There was a golden time when companies, especially the tech sector, touted the perks of being in an office.
Companies’ trend was to showcase their catered lunches, yoga sessions, team outings, and ultra-comfortable workspaces.
But, COVID-19 changed the entire landscape, and people shifted to work from a culture where they enjoyed home comfort. Now, in the post-pandemic era, hiring candidates who can fit your company’s culture while being knowledgeable is going to be a little difficult.
For instance, during the pandemic, companies were ready to shift to virtual hiring to cut costs and prevent HR personnel from interacting face-to-face with anyone. But, after the pandemic, this trend is likely to change. Why?
More and more companies realize that without face-to-face interactions, they cannot hire top talent. This is just one aspect of hiring that may change in the coming months.
In this article, we explore reliable tips to hire the best candidates for your business in the post COVID era.
6 Tips to Hire the Best Candidate for your Business Post Covid
Follow these tips religiously to hire candidates who fit your culture and become an asset to your company.
1. Conduct problem-solving test
Regardless of the role you’re hiring, consider conducting a problem-solving test for the individual you hire. With problems evident in a business environment, hiring candidates who can deal with roadblocks without losing their calmness is essential.
Time and again, we have seen examples of brands failing because they could not cope with their business’s problems. Nokia, which was once a cellular network giant, fell flat on its face because it could deal with the problem of innovation. They failed to accept the changing user demand, and instead of focusing on building software for their phone, they gave preference to only hardware.
Had the company employed employees with problem-solving skills, the company fate would have been different. Their inability to solve a business problem (innovation and change acceptance) led to the ultimate downfall. So, every company needs to hire candidates who can use their analytical skills to evaluate and respond to complex situations.
To assess a candidate’s ability, focus on conducting a problem-solving test to filter out best-fit candidates.
Problem-solving tests from TestGorilla are comprehensive and allow a team or business to choose candidates who can move towards stated objectives.
2. Focus on recruitment marketing
Recruitment marketing is the technique of attracting qualified candidates to your job roles by marketing to them.
With 75% of candidates being passive job seekers, recruitment marketing can be the difference between hiring qualified and non-qualified candidates.
In the post COVID era, recruitment marketing will play an essential role because the old hacks of transactional recruiting no longer yield desired results.
With candidates finding employers the same way as consumers find products, it becomes essential to market your employer branding to reach talented candidates.
For ensuring companies hire talented candidates for a vacant position, recruitment marketing improves candidate engagement and experience.
Recruitment marketing includes marketing your jobs on video marketing, text messaging, social media platforms, billboard ads, newspaper ads, and every other place where candidates are likely to notice it
It’s all about spreading a message to as many people as possible. This helps you attract more applications from qualified candidates, and a large audience will see your job posting.
Interestingly, with the advancement in technology, recruitment marketing has gone a step ahead. By applying marketing analytics to data captured during your last recruitment, you can identify potential sources of qualified applicants. It also helps companies hire candidates at a lower cost with a few clicks.
3. Use natural language processing (NLP)
NLP-enhanced automated interviews are slowly empowering recruiters to understand a candidate’s abilities in-depth.
With NLP in your arsenal, you no longer review hundreds or thousands of resumes for a single job posting. Interestingly, as the average time to fill a position is 42 days, NLP can be a welcome change for your recruitment process and saves precious time by analyzing resumes and screening candidates.
Apart from helping in shortlisting best-fit candidates, NLP programs remove subconscious bias from your recruitment process and increase diversity.
NLP programs or software use semantic and lexical analysis to interpret natural language like sentiments, hidden meanings, or intent.
Interestingly, many NLP programs can handle legal documents, create algorithms that match potential candidates with vacancies, and help you in automating repetitive tasks like scanning resumes or cover letters.
Though the potential of NLP may seem limited, NLP is likely to bring a paradigm shift in all stages of a recruitment process, such as onboarding, interviewing, and training.
4. Use predictive analytics
During the era of skilled labor shortage like today, hiring and attracting suitable candidates is difficult. Companies that jump in the recruitment process without analyzing data, understanding candidates’ compatibility with their company, and predicting employee tenure hire purely on their intuition and guesswork.
Often, it results in bad hires. With the cost of a bad hire being up to 30% of an employee’s first-year earnings, hiring candidates based on guesswork will not yield any fruitful results.
Predictive analytics helps in providing insights into the effectiveness of your recruitment and hiring process.
Predictive analytics software uses and analyzes historical data to make future predictions. Companies can create recruiting strategies and make informed hiring decisions while planning their workforce using this future prediction.
Though predictive analytics isn’t a crystal ball that gives accurate results, it allows you to understand recruitment trends.
It can also prevent employee turnover and help you put only the best candidates before hiring managers.
5. Leverage benefits of referral programs
With hiring culturally fit and knowledgeable candidates becoming a priority for many companies, referral programs can come in handy. With 28%-30% of hiring in the past decade occurring due to referrals, you may benefit from starting an employee referral program in your company.
Apart from helping you hire suitable candidates, it’s a cost-effective method of hiring.
Often, referred employees are culture fit, less likely to leave, and perform better than other newly hired candidates.
What’s more interesting is the fact that referral programs reduce turnover rates and improve employee retention. It also reduces time and cost per hire and can significantly improve your employer branding.
When you ask your employees to search for qualified candidates and reward them by providing some bonus, they’re going to go the extra mile to find suitable candidates. Such employees are likely to say only nice words about you and your company.
So, don’t miss out on referral programs in the post COVID era because they will deliver fruitful results.
6. Give importance to artificial intelligence (AI) recruiting
Though recruiters and companies have been using AI for a long time to scan hundreds of resumes primarily based on keywords or commonly used phrases, its use is likely to increase in the coming years.
Technology like applicant tracking systems (ATS) helps HR professionals thin the herd of applications. From job advertising to attracting potential candidates for a vacant position, AI is helping make data-driven decisions.
For instance, tools like LinkedIn Recruiter uses AI to rank candidates based on predefined parameters. It helps a hiring manager shortlist suitable candidates for a job role. Interestingly, platforms like ZipRecruiter use AI to match candidates with jobs available nearby that are a good fit based on the resume a candidate shares on their platform.
Another area in recruitment where AI is lending a helping hand is talent and personality assessment. Using AI technology, companies create neuroscience computer games to check a candidate’s cognitive and personality traits. The AI technology gathers millions of data points to match applicants’ traits with an open job role during the game.
These tools make it easier for HR managers to shorten a long list of candidates and decrease their hiring cost.
AI is revolutionary and is likely to bring about a sea change in every recruitment stage.
Hiring the best candidate
Since COVID-19 created havoc in the world, recruitment strategies are witnessing a changing trend. More and more HR managers are turning to technology to hire candidates who can positively impact their bottom line.
Currently, the recruitment industry is more about diversity and less about paper-pushing. For hiring top talent for every job role, you have to stretch beyond your traditional hiring methods to find a perfect fit.
Use AI, ML, and NLP technology to market your company on various marketing platforms conduct problem-solving tests and encourage current employees to spread the word about job openings with their professional network.
The need for the hours is to think outside the box and find managers or employees who invest time in your company as you invest in them.
Which of these tips did you find most useful?
Please share your thoughts with us!
