Top 7 Steps to Creating a Foolproof Hiring Policy

The process of recruiting the right candidate is very time consuming and costly. It entails taking a lot of small and big decisions that impact the overall recruitment process for the hiring policy. Nevertheless, it is a collaborative effort wherein, all stakeholders arrive at a consensus before making the hiring decisions.

Having a proper hiring policy can bring some structure to your hiring process and make it more effective. Moreover, it helps you to channelize your resources to find the best candidate from the talent pool.

Different companies have different types of recruitment policy. Most organizations design their policy or hire a recruitment agency to suit the unique job requirements or the hiring needs of their organization. However, a good recruitment policy helps you to:

• Promote consistency within the organization
• Speed up the decision-making process with proper guidelines
• Instil belief in the company’s hiring process
• Trains the hiring managers for making better hiring decisions
• Reaffirms the commitment to fair equal employment opportunities

If you already have an in-house hiring policy but it is ineffective, here are the top tips to help you improve your hiring process.

Steps to improve the hiring process

Here are the steps to create an effective hiring process:

1. Involve all stakeholders

The first and foremost thing that you should do is, create a team by including the people that are involved in all aspects of employment law compliance and recruitment at the company.

Your team should include:

1. HR team: A team of HR executives and recruiters who would scout and screen the candidates.
2. Hiring managers: These managers are people who would oversee the entire recruitment porches and take interviews.
3. Legal counsel or staff: The legal counsel will take care of all the laws and legal matters associated with recruitment.

You need to ensure that the representatives of every stakeholder who are part of the recruiting team, work in tandem and collaborate effectively to plan a strategic recruitment strategy for the organization, right from sourcing to the final induction.

2. Use applicant tracking software

Select the appropriate software tools that would help you manage various job applications. You could opt for the best applicant tracking software that will perfectly suit the distinct needs of your recruitment processes.

The applicant tracking system or ATS enables the electronic handling of hiring and recruitment needs. The ATS is similar to the CRM systems but is mainly designed for recruitment tracking purposes.

A good ATS system is web-based and customizable as per your unique hiring needs and is capable of managing your entire recruitment process. This includes the job posting, sourcing candidates, screening of candidates, and effective reporting to the hiring managers. The applicant tracking software would ensure that you do not miss out on any process during the recruitment process.

3. Create a purpose

Establish a clear purpose for the hiring process. A clear purpose gives direction to the recruitment process. After you have identified the key collaborators and selected the right applicant tracking system for the recruitment process, you need to establish proper reasons or the purpose of the hiring policy.

Here are a few questions that you can ask your team in order to establish the right purpose for the recruitment policy.

• What are your objectives or goals for the new hired?
• How do you view your employees, their roles and contributions to your success?
• Which values of the company should be reflected in the hiring process?

Seeking answers to these questions will help you establish the right purpose for the recruitment policy.

4. Believe in talent

We may become biased subconsciously towards a particular type or category of candidates during the sourcing and agreeing possess. This could limit our horizons and may deprive us of getting some of the best talents for the job role.

Therefore, try to steer clear of any subconscious bias during the recruitment process. A new hire could bring many innovative ideas to the table which could be immensely beneficial for the organization. Therefore, do not be wary of atypical candidate profiles; they might become the during force in shaping the outlook of the existing processes in your organization.

Some candidates bring in dynamism, while others bring in critical thinking and creativity. Therefore, you should be open to accommodate all kinds of talent, provided their credentials fit into the requirements of the job role.

5. Create an overview

A proper outline or an overview of the recruitment process will help you plan the process to achieve the desired hiring objective. The main objective is to create a rough, sequential draft of your hiring process, and identifying the key people who would be responsible for the successful completion of each task in the process.

Here are a few questions you must consider while developing the hiring process:

• What type of job interviews would you need?
• What number of rounds of interview is required?
• How many personnel should get involved at different stages of the interview?
• What should be done in the pre-recruitment process (example: background checks)?
• Would you include skill assessment or drug screening?
• What are the circumstances or conditions for rehiring former employees?

These questions are essential and seeking appropriate answers will help you create a daft overview of the hiring process.

6. Assign responsibility

In general, it is the responsibility of HR professionals to implement the hiring policy. However, depending on the approach your company takes to manage human capital, your professionals could include your in-house HR staff along with other torrid party professionals and the upper management.

7. Establish the scope

The scope of your hiring policy should be precise and clear, and it should apply to all the employees of the company. Whether you plan to recruit a top executive, manager or an entry-level employee, your hiring process must follow the exact procedures as mentioned in the hiring policy.

Therefore, you need to precisely explain the scope of your hiring policy to all the stakeholders involved in its formation and document the policy appropriately.

Enforcing the hiring policy

Advertise your hiring policy documents on the internal portal of the company, and make the policy accessible to every employee, including :

• Executives
• Recruiters and HR staff
• Hiring managers and supervisors

Make it compulsory for the supervisors to undergo thorough training in your hiring process. They should understand and follow the hiring process so that they can effectively hire new professionals for the company.

Inclusions in the hiring policy

Purpose:
Your hiring policy handbook should have a proper purpose, i.e. the reasons or the philosophy for the existence of your hiring policy. Your purpose will give a direction to your hiring policy.

Statement on inclusion and equal employment opportunities:
It must contain the statement on your commitment to inclusion and providing fair and equal employment opportunities to all. This statement will reflect your values and company culture.

Policies on former employees and related employees:
Your hiring policy should comprehensively explain the guidelines on hiring former employees and relatives of former or existing employees to minimize any conflict of interest at the workplace.

Hiring procedures:
Finally, the hiring policy should cover the steps in the hiring process, right from the first requisition for an open job position to the final onboarding of the candidate.

A comprehensive hiring policy and a proper hiring process will create a solid framework for all the hiring decisions in your organization across different channels and verticals.