All savvy business owners know it: To run a successful company, you need to employ the right people. It’s not enough to sell great products, offer quality services, or use the latest and most sophisticated technology — people are the real beating heart of a solid company.
This means recruiting the best people for the job is paramount to success. And, if you want to find and secure the best talent, a collaborative hiring strategy is essential.
Not quite sure what this strategy entails or how you can implement it? No worries – that’s what our guide is here to explain.
Collaborative hiring strategies: A definition
Generally speaking, your HR department (or external agency) is responsible for developing and executing your recruitment strategy. With “collaborative hiring,” you actively engage people from other departments to assist with identifying and selecting the right candidates. You have complete control over who is on your collaborative hiring team.
Depending on the role that needs to be filled, you might want to involve a sales leader, a marketing manager, or a tech expert. It’s entirely up to you.
Benefits of hiring collaboratively
A larger, higher-quality talent pool
Now that the traditional, in-office workplace as we know it is being replaced by hybrid or fully remote environments, almost every company can access a larger pool of global talent.
The downside of a global recruitment strategy is that, with a more extensive hiring pool to select from, you might find yourself pressed for time and resources. That’s when collaborative hiring can help.
When you build a collaborative hiring team composed of department leaders, you can easily split up the recruitment process by assigning specific tasks to specific people. This can make recruiting both local and global candidates quicker, simpler, and more successful. And, because different people bring different skills, qualities, and perspectives to the table, you’ll benefit from a more comprehensive and effective process.
Whether you’re looking for experts in key areas like intellectual property management, cloud technologies, data security, or email monitoring software, a collaborative approach to hiring can help you source the best people.
Higher employee retention rate
As the success of a company largely depends on its workforce, companies must avoid losing employees at a steady rate. Sometimes, updating your hiring process is the solution to high turnover risk.
Adopting a collaborative approach to recruitment is key to ensuring employees are happier, more satisfied, and more productive, as it shows them how much you value their skills, opinions, and suggestions.
Remember, when it comes to employee retention, you must also consider your HR talent – while they are usually on the other side of the table when it comes to hiring, it’s important to keep them top of mind when developing your retention strategy.
Cost savings
Together with tech like VoiP and WiFi calling you can dramatically slash business costs by rethinking your recruitment process.
Did you know the average cost of hiring just one employee is USD 1,633? Now, imagine if you had to build an entire team or even hire as few as three people. All these costs add up and become unsustainable in the long term.
However, by dividing up the tasks and responsibilities that are intrinsic to the hiring process, costs will go down, recruitment times will shrink, and employee engagement rates will soar.
Minimizing unconscious biases
Unconscious biases are prejudices concerning everything from a person’s religion to their sexual orientation, gender, ethnicity, appearance, disabilities, and more. We may not be aware of these biases, but we may unintentionally display them through our actions and decisions involving certain groups or individuals.
Unconscious biases within the hiring process are, unfortunately, common. However, when you involve several people in the process, it’s easier to catch any unintentional displays of bias and to focus strictly on candidates’ skills, experiences, and professional qualities.
7 steps to collaborative hiring
1. Get social
Inviting internal employees to join the recruitment process by promoting open roles on social media is an engaging and impactful way to update your acquisition process. For example, encouraging employees who would work closely with the new hire to promote the job vacancy on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn will give potential candidates a sense of what their team would look like, and a chance to ask your employees about the role and the company.
With millions of people using these channels on a daily basis, getting access to the right talent at the right time becomes a cinch.
2. Launch an employee referral program
Try your hand at an employee referral program – one of the pillars of collaborative recruitment.
With these programs, you can involve your team members and encourage them to refer candidates for specific job vacancies. Then, if one of the candidates gets hired, the referring employee receives some form of reward, such as a cash bonus, gift voucher, or vacation day.
3. Interview candidates online
Next time you need to schedule an interview with a potential candidate, make sure it takes place online as a part of your virtual onboarding.
This means the best person from your collaborative hiring team can log in from wherever they are and run the call with ease, confidence, and expertise.
Need two or more people from your company to run or attend the interview? No problem. Digital interviews can accommodate as many virtual users as you like.
4. Prioritize communication
Communication skills are essential in collaborative recruitment precisely because of the number of people involved. As the employees you choose to be part of your recruitment team will likely come from different areas and departments within your company, you must make this a priority.
For this reason, ensure you communicate clearly and often with your recruiting team to avoid confusion about, for example, VoIP number meaning, security protocols, or key aspects of the virtual hiring.
5. Consider using an ATS
Using an applicant tracking system, also known as an ATS, is another way to ensure your collaborative hiring strategy is efficient and hassle-free. ATS programs let you categorize all the applicants your recruitment team is planning to interview.
By doing so, candidates can be ranked, classified, and managed using the right keywords, allowing your team to identify the top applicants and schedule an interview with them.
6. Train your team
Do members of your collaborative hiring team ask you questions like “what is a virtual phone system?” Then you might need to introduce some training. However, remember training programs shouldn’t just be about technology.
Teaching your team how to conduct a proper interview, eliminate their unconscious biases, and communicate with candidates are equally important skills to master in collaborative recruitment.
7. Leverage the right tech
Technology, such as video conferencing tools, collaboration platforms, automated email, and automated onboarding webinars can simplify and streamline your collaborative hiring strategy.
Quote tools are another great way to expand your in-house tech landscape, especially if you work with external hiring agencies and often need to put together and share quotes and estimates with third parties.
Make your hiring process more successful with collaborative recruitment
If you want your company to remain productive, successful, and competitive, you need to foster an inclusive culture that ensures employees remain motivated and satisfied. What better way to hire and retain these team members than through a collaborative hiring strategy?
By engaging internal employees across your company to help you make important hiring decisions, you’ll benefit from a simpler, faster, and more cost-efficient recruitment process.
Globalization Partners’ Global Growth Platform™ automates key processes like employee contract generation and payroll setup to streamline the hiring and onboarding process of your global talent. Reach out to our team of HR experts to help you get started.
Want to learn more about how you can hire anyone, anywhere in minutes? Take a quick tour of our platform.
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About the author:
Richard Conn is the Senior Director for Demand Generation at 8×8, the best business phone platform with integrated contact center, voice, video, and chat functionality. Richard is an analytical & results-driven digital marketing leader with a track record of achieving major ROI improvements in fast-paced, competitive B2B environments. Richard Conn also publishes articles for domains such as PropTechNOW. Check out his LinkedIn profile here.