Let’s say business is booming, but it’s getting harder to find new employees. If you don’t fill your staffing gaps soon, you’ll start shedding customers as you fail to meet demand. That can put a knot in your gut and make your skin feel clammy.
Hiring is an essential part of scaling a successful business. With all-star talent, you can develop new products, improve customer service, expand your book of business, and drive your bottom line.
If only acquiring great talent was easy. According to Glassdoor, 76% of hiring managers say attracting the right candidates is their top challenge. Consider that your competitors are likely sending candidates offers within days, and the pressure’s on to hire efficiently.
Don’t want to sacrifice quality for the sake of speed? Good — you don’t have to.
In this article, we’ll share 10 different ways to hire employees quickly and accurately.
Meet with our hiring coaches today to see how AI can slash 90% of the time from your hiring process. Start filling jobs faster right away, with 10x higher quality people.
1. Employee Referrals
The average hire costs businesses $4,683 — and that number only increases the longer your time to hire. An employee referral program helps you save on cost and time to hire while giving existing employees a powerful motivator to help grow your talent pool.
An effective referral program has clear parameters. For example, you can offer employees $3,000 for a hire that stays for at least 90 days. Or, offer a smaller bonus for candidates who exceed a certain performance — thus incentivizing top-tier referrals.
With a program like the that, you’ll save an average of $1,683 per hire. You’ll also drastically improve your quality of hire, as referrals generate 70% more good hires than non-referrals.
2. Social Media
Social media is hardly new. In a 2014 study, Weber Shandwick reported that 88% of workers use one platform or another, and today, LinkedIn has over 950 million users.
Invest marketing spend in the platforms your ideal employees use most. For highly specialized jobs that need Millennials (or older candidates), consider creating targeted ads for Facebook and LinkedIn.
For younger, incoming workers, turn to Instagram and TikTok. If that sounds like a better place for the latest Kardashian challenge than a job ad, it’s not. TikTok is now hailed as Gen Z’s preferred search engine, and creating recruiting videos is a different way to hire employees who won’t see your ads anywhere else.
3. Post Job Ads
Social media may be the future, but traditional job boards still serve a critical purpose. Publish a viral post on social media, and you’ll need to direct those viewers somewhere.
Linkedin, Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and dozens of niche job boards serve as landing zones for prospective job seekers. Post job ads on these websites that feature compelling copy and clear job requirements. The more precise your ad, the greater the likelihood of attracting high-quality candidates for a given role.
With hundreds of job sites out there, posting can be a hassle. Thankfully, applicant tracking systems such as Discovered let you push job ads live with a single click. Save time on posting — and other menial hiring tasks — for as little as $249 a month.
4. Search Your Competition
If you’re in the market for top talent, the odds are good that your competitors are, too. While this adds to the pressure of hiring, it also creates a ready-made talent pool that you can tap into.
LinkedIn is a critical scouting tool. Enter your target job role into the search bar, along with the names of key competitors. (If you lack the latter information, perform a competitive analysis first.) Look for immediate connections, then click on their profile to review their work history and skills.
If you see a potential hiring fit, do some additional research on sites like Glassdoor to estimate their current salary and benefits. That way, when you reach out, you can provide a compelling offer that’ll get them to take a phone call. Though it takes time, this different way to hire employees can be outsourced to a virtual assistant or other inexpensive labor.
5. Look at Past Candidates
The average job posting attracts 250 candidates. Even if only 10% are qualified, that’s 25 people vying for a single role. Regardless of who you extend an offer to, you’re likely leaving qualified candidates on the table.
Use these previous candidates as vital leads. Keep their information in your ATS database, and nurture them with monthly emails advertising new roles at your company. You don’t have to wait for them to call — reach out to any potential fits as soon as you have an open role — before a competitor scoops them up.
6. Create a Careers Page
Need a reason to invest in your brand? Per LinkedIn, a great employer brand can reduce cost-per-hire by 50%, slash your time-to-hire in half, and decrease turnover by 28%.
But you don’t need a lavish marketing budget to improve your brand. All you need is a career page that catches the eye, captures your culture, and communicates your values.
The Discovered – Performance Hiring Software tool creates custom career pages, included in the low monthly price, and bundles with a full-featured ATS, reference checking, and more. Best yet, the platform is packed with AI-based different ways to hire employees.
7. Screen Better
Recruiters don’t have the time to sift through 250-plus resumes, let alone hop on that many phone calls. Thankfully, screening has become increasingly sophisticated and easy to use. Modern recruiting platforms use a combination of AI and pre-employment assessments to predict candidate success. These tools can prequalify strong candidates automatically, letting you hire faster and smarter.
Many platforms also offer one-way video interviews, where you can record candidate responses to review at your leisure. Make sure to screen for integrity, too — you could have a candidate that checks all the boxes, only for them to check out of their role or drive up workers’ comp costs.
8. Internal Recruitment
While practically every hiring team relies on external recruitment (posting to job boards, etc.), far fewer look internally. Often, the best candidate is someone already within your organization who natively understands your mission, vision, and values.
Write a job description and share it internally, then conduct a hiring process just as you would for an external candidate. Even if you don’t find an ideal fit, you’ve already done the heavy lifting and can simply post your job listing as usual.
Nearly 30% of job seekers leave a job within the first 90 days. By recruiting internally, you can promote employees who already love your company and would be hard-pressed to leave. Using this different way to hire employees saves on turnover costs, keeps your culture intact, and reduces the risk of future layoffs.
9. Use a Performance Hiring Tool
Already have a high performer in the same role? Use that employee’s performance metrics and manager reviews to create a benchmark for success. Include keywords that match your success metrics in your job description, and attract candidates who may be a strong fit.
Say you’re hiring a sales rep. If your top performer drives $20 thousand in revenue each month and regularly motivates other team members, include phrases like “must have proven sales experience” and “strong interpersonal skills required” in your job ad.
Discovered helps you hire great employees, then track their performance with detailed scorecards. Identify top performers with a quick click, and screen for potential candidates just like them.
10. Attend or Hold a Hiring Event
Job fairs are an age-old way to assess candidates face-to-face while advertising your brand. Yet doing business in person can be pricey. Between renting space at a venue, renting technology, and staffing the booth, you could pay anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000 per event.
In a post-pandemic world, however, these recruitment events are increasingly held virtually. Not only does this drastically reduce costs, but it gives you access to a broader talent pool. Engage with job seekers from across the country (or world), and capture their emails for future outreach.
Hire Better With Discovered
You can use all these different ways to hire employees on your own — or, partner with Discovered and let the platform do it for you. Partner with Discovered for as low as $8 a day, and you’ll automatically create and post engaging job ads to dozens of job search sites, screen candidates, check references, and hire the best employees — slashing 90% of the time from your recruiting process.
Book a demo today, to see why more and more companies are using Discovered to tame their hiring pipeline.
