Hiring is critical work that often doesn’t get the love it deserves. If your HR team has ever been short-staffed, underfunded, or both, you know the pressure well. Despite limited resources, you’re expected to recruit and hire all-star candidates to propel your organization forward.
The odds can be daunting, but there’s good news: Hiring doesn’t have to be difficult.
With the right hiring tips and tricks, you can acquire high-quality talent without breaking your psyche — or the bank.
Read on to learn how to save time, effort, and money while making stellar hires.
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.
Top Hiring Tips and Tricks
Wondering how to attract and retain top talent? Looking for successful recruitment strategies? Follow these hiring tips and tricks to avoid dead-end candidates and bring precision to your recruiting arm:
1. Test Candidate Integrity
Candidate integrity may seem like an odd way to start this list. After all, you only test for integrity once you’ve completed the interview process. Surely, it’s a formality... right?
Wrong. Integrity testing is your first line of defense against bad candidates. Neglect it, and you risk hiring someone who is dishonest, lazy, or both. It can take weeks, if not months, to weed out a nefarious actor — and by then, the damage is done.
Everyone has embellished a skill or two in their career. But 56% of hiring managers have caught candidates flat-out lying on their resumes. Let those lies fester, and you allow unqualified people to sneak into key positions, racking up workers’ comp claims and jeopardizing your bottom line. That’s why this hiring tip is so powerful.
Integrity tests help catch liars in the act. The Integrity First test, for example, has a proven track record of creating a 37% reduction in turnover, and can increase the chances of making a good hire by as much as 90%. When you lay a foundation of targeting integrity in your recruitment process, everything else falls in line.
Recruiting Tip: Use social media to post your open roles, with hashtags to spread the news to more potential candidates. Then ask your employees to re-share your posts.
2. Guard Your Time to Hire
Time is money — literally. According to SHRM, the average cost per hire is $4,683. The longer your time to hire, the higher the cost. Suffer a mishire, and those costs grow exponentially. You’ll have to hire, onboard, and retrain someone else all over again. To make use of this hiring tip, use an ATS.
Applicant tracking software tools help you protect your time to hire while radically improving your hiring accuracy. For as low as $249 a month, you can use Discovered to automate 90% of your menial recruitment tasks, from job ad creation to reference checking. Send out pre-employment assessments with a click, record one-way video interviews, and filter for the best of the bunch — all from a single dashboard.
3. Use AI to Write Your Job Ads
To many, artificial intelligence is the “enemy.” To a recruiter, it’s an invaluable ally in the fight for talent. If your competitors aren’t already using AI in their outreach efforts, they soon will be. Beat them to the punch by using increasingly powerful tools like ChatGPT.
With AI, you can write faster, better job descriptions and job ads — at scale. Here’s an example prompt that shows how to use this hiring tip and trick:
Prompt:
I’m hiring a Sales Manager for a 2,000-person tech company. We need someone with SaaS experience and excellent leadership skills. Can you write a job description?
ChatGPT response:
Company Overview:
We are a leading and innovative tech company with a global presence, dedicated to delivering cutting-edge solutions in the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry. Our forward-thinking approach has established us as a trailblazer in the tech world, and we are seeking a dynamic Sales Manager to lead and elevate our SaaS division to new heights.
Position Overview:
As the Sales Manager of our SaaS division, you will be at the forefront of driving revenue growth and spearheading the expansion of our SaaS offerings. You will lead a high-performing team of sales professionals, cultivating a collaborative and results-oriented environment. Your strategic mindset, exceptional leadership skills, and SaaS expertise will be critical in positioning our company for continued success.
Key Responsibilities:
- Lead, mentor, and develop a team of sales professionals to achieve and exceed sales targets within the SaaS division.
- Create and implement comprehensive sales strategies to penetrate new markets, drive customer acquisition, and maximize revenue generation.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Marketing, Product Development, and Customer Success, to align efforts and drive a cohesive SaaS business approach.
- Stay current with industry trends, market dynamics, and competitive landscape to identify growth opportunities and inform strategic decisions.
- Foster strong customer relationships at all levels to ensure customer satisfaction, retention, and expansion within existing accounts.
- Develop and maintain a robust sales pipeline, utilizing CRM systems and data-driven insights to forecast accurately.
- Provide regular performance metrics, reports, and analyses to senior leadership, highlighting achievements, challenges, and areas for improvement.
- Cultivate a culture of continuous learning, professional development, and innovation within the sales team.
Qualifications:
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Marketing, or a related field; MBA is a plus.
- Proven track record of success in B2B SaaS sales, with a minimum of [X] years of experience in a leadership or managerial role.
- Exceptional leadership and team-building skills, with the ability to inspire, motivate, and mentor a diverse group of sales professionals.
- Strong understanding of SaaS business models, subscription-based sales, and related industry trends.
- Excellent communication and interpersonal skills, with the ability to establish rapport and credibility with clients, partners, and internal stakeholders.
- Strategic thinker with the ability to develop and execute effective sales strategies that drive revenue growth.
- Proficiency in CRM systems and sales analytics tools to track performance and extract actionable insights.
- Proven ability to collaborate across departments and foster a culture of cross-functional teamwork.
- Results-oriented mindset with a commitment to achieving and exceeding sales targets.
Benefits:
- Competitive compensation package including base salary, commission, and performance-based incentives.
- Comprehensive health, dental, and vision insurance coverage.
- 401(k) retirement plan with company matching.
- Generous paid time off and flexible work arrangements.
- Professional development opportunities and continuous learning initiatives.
- Vibrant and inclusive company culture fostering innovation and creativity.
- Opportunity to contribute to shaping the future of a market-leading tech company.
Join our team and be a driving force in shaping the future of our SaaS division within a thriving and dynamic tech organization. If you're a visionary sales leader with a passion for SaaS and a proven track record of success, we invite you to apply and embark on an exciting journey with us.
To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter detailing your relevant experience and how you envision contributing to our SaaS division's growth and success.
[Application link]
Application Deadline: [Date]
(Please note that only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.)
[Company Name] is an equal opportunity employer. We encourage applications from candidates of all backgrounds and experiences.
You can use ChatGPT to write job descriptions like the one above, or let Discovered’s AI integrations do it for you, then post your job ads to multiple job search sites, screen candidates, write interview questions, schedule interviews, and more.
4. Post to the Right Job Boards Automatically
It’s easy to get lost in the sea of online job boards. Here are just a few popular sites for job ads:
With so many options, it’s easy to put your job posts in the wrong place. For example, Built In caters to tech companies, while Ladders focuses exclusively on jobs paying $100,000 or more. Know your audience before clicking “publish.”
But even if you want to post to as many job boards as possible, that takes time. The best hiring tip here is to post to a selection of the right job boards, all at once. Discovered saves you time by posting to multiple job boards automatically. Write a compelling job ad using AI, then get that job in front of as many eyes as possible.
5. Screen Candidates Automatically
The average job application receives 250 resumes. You can’t sift through that massive stack of (tedious) info without some serious help. So, one of the best hiring tips on this list is to screen and prequalify candidates instantly, with science-backed pre-employment assessments.
Test for integrity, cognitive ability, eye for detail, and other skills that predict on-the-job success. Not only does this cut down on hiring biases, but it finds strong-fit candidates faster.
Assessments aren’t the only screening measures you can lean on. The best ATS tools allow for one-way video interviews where candidates record answers that you review at your leisure. Even reference checking can be automated so you’re not wasting dozens of hours tracking down key contacts.
Discovered does all the above and more, delivering your choice of dozens of pre-employment tests, screenings, and automatically checking references, so you can hire with confidence.
Recruiting Tip: Use social media to check your candidates’ backgrounds. See our masterclass on social media checks:
6. Improve Your Employer Brand
Attracting top talent with the potential to enrich your organization, drive productivity, and make meaningful contributions starts with being the organization high-quality job seekers want to work for. Even if you are already that kind of workplace, your candidates won’t know it by osmosis.
Projecting an image of being a great place to work starts with a top-notch career page. The best career pages are keyword-optimized, engagingly written, and packed with details that job seekers can sink their teeth into. That includes benefits, advancement opportunities, and employee testimonials.
From there, make sure your hiring process is smooth, fast, and engaging, creating a strong candidate experience. Make these investments up front, and future recruitment efforts become easier.
For more hiring tips and tricks on building a strong employer brand, see this webinar with Fletcher Wimbush and Rachel Kennedy:
7. Stop Reacting and Start Hiring
Another hiring tip/trick: If you don’t have a referral program, it’s time to start. Employee referrals result in 70% more “good hires” than regular recruiting strategies. For recruiters, you can receive higher-quality applicants by letting your peers do the hard work. What’s not to love?
Applicant tracking systems often automate the employee referral process. Build out a program in seconds, and store all referral data in a centralized location. Even if you don’t decide to move on a referral, you’ll have them in your hiring pipeline for future consideration.
Discovered – Performance Hiring Software for Small Business Recruiting
You can instantly employ all the hiring tips and tricks above — and so many more — by using the Discovered – Performance Hiring Software to automatically create career pages and job ads, post job ads, collect and screen resumes, and administer your choice of dozens of screening tools to candidates.
Leverage Discovered’s AI integrations to do it all with just a few clicks, from administering one-way video interviews, integrity tests, DISC assessments, skills tests, and schedule phone screens and in-person interviews.
Book a demo today to see how Discovered can transform your hiring process.
