Hiring new talent is an inevitable part of being a business leader, and it’s more complicated than simply reviewing resumes and conducting interviews. Recruiting mistakes, like a poorly crafted job description or lack of communication about applications, can deter a qualified candidate from seeking employment with you. However, with the right hiring and on boarding process in place, you will soon be able to recruit and hire the best candidates.
Recruitment methods have been studied since the 1920s. During interviews, pay attention to the employee coach’s ability, emotional intelligence, temperament, and motivation.
A hiring process is a step-by-step method to find, recruit and hire new employees. A good hiring process will help you attract and retain high-quality employees who match your brand. The specific elements of a hiring process are unique to each healthcare organization, but there are general steps every business can follow to attract and hire qualified candidates. In this article, we will give an overview of the 15 most common recruitment methods.
1 – IQ Tests:
Our number one recruitment method is the IQ test or General Mental Ability (GMA) test.
IQ testing is, arguably, a well-validated concept in social sciences. Whether we like it or not, your IQ is the best predictor of your academic success, learning abilities, how successful you are in your work, and how much money you will make in your life.
Because of IQ is not related specifically to job knowledge. The interesting thing is that IQ is indicative of two things when it comes to working. First, it predicts how quickly a candidate will learn a job. This means that candidates with a higher IQ score will have a shorter ‘time to productivity, a metric that measures how long it takes a new hire to contribute to an organization. Second, it predicts how successful a candidate will be in their job.
Overall, while GMAs are still a great tool for predicting future success, decisions shouldn’t be made based on these results alone and should always be combined with other recruitment methods to balance the potential advantages.
2 – Unstructured employment interviews:
There’s no doubt you’re probably already using interviews in your hiring process. But did you know that the way you structure your interviews can have a major impact on how effective they are?
Many organizations have little time to come up with a structured review process. Instead, they leave it up to hiring managers to come up with their questions and means of assessment. But, if you’re using unstructured interviews now, it’s time to stop!
This means that unstructured interviews predict roughly 14% of a new hire’s performance, while a structured interview predicts 26%! This means that you would need around 3 unstructured interviews to be as confident about someone’s skills, compared to 1 structured interview.
When interviews are unstructured, it’s more likely that certain candidates can be favoured based on the biases of the interviewer. Unconscious bias is more common than you may think and can greatly damage your recruitment efforts. Instead, having a set list of questions that every candidate must answer improves the chances of a fair assessment.
3 – Structured employment interviews:
Combining structured interviews with a GMA test was the second highest predictor of future performance. Precisely because structured interviews mean that applicants are assessed and scored based on the same questions, they’re considered significantly more valid in terms of predicting future success. Studies show that comparing candidates based on the same criteria lowers the chances of a biased interview.
Taking the time to research the right questions for your interview process will help you make better hiring decisions. A famous example of a brain teaser is “why are manhole covers round?”
While face-to-face or phone interviews may be a great way to see how a person expresses themselves and presents their qualifications, they don’t tell us everything. The fact is, some people are much better at selling themselves and their abilities than others. Are we passing up great talent just because they aren’t comfortable in interviews?
4 – Work sample tests:
Asking for a short assignment is a great way to see a potential hire’s skills in action. Some organizations are commonly asked to draw up a fake event strategy to see how much forethought they put into their planning. You can also give a short writing task to get a sense of their style. You can even hold group work sample tests to see how different people can interact and get a job done.
The use of work sample tests is one of the best ways to find how well a candidate will perform in their job. It is just as effective as a structured interview!
However, one potential drawback is that they may not be effective when hiring candidates who don’t have previous experience. Today people are continuously changing career paths. Especially in new or hard-to-fill roles, it’s necessary to be open to candidates who may not have the skills they need yet but who have the learning agility they need to grow, develop and adapt to the needs of the organization.
5 – Job knowledge tests:
Instead of just testing one aspect of a candidate’s abilities, job knowledge tests allow you to get a wider picture of a person’s role-specific expertise. Unlike a GMA, there is no attempt to assess the applicant’s learning potential. This can be used to inform the hiring manager about what an applicant already knows. A job knowledge test may provide a better prediction of future performance than cognitive ability tests.
If you decide to use this method, consider the types of questions you’re asking and what the role requires. Again, like work sample tests, job knowledge is harder to test for hires that don’t have prior experience. However, it does enable you to test whether or not candidates have a solid understanding of the job they applied for.
6 – Integrity tests:
What a GMA test, interview, or job knowledge screening won’t tell you are the behavioural traits of an applicant. Someone may be very intelligent and skilled in a particular field but they may not have the soft skills they need to work in a team, or they may even have a tendency towards toxic behaviours. Integrity testing identifies a person’s propensity for honesty, trustworthiness, and dependability. By using this sort of assessment, healthcare organizations try to select talent that has a higher likelihood of displaying positive behaviour in the workplace.
Although this method is highly effective, it is good to be aware of the drawbacks. Those who are rejected based on the test may feel they’re being labelled as ‘dishonest’. Good communication of test results is, therefore, key for a good candidate experience.
7 – Conscientiousness tests:
Similar to integrity tests, conscientiousness testing measures a person’s level of self-discipline and reliability through organizational skills and the ability to create long-term goals.
Personality traits are indicative of work behaviour. Of the Big Five, especially conscientiousness is related to better job performance. Conscientious people are described as orderly, dutiful, achievement striving, self-disciplined, and industrious.
Because personality traits and IQ are two very different things, a combination of GMA testing and conscientiousness test can predict 36% of job performance. Both conscientiousness and extraversion are positively related to overall performance.
8 – Peer ratings:
Another avenue some recruiters use to find candidates who will be both a great fit for the team and top performers are peer ratings. Today more and more companies are using peer feedback to assess job performance. Unlike traditional manager-to-employee performance reviews, peer ratings provide a well-rounded picture of a person’s abilities. These results allow us to get an idea of how the candidate is perceived by the people they work with directly.
It’s only possible to use this method for internal hires that already have a history of peer-review data. There are also concerns that peer reviews may be influenced by factors like popularity.
9 – Reference checks:
Reference checks are one of the oldest recruitment methods. And it makes sense. If you want to know more about a potential candidate, who better to ask than their previous employer? There are several considerations to take into account when using this method.
The perception we have of another person and their performance will be altered by our standards and values. References can be helpful, but be sure to use this method in conjunction with other, more predictive assessments.
So far, we’ve gone through the most popular and well-researched methods to date but, to find the right recruitment methods for your needs, we also need to consider some of the modern challenges which could be impacting your search.
10 – Improving job postings:
Improving diversity is a major challenge many HR managers are facing. Having a deeper look at our recruitment methods could provide some answers.
We shouldn’t just be looking at the methods used to assess each applicant; we should also consider the methods we’re using to attract candidates in the first place. The ways we advertise a position and our organization can have a major impact on the candidates who apply.
Several studies have found that the wording discourages certain groups from applying for a job. This can be based on gender, ethnicity, age, introverts, extroverts, parents, etc.
11- Employee referrals:
Instead of focusing only on candidates who come in through the typical job portal, leverage your employee ambassador network to find your next hire.
Surveys have shown that employee referrals reduce cost and time per hire and have the highest ROI of any other recruitment method. The new talent that comes in via a referral is also more likely to stay longer at their jobs. Some organizations are maximizing the potential of this method by offering employee bonuses for each new hire they bring in.
As with all methods, there is a downside. Employee referrals may impact the diversity within your organization. An employee’s network will most likely be made up of people who are similar to them, whether they share the same social circle, live in the same neighborhood, or went to the same university.
12 – Gamification:
Tech talent is in extremely high demand and traditional recruitment methods are often less effective with this group of candidates. Rounds of interviews, tests, and assessments are not something these hires, especially the younger ones, are willing to go through.
Instead, many companies have turned the tables and rethought how they can make the recruitment process more fun for applicants and more effective for companies. A good example is hackathons. Similar to situational group interviews, hackathons allow recruiters to see how developers interact with others, solve problems, and how they put their skills into action.
13 – Video job postings, applications, and interviews:
In today’s interconnected world, organizations aren’t limiting themselves to local talent pools. International hiring is now becoming the norm. But this can also impact the effectiveness of some of the more traditional recruitment methods we discussed. In the digital world, video-based job ads, applications, and interviews are becoming more popular. After switching to a video-based recruitment process, the organization can cut hiring time from six weeks to five days.
14 – AI-based screening process:
New advances in AI technology and automation are here to save recruiters from having to sift through resume after resume.
There are various intriguing uses of AI in recruitment, varying from automated candidate sourcing and candidate rediscovery to candidate matching and preselecting and everything in between. Pre-employment assessment tools often combine (elements of) GMA, work samples, integrity, and conscientiousness tests in a single online experience to predict a candidate’s likelihood to succeed in the job their applying for. Put very simply, AI works by analyzing historical data and using it to make decisions. Sometimes, in case of unskilful use of the technology, this may mean that the AI will copy the biases of the traditional recruitment system.
15 – Hiring freelancers and contractors:
Finally, the rise of the gig economy is providing more and more recruitment options to healthcare organizations. This means more money being spent on the recruitment process and less money being generated while the position goes unfilled.
Hiring freelancers and contractors is a great cost-effective alternative. While freelancers still need to go through a recruitment screening, the costs associated with contracting them are much lower. The consequences also aren’t as big if you happen to hire someone who isn’t a fit.
In closing
Every organization will have different hiring needs and challenges to overcome. Hopefully, with this list, you’ll be able to get a better idea of the options available and how effective they can be for reaching your recruitment goals.
