For hiring managers, staying on top of your tasks and managing your time effectively can be challenging, even for the most organised of individuals. Working smarter, not harder tends to make huge differences when it comes to freeing up time and getting more done in the day.
So how can hiring managers be more efficient?
Here are 10 of the best tips for hiring managers to be more efficient when it comes to hiring and recruiting.
10 Tips For Hiring Managers to Improve Efficiency
1. Outsource
Hiring employees is a huge expense in terms of both time and money. To source top talent, it may be worth employing a professional recruitment source that specialises in sourcing the best employees that match your needs and fit in well with your company’s culture.
Outsourcing can be a massive time-saver and so our number one tip is to work out what you can afford to outsource.
2. Build an effective strategy
Without a strategic hiring plan, you cannot realistically expect hiring to be a quick and logical process. Once your strategy is in place, you should be able to proceed with swiftness and efficiency.
There are many guides and templates to building an effective strategy. Your priority (whether or not you are using a professional recruitment company for outsourcing), should be to chart your company’s goals.
Furthermore, you should also get clear on your company’s culture and have clarity on your HR department. Doing this right at the beginning will help you to make informed decisions about exactly what skills and abilities are needed to bring the company’s overall goals to fruition, but also what sort of personality and interests the candidate should have to fit in with the team.
When you hire based on skills and personality, you are hiring for the long term. Employees that identify easily with company culture are much more likely to work happily (and therefore effectively) and will want to stay longer with the business.
3. Set SMART goals
SMART is a mnemonic acronym designed to elevate the efficiency of your goal setting. The letters stand for:
- Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
- Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
- Achievable (agreed, attainable).
- Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
- Time-bound (time-based, time-limited, time/cost limited, timely, time-sensitive)
When setting goals, it’s easy to make goals that are realistic, but too generalised. When you use the SMART criteria, you will be able to see your way clear to making better decisions whilst on your goal journey.
For example, you might have the specific goal of hiring a new project manager, but a SMART goal would be, “We will hire a new project manager. To hire the best project manager we can, we will use a precise pre-screening method of recruitment, and a standardised set of questions, to collect the data and information we need to compare to come to the right decision.”
4. Use pre-screening tests
Using pre-screening employment tests is a highly efficient method of collecting data to evaluate candidate performance.
Pre-screening methods, often appearing in the form of psychometric testing, are designed to reduce hiring risk, improve the quality of hire, and remove unconscious bias.
Depending on the job that you are hiring for, psychometric tests typically will split into three to include abstract, verbal and numerical reasoning, covering different areas of ability. Appropriate tests can be found for different levels of the business team, such as operational workers, junior managers, and middle and senior managers.
You may also consider a more traditional IQ test, which is typically focused on testing a candidate’s ability for reasoning and logic.
Another pre-screening method that may aid the hiring process is a personality test. This could be presented in the form of an EQ (Emotional Intelligence) test. EQ is a broad concept, but it is gaining traction within recruitment and can be most commonly described as the ability to emotionally self-regulate and to react and respond appropriately to others’ emotions.
5. Automate your processes
A flood of resumes can make hiring slow. However, introducing AI (artificial intelligence) into your processes can swiftly sort the resumes that require definite attention, streamlining the process.
AI data learn from available information, unlike other typical software applications which will have hard-coded algorithm rules that do not shift and adapt.
6. High-volume hire
High-volume hiring is also known as mass recruitment. This is often needed due to rapid growth, but it can also be due to fluctuating needs of the particular business, such as retail, where a huge demand on the workforce can be made at particular times of the year, like Christmas.
7. Use time management tools
A key to any hiring process is to manage your time as effectively as possible. As a hiring manager, you will be expected to have exemplary communication skills, but time management is often less talked about.
There are many different ways of being efficient with your time, but the salient point when considering this is to find a system that works for you.
Try a few of these tools:
8. Know your metrics
Recruitment metrics refer to analyse and track hiring, to make your hires as successful as possible. Seeing your hiring process laid out in terms of data can be a much more helpful way of understanding your recruitment process and how to continuously improve it.
9. Collect data to improve
As well as assessing the recruitment metrics of new hires, it’s important to collect data from all employees to understand patterns of success and areas for improvement. It’s no secret that recruitment is an expensive process; with so much investment at stake, being aware of data metrics and being able to demonstrate your hiring ROI is key.
10. Look after your well-being
As a hiring manager, it often feels like your first priority to look after candidates’ well-being before your own. However, to be the best hiring manager, it’s both practical and perceptive to look after your own mental and physical well-being first and foremost. If you don’t look after yourself, how can you expect to look after others?
