Are you a recruiter or HR manager dreading the next time you have to begin the recruitment process? Does it cause you stress and anxiety?
Recruiting top talent doesn’t have to be such an anxious procedure for the people involved—and it should be even less so for recruiters, who don’t have as much to lose in the process.
So, how can you ensure that you aren’t getting stressed every time a vacancy in your company opens up and you need to start the recruitment cycle again?
Here are six methods you can follow to ensure that recruitment methods are painless for recruiters and HR managers.
Choose Who You Want to Target
One of the main reasons work—not just recruitment work—can become stressful is if you haven’t planned in advance. Not having a plan will make you feel lost and frazzled. It’s also a very wasteful way of working.
Instead of leaving yourself to flounder when a vacancy appears in your healthcare marketing company, plan potential roles well in advance.
Look at the current job descriptions of the people in your company—make a workplace organization chart using a flow chart maker, if necessary—and frame the profile and job requirements you would need were these employees to leave.
This way, you can make a handful of updates to the job descriptions when the vacancy arises and have it ready to share and upload to job search websites.
Create a Set of Standard Questions
While many job seekers have access to a resume guide or the top resume writing services to create their resumes, you don’t really have anyone else to turn to when setting up interviews.
And though you acknowledge that the interview process is nerve-wracking for job seekers, it can be just as stressful for recruiters, as well. But there is a way to make the interview process easier.
While different job roles will require you to ask specific questions pertaining to those positions, there are also a few set questions you can ask all candidates.
This is a great way of decreasing your workload, and to ensure that you have a consistent set of replies to judge candidates against.
You can rate the candidates according to the answers you get from them—this will make the vetting process easier for you to distinguish between candidates who deserve to move on in the process, and those who don’t.
You can then ask more open-ended questions that will clarify how well a candidate fits the particular role you are recruiting for.
Use a Calendar App
There are a number of tools you can use to make the interview process much easier—one of them is a calendar app that makes it much easier to schedule interviews.
Because there is nothing more time-consuming that scheduling meetings and interviews. It can be draining and stressful to keep looking at your calendar and checking when you’re free, and when you’re not, so that you can hold interviews.
And the more stressed you are, the more likely you are to make mistakes. If you end up with a scheduling conflict, or linking to sites that sell online courses instead of to a job post, you will end up becoming even more stressed, and will not look forward to the interview process.
Instead of leaving anything to chance, look online for calendar apps or for a WordPress plugin that will automatically display available slots to interested interviewees.
These apps also send you notifications well in advance so you can prepare yourself for the interviews.
Using the right tools will help you save time and energy, that can be better spent preparing to interview candidates.
Take a Mental ‘Break’
You can be as organized as possible but when it comes to conducting a face-to-face or phone interview, if your mind is still at ‘work’ or thinking of home business ideas, instead of relaxed, you will end up having a difficult interview.
And remember, you are holding an interview with a person who is even more anxious about this whole process than you are. If you aren’t ‘there’ at the interview, you’re going to make it so much harder for the job seeker.
Instead of working on your projects right up until the moment of an interview, take a mental break just before the interview is about to begin.
Consider meditating or listening to some calming music before an interview starts—for at least 5-10 minutes before—so that when the interviewee arrives, you are in the right headspace to speak to them.
Avoid Distractions Before, and During, Interviews
In general, you should avoid all distractions before and during interviews. Don’t use your break time to play a quick phone game, or to design custom wall art. These may be calming for you but they will distract your mind from the matter at hand.
Avoid looking at social media before meeting interviewees—social media may be informative but it can be very dark and negative. That is not the kind of mental place you want to be in when you’re meeting a candidate.
This may seem basic, but when an interview is happening, ensure that you remove all distractions. So, turn off your mobile phone—don’t just keep it on silent because it will keep buzzing. If you are near your laptop, turn it off, put it to sleep, or at the very least, mute the notifications.
Keeping yourself in the moment will make it much easier for you and your interviewee to complete the process.
Don’t Be Critical of Yourself
Sometimes an interview doesn’t go well. The candidate may not have had the best personality; there was a completely unforeseen incident that became a huge distraction.
Your app went down and you ended up double-booking. Or the company scheduled site maintenance at the time when you wanted to show your interviewee the website.
There are numerous reasons why something can go wrong at an interview but that doesn’t mean you have to hold that against yourself forever. One bad day doesn’t make you a bad worker, recruiter, or manager. It just means you had one bad day.
Take a moment to wallow in self-pity about how terrible everything was but give yourself time to assess what happened in the interview. Analyze what you could do to make the process better for you and future interviewees and adapt accordingly.
Learn from the experience and be kind to yourself—you didn’t intentionally do anything wrong, after all.
Improve Your Recruitment Process
With these tips, you should be able to make your recruitment and interview process much less stressful for yourself, and for your interviewees.