill. Let's say you decide that you need help with marketing. Are you really looking for a marketing manager or digital marketing expert? The job descriptions for those two positions look very different. Get specific about what you need and build a job description from that.

2. Don't Overvalue Experience

Of course, you want employees who know what they're doing. Traditional wisdom suggests that experience equals expertise. It's true, but with some caveats.

Experience can lock someone into a mindset about how things work. Take someone with a decade of experience working at startups. They might expect a level of informality you don't see at bigger companies. Experience matters, but it's not more important than a good culture fit.

3. Hire People Who Plan on Staying

Recruiting, interviewing, and training are time-intensive and expensive. The less often you must do it, the better.

You can minimize how often you go through that cycle by hiring people who plan on sticking around. You can gauge the odds of this by asking certain questions, such as:

• Are you looking for rapid advancement?
• What kind of working environment do you prefer?
• What management style do you prefer?

If the candidate answers aren't consistent with how things work in your company, they probably won't stick around long-term.

4. Get Clear on the Decision Process

Before the first candidate walks through the door, everyone on the hiring team should know certain things. Those things are:

• Who makes the final decision
• When the final decision will get made

If you plan on deciding, the hiring manager will focus on selecting a handful of top candidates for your review. If the decision rests in the manager's hands, she'll ask more or different questions. Knowing when the decision will get made informs the planning process.

Say that you plan on hiring as soon as you find a good candidate. The team will front-load the best resumes with the hope of keeping the process short. If you expect an interview for every candidate, the team will block out more time.

5. Outsource

Aren't happy with the results from your last round of hires? You can always outsource some or all of the process. Staffing companies can take on many parts of the process, including:

• Developing job descriptions
• Resume review
• Skills testing
• Onboarding

Outsourcing could be a great option.

Parting Thoughts on Optimizing Your Hiring Plan

The attrition rate among new hires should make you take a hard look at your hiring plan. If any other company could use it, it's time for some optimization.

Get specific about your needs in job descriptions. Don't let experience blind you about culture fit. Look for people who plan on staying. Get clear on who makes the hiring decisions and when the decision is made. If you struggle with part of the process, consider outsourcing it.

Bear Staffing Services specializes in connecting the right candidates with the right employers. For more information, get in touch with us.