HRMD: How to Diagnose Your HR Problems, and What to Prescribe

Did you know that the Tower of Pisa started leaning before they’d even gotten to the fourth story? It’s eight stories tall.

Just as those 12th-century stonemasons would have benefited from a bit of distance, getting perspective on your recruitment efforts is vital. If you’re not taking the time to step back and assess your strengths and weaknesses, you’re missing out on the opportunity to improve—and could be making costly mistakes in the process.

That’s easier said than done, though – especially for smaller HR teams or lone HR managers. Who’s got the time to diagnose and solve HR problems when there’s so much other work to keep on top of?

We’ve saved you the time and effort. Here’s our fast track to an HR doctorate with three common ailments, along with the prescriptions we’d recommend.

• Symptom: Slow Time-to-Hire

Does it feel like filling vacancies is taking longer than it should? You can easily benchmark your time-to-hire against the average for your industry here. While that data doesn’t reflect changes brought about by the pandemic, it does give you a rough timeline to aim for.* If your time-to-hire is significantly longer than the industry average, you’ll risk higher candidate drop-off rates.

Prescription: Audit and streamline your hiring process. 

Take stock of the tools you’re using and the processes you’re employing throughout the recruitment timeline. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you making use of automation wherever possible and eliminating repetitive tasks?
• Do you have a strong CRM or ATS platform to help you keep track of and communicate with candidates?
• Is your online application process as straightforward as it could be?
• Is there a clearly defined recruitment timeline for each vacancy?

Make sure you can confidently answer each of those with a ‘yes’, and you’ll be addressing the root cause.

• Symptoms: Missing Out on or Losing Top Talent

Whether your competition seems to be nabbing the hires you wish you’d made – or they leave within the first few months – you might have a problem with candidate engagement and onboarding.

Hiring and onboarding a single employee costs an average of $4000, so you won’t want to waste your efforts. 69 percent of employees that experienced a strong onboarding process were more likely to stay at the company for three years. Here’s how to make that happen.

Prescription: Automate Engagement and Improve Onboarding

Automated communication doesn’t have to mean low-quality, robotic communication. Look for engagement tools that make it possible to create tailored emails and texts depending on application status. You’ll be able to maintain regular contact with a smaller upfront investment of time.

The same ‘do it less often, but do it right’ philosophy applies to onboarding. Audit your current onboarding process to ensure that it consists of repeatable steps and checklists that cover all the bases for new hires, but that it also makes room for their individual needs.

That sounds like a difficult balance to strike, but there are some straightforward best practices that’ll keep you on track. Check out this onboarding guide on our blog, updated for 2021.

• Symptom: Hires Aren’t the Right Fit

There are few things more disheartening for an HR manager than a bad hire, especially at the end of a lengthy recruitment process. It’s not good for morale, and it can also cost businesses an incredible amount of money.

That could be down to a less-than-rigorous screening process.

Prescription: Consider Screening Tools and Revisit Job Descriptions

We’re not the screening experts, though, so we’ll let our friends at Accurate take this one:

Background checks are one way small and medium-size businesses are improving the quality of new hires and ensuring the best candidate is selected for the job.

By keeping you informed every step of the way, employee screening providers (such as Accurate Background) are dedicated to helping employers and candidates find the right fit, making the hiring process quicker and easier.

Whether your goal is to reduce time-to-hire, improve quality-of-hire, or hire at scale, background checks can help.

Check out this free ebook, “Background Checks 101,” to learn the ins and outs of employment background checks.

A Clean Bill of Health

With that, you’re now equipped to tackle some of the most common problems HR teams face when it comes to hiring. It’s not an exhaustive list of diagnoses, but it does cover some of the most frustrating and expensive challenges you’re likely to deal with.

If you’re interested in a post-doctorate, we’ve got plenty of free educational content on our blog. For a closer look at choosing the kinds of recruitment technology mentioned in this post, we’ve got a buyer’s guide (which is also free) here.

*If you’ve got the time and want to parse through the latest raw data, you can check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly ‘Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey’ here.