The New Year’s in place, the hiring clock is ticking and you’re armed with a new team swamped with a bunch of positions to fill. Where do you start?
We talk a lot about hitting the ground running, so here’s even more ammo to help you get started on filling those open reqs by first, prepping your sourcers and recruiters with the right training! Check out these five tips.
Meet with hiring managers to get an idea of the ideal candidate’s profile.
Before beginning the search, your recruiting team should get a sense of the qualifications, experiences, and skills of someone who’s a good fit for the position. Use current employees as an example, sharing links to their professional profiles and portfolios. Talk with hiring managers about their expectations for the ideal candidate, making sure to push back and clearly communicate why some of their criteria for the role may be unrealistic and limit the talent pool. Sourcers should get an understanding of how to establish a solid middle ground with hiring managers’ requirements so the candidate search is efficient and realistic, and so only qualified people get through to the interviewing process. A hitch in this step can be the catalyst to the candidate dropoff.
Take them through a sourcing do’s and dont’s sessions for your current open reqs.
Give sourcers an opportunity to shadow the team’s more seasoned pros during the search for ideal candidates, allowing them to see what’s in a practical, targeted Boolean search string, what makes one person more qualified than another, and how to track applicants and sourced candidates through the process.
Do a mock-up of a typical interview.
Set aside time for the team to sit in on a mock-up phone screen and in-person interview for each of the open reqs. The list of interview questions varies from role to role, and giving your sourcers an idea of the what to look for in a candidate who receives an offer, gives them an idea on what to look for in someone who passes through to the interviewing stage. This can also prep sourcers for a future role in recruiting and interviewing candidates at the company.
Consider the benefits of a sourcing certification.
Putting sourcers through a certification program may be the extra boost they could use to get better at identifying candidates on more, wider networks using search skills and tools that can be taught to the rest of the team. In this article, SourceCon’s Jeremy Roberts shares some insight to the pros of certifying sourcers, and lists programs from AIRS, Social Talent, The Sourcing Institute, and the People Certification Program.
Share feedback on a candidate.
Whether the candidate is hired or not, be sure to meet with your recruiting team after the process to review what worked, what didn’t work, and what to prepare or change for the next open req. Did the sourcer take enough time and consideration when building out their lists of qualified candidates? Was their outreach timely, tactful, and personalized? Did the candidate profile match expectations the team set with hiring managers?
Getting the hiring team ramped up on identifying the right people for your open reqs tends to take the brunt of the training, and it’s a work in progress. Offering upfront, frequent feedback on your sourcers’ work will help the team align their expectations, speed up the hiring process, and encourage your sourcers to share their feedback on how to improve your training program.
Want to take your new recruiting team a level up? Check out our webinar on building your employer brand to improve the way the company engages potential hires!
