Your Approach to Hiring Is All Wrong

Hiring today is a completely different situation than in years past. Today’s job market moves at an unprecedented rate. 

Employers that don’t use the latest tools and strategies miss out on the best candidates. There are more jobs available than qualified candidates. On average, jobs are open just a few weeks, particularly in the diagnostics, life sciences, and biotechnology fields. If you aren’t careful, you will lose great candidates due to simple errors on your part.

How many of the below mistakes are made in your hiring process?

1. The hiring process itself takes too long. If not approached correctly, this can result in less qualified candidates as the cream of the crop has already been hired elsewhere.
2. Delegating hiring to the human resources department can lead to the wrong candidate being brought down the hiring path. By the time that candidate gets to the person who will actually be their supervisor, much time and money have been spent on an unsuitable job candidate. 
3. Simply interviewing one candidate after another and comparing them only with each other means that more qualified candidates may be overlooked because of our innate recency bias. 
4. Often, an offer is made only to one individual, while other qualified candidates are left languishing. When that one individual passes on the offer, the next most qualified candidate may have already moved on to accept a job offer elsewhere.
5. Choosing salary and benefits packages without considering salary increases down the road leads to retention issues. Employees brought on board only to find that their salary is already maxed out will be sure to “jump ship” when they can find a higher salary elsewhere. In cases like these, retaining the best employees becomes an HR disaster.
6. Hiring whoever has the right industry experience on paper instead of seeing the individual and hiring the candidate with the most potential.

A Better Way to Hire

In today’s red-hot job market, companies need a modern approach to hiring. This includes:

1. Forming a recruitment strategy and then following it. This includes following best practices.
2. Being realistic about the job market. Positions in diagnostics, life sciences, and biotechnology fields are not filled overnight, nor should they be. There are inherently smaller talent pools, and candidates in these fields are likelier to have multiple offers from different companies.
3. Using a scorecard method facilitates decision-making when multiple people need to come together to agree on a candidate's choice.
4. Moving through the hiring process as efficiently and quickly as possible so that other suitable candidates are not lost to competitors. 
5. Keeping candidates engaged the entire time in the recruitment and hiring process.
6. Discussing compensation possibilities as early on as possible. This will help to circumvent wasted time and avoid disappointment on either side. 
7. Making an offer too good to refuse.
8. Making the candidate’s potential to fulfill the job responsibilities the primary hiring criteria.

If you would like to learn more about hiring best practices and getting your new recruitment strategy in motion, contact Connexis today.