The Elements of an Efficient Hiring Process

Finding and keeping great talent is not easy. Especially in today's work environment, many small businesses are hemorrhaging employees. It costs companies tons of money as replacing an employee will cost about half their annual salary. So, if you have an employee making $75,000 who leaves your company, you can expect to spend about $35,000 to $40,000 to replace them.

Employee turnover starts during the hiring process. That's your first opportunity to spot red flags and make the right impression to generate loyalty from your new hire. An efficient hiring process helps reduce costs while increasing retention.

An Overview of the Hiring Process

Hiring employees consists of three components: 

• Recruitment 
• Onboarding 
• Training  

Recruitment involves finding, interviewing, and negotiating an offer with high-quality workers. Onboarding ensures your new employees receive white-glove treatment and your company stays compliant by following all relevant employment laws. Finally, during training, you teach your new employees about the role and help them understand their position, how their work affects the company's goals, and conduct appropriate compliance training.

Efficient onboarding and training can help employees become productive faster and leave a positive impression to keep them in their role with your company longer. When companies fail to train new hires, they're more likely to be disengaged and jump ship when a unique opportunity arises. Many companies blame the employees for leaving, but the core problem could be inadequate training. Ultimately, a structured onboarding and training process can help increase your employee retention.

Refining the Recruitment Process

Your first step to increasing retention and getting quality workers to stick around is to refine the recruitment process. Your company needs to develop a standardized process that you can repeat every time you hire. With light tailoring to the different positions, a repeatable process makes for a more structured and engaging experience for the applicants.

For each position, you want to standardize specific interview questions for each role. Asking the same questions to each person ensures you differentiate them based on merit, using consistent measures to rate each candidate. Furthermore, that also helps prevent you from making a biased decision, and it acts as evidence that you conducted a fair process.

Base the Position Around Your Needs

You are your own company, so don't hire positions because your competitors hire for them. Your company is unique, and you need to assess your own needs. When you need it, hiring what you need is an efficient way to ensure you have the necessary staff.

Make Your Job Description Clear

Your job description should make clear what you need each employee to do. You don't need to list the exact day-to-day actions minute-by-minute. Having clear instructions about what each role does and what goals you expect for each position is vital to ensuring your employees know what you need them to do.

Make Job Posts and Ads Relevant

Your job post is the way you attract candidates and sell your company. Why would someone want to work for you? Sell them on the company and set them up for success by being clear about your expectations and requirements for the role.

Select and Decide on Candidates Quickly

In today's work environment, you cannot delay. If you find a high-quality candidate, don't dawdle. The longer you wait, the more likely they will accept an offer from a competitor. After all, top-notch workers aren't just going to apply to your company.

Increasing Onboarding Efficiency

The onboarding process gets your new hire up and running, understanding the company's systems and ensuring the new employee feels comfortable working in their new environment with their new team. 

You must prepare for all new hires before their first day or risk alienating them from your company. If you don't prepare, your company can look like it doesn't know what it's doing, which can push a worker out the door before they even get fully set up.

The benefit is that you can conduct most onboarding online, improving efficiency and maintaining compliance with relevant employment laws. There are companies you can partner with who will help you ensure compliance and give you testing materials to have new hires review.

Develop a Training Plan

Training a new hire is a crucial part of the hiring process. While training is ongoing throughout the individual's tenure with your company, the training you provide in their first few days and weeks is the most important.

With the proper training, you can get employees up to speed quickly and do productive work in a short period. There's always a learning curve, but the better your training program, the faster your employees will start producing the work you need from them.

You can spot fundamental work ethic and integrity traits during the recruitment process. You can ask vital questions that will give you insight into a person's ability to catch on quickly. But you still need to provide them with the necessary information and training to help support their success.

Partner with the Right PEO to Get Results

A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) partners with small businesses like yours to provide outsourced HR services and support. When you choose a trusted and experienced PEO, you gain access to HR experts who can help you build job descriptions and job ads that attract the best candidates. They can increase your onboarding efficiency by building templates and repeatable processes and developing training programs that ensure compliance with employment laws. That way, you guarantee your new hires get training on exactly what they need to know to be productive and successful as quickly as possible.