The Best Practices for Hiring More Assertively

What is your one tip for hiring more assertively?

To help you hire more assertively, we asked hiring managers and business leaders this question for their best insights. From developing a proactive plan for reaching passive candidates to hiring people who are driven by your company’s mission, there are several tips that you may adopt as best practices to make your hiring more assertive.

Here are 13 best practices for hiring more assertively:

• Develop a Proactive Plan for Reaching Passive Candidates

• Create a Transparent Interview Process

• Be Honest With Your Employer Value Proposition
• Define The Type of Candidates You Want

• Set Goals for The Hiring Process

• Set Clear Definitions for Employer Brand and Job Profile

• Move Fast With The Process

• Make The Most of Industry-Specific Events and Meet-Ups

• Give an Application Deadline
• Instill a Sense of Urgency

• Target Your Headhunting With Your Competitor Research

• Have a Clear Understanding of Your Business Needs

• Hire People Who Are Driven by Your Company’s Mission

Develop a Proactive Plan for Reaching Passive Candidates

Experienced recruiters and HR executives understand that good candidates rarely show up as a result of a job ad on Indeed or any other job board. The top 10% of candidates for hard-to-fill jobs are getting offers all the time from companies and never visiting the job boards.

To hire more assertively, you need to have a proactive plan for reaching these passive candidates. That's where employer branding comes in. Using the power of good messaging, video, and a great candidate experience, employers who want to come out ahead in the race for talent invest in content and advertising that speaks to the needs and desires of their future candidates.

My one tip for hiring more assertively is this: stop thinking you'll find good candidates on job boards and instead start building your company's reputation as an employer of choice by telling your story through video, your website, and social media.

Justin Vajko, Principal & Chief Strategy Guy at Dialog

Create a Transparent Interview Process

Especially in today’s competitive hiring landscape, transparency is one way for recruiters and companies to differentiate themselves. It’s important for recruiters to share a detailed overview of the company, role, team structure, interview process, and total compensation package during initial conversations with candidates. Recruiters also should ensure candidates have an opportunity to ask their own questions. This proactive approach helps create a positive employer brand and better overall candidate experience.

Ricki Holupchinski, Senior Recruiter at Cube Software

Be Honest With Your Employer Value Proposition

In the current war for talent competitors are chasing after the same skill set and it's harder and harder to engage talent externally. Therefore it's crucial to engage candidates by sharing your Employer Value Proposition and highlighting the best things about your company as an employer.

However, it is even more critical to speak with external candidates honestly - tell them what the challenges are that the business is facing, what the strategic plans for the role are, what their immediate tasks are - and don't sugar-coat unnecessarily! People do their own research, so be fair - sharing the not-so-flattering details assertively, pairing them with the best traits of your company as an employer will result in truly engaged candidates, seamless hire stage and smoother onboarding.

Delyana Racheva, Global Strategic Hiring Head of Atos

Define The Type of Candidates You Want

You need to be clear with what type of job seeker you wish to hire, and that is precisely why you should consult the hiring manager and create the candidate persona. Your talent acquisition efforts will automatically boost if you save time by sourcing the relevant and ideal candidates for the job. Here are three simple steps to creating a candidate persona: First, research the role - the most effective candidate personas are based on factual data, not assumptions, so gathering the correct data is the most crucial step. Then, analyze candidate behavior - analyzing the online behavior of your target audience or candidates is the best way to get insight into their motivations, interests, and challenges. And then create your candidate persona template - with the correct data and an in-depth understanding of your candidate demographics and requirements, this is when your persona will start to take shape.

Madhurima Halder, Content Manager at Recruit CRM

Set Goals for The Hiring Process

Assertiveness hiring requires developing vital skills that meet the goals set for different situations. Setting the goals for the hiring process is essential to enhance and assess the individual level of assertiveness. It enhances maintaining an acceptable level of assertiveness with the jobseeker.

Planning before the meeting enhances setting goals and leveraging confidence in assertiveness. It enhances preparedness and consistency in the hiring process. Awareness of the line not to cross helps understand the jobseeker's reactions and body language intelligence. Setting goals enables the jobseeker to take the interviewer seriously and understand the weight of the position. It also eases assessing the performance for the hiring decision.

Leah Wanjiku Gathoni, Hiring Manager of NearbyMovers

Set Clear Definitions for Employer Brand and Job Profile

A clear definition of the Employer Brand and Job Profiles is the strategic and operational foundation for assertive hiring. It will guarantee attracting the talent that actually identifies with and strives for your company's values and requisitions. Hiring Managers and teams having uncertain or less aligned expectations about their vacancies lead to a worse candidate experience, longer time to hire, demotivated employees and therefore higher risk of churn and costs.

Working with department or team-specific personas that represent and complete current employees' skills and dynamics, as well as working with competencies that are used consistently for interviewing and performance reviews is a blessing for every hiring process.

Claudia Liesenhoff, Senior Talent Acquisition Manager at Forto Logistics GmbH & Co. KG

Move Fast With The Process

It's no surprise this is the tip that I recommend as we have all encountered the slow interview process, whether we ourselves were on one side or the other.  We've got to move faster. The "we" being more relative to whatever is slowing the process down. This could be a Hiring Manager taking weeks or sometimes even longer to review resumes. This could be that there are 5 interviews instead of being agile and only having as many (or as few in this case) interviews as necessary.

As a Strategic Sourcing Manager sourcing constantly for extremely niche roles for quite some time in my career, I have seen candidates opt out of the process because another company moved quicker through the process and gave them an offer that they accepted. If the Hiring Manager is taking their time, it is time to speak with them to prioritize: Does this role need to be filled now or later? If there are more than 3 interviews, it is time to scale down and be empathetic in regard to the candidate.

Danielle Bailey, Strategic Talent Sourcing Manager of Altria

Make The Most of Industry-Specific Events and Meet-Ups

Put your networking skills to good use and start attending virtual meet-ups and conferences in the fields of your interest. By doing this, you're increasing your chances of interacting with potential candidates, or at the very least, people who can point you in the right direction. It does require some patience and time. But if you step up and talk about your work and company culture, interested candidates are very likely to reach out to you. Preparing an elevator pitch comes in handy here.

Harry Morton, Founder of Lower Street

Give an Application Deadline

Give a hard deadline as to when candidates' applications are due. Not doing this can make it challenging to make hiring decisions. For example, if you interview some candidates and then receive another impressive application, you would have to decide whether to interview this new candidate or go ahead and choose between the candidates you have already interviewed. On the other hand, if you do not begin interviewing until after the deadline passes, you can make a more definite hiring decision amongst the candidates who have already met this deadline.

Nick Shackelford, Managing Partner of Structured Agency

Instill a Sense of Urgency

Hiring more assertively is all about generating faster results at each and every stage of the recruitment process. Starting with your job listing, you must give people a compelling reason to apply — and to do so quickly. If candidate attraction is the weak link in your process, creating a sense of urgency is crucial. Otherwise, it directly inhibits your interview and short listing speed. 

The first step is to shorten the application window. By reducing the amount of time that candidates have, it encourages only the most motivated and prepared applicants to apply. If your deadline is too far into the future, candidates are more liable to procrastinate or forget about the opportunity entirely. Along with this tactic, you may also consider limiting how many applications you accept. By stating that the application will close once a certain number of applications have been received, it encourages candidates to make their interest known promptly if they want a chance at securing the position.

Max Wesman, Chief Operating Officer of GoodHire

Target Your Headhunting With Your Competitor Research

My top advice is to use your competitor research to target your headhunting efforts. It’s much harder to lure an employee from a competitor when they’re happy and well-compensated in their current role than one who’s dissatisfied, under-paid, or feels their current job or company are unstable. The more you know about the market and your direct competition, the better you’ll be able to target your headhunting efforts to improve your chances of success and entice top professionals to join your organization.

Jon Hill, Chairman & CEO of The Energists

Have a Clear Understanding of Your Business Needs

Hiring assertively is something many new businesses struggle with because they don't know exactly what they need. They may need someone to wear many hats, from assistant to public relations, which might mean they might be less-clear on their true needs in the organization.

Being flexible in hiring often leads to lukewarm interviews that can seem unclear for both hiring teams and job seekers, which can cause a poor fit between employees and employers. Even if you have a broad set of needs, try to narrow them down to concise roles that need to be filled, so you can narrow your job search and find the perfect employee for your business. Knowing exactly what your business needs can make filtering candidates easier, and streamline negotiating, giving a vision to the company's hiring practices.

Kyle Risley, CEO of Lift Vault

Hire People Who Are Driven by Your Company’s Mission

Hire people who are driven by your company’s mission, employees that believe in what you’re trying to achieve as much as you do. When you interview candidates, ask them what inspires them the most about the idea of coming to work at your company. If they don’t know, then they likely aren’t aware of your values, no less your vision for the future. When you start with a team that's passionate, you won’t have to question whether or not you found the right staff.

Jeff Goodwin, Senior Director, Performance at Orgain