How to Hire More People Faster Even in a Weird Job Market

Know why it’s increasingly difficult to hire more people? According to Tim Sackett, CEO of the Lansing, MI-based staffing firm HRUTech.com, U.S. birth rates have been declining.

In a presentation during SHRM 24 in Chicago, he said employers should also be concerned about other converging demographic issues that will continue to impact the workforce: the ongoing retirement of baby boomers, what he described as inadequate immigration policies and low unemployment.

“What we know as TA (talent acquisition) professionals and … hiring leaders, once you get under 6% unemployment, it’s sticky, right? It’s hard to find really good, talented people. … When you get under 4%, it becomes painful,” he said.

Ready for Hiring Difficulties?

Sackett warned HR pros to prepare for potential future hiring difficulties even if you’re not currently experiencing them. If your executives ever say out loud that company revenue may be suffering because you need to hire more people, your current recruitment practices need to be critically examined.

He said that to hire more people, it’s most likely going to involve an updated Software as a Service (Saas) solution and you have to be willing to experience several product demos (and willing to tell a vendor when you have no intention of buying).

An Effective ‘Machine’ to Hire More People

To hire more people and reduce your time to fill by 40%, Sackett encouraged HR to:

• Change to a candidate-first, mobile-friendly application process: “When’s the last time you applied to one of your jobs on a mobile device [using the Wi-Fi] in a McDonald’s parking lot?” he challenged the audience. “Ask somebody who doesn’t work for you to sit in the car seat next to you on a mobile device and do it [and] time them.”
• Eliminate roadblocks: He highlighted the need to remove unnecessary steps in the application process, such as mandatory profile creation on the “careers” section of your website before applying. Sackett shared that 68% of candidates abandon applications when faced with such barriers.
• Use another job advertising engine besides Indeed and LinkedIn: A programmatic job advertising company like JobAdX, Pandologic, Appcast, Recruitics and Joveo may be more cost-effective.
• Closely monitor hiring processes: Sackett encouraged HR pros to measure how many visitors to your careers page become applicants; how many candidates it takes to get to the interviews, screenings, offers, and hires you need; your recruiting capacity; and ratio of source of hire to the cost of source of hire.
• Test changes out first to see if they work: Try any new process intended to hire more people with a temporary trial involving just one hiring manager, division or location. “Think of all the beta stuff that we get thrown at us, even a LinkedIn thing where … they’re like, ‘Oh, we just rolled it out to a few people to test to see if it actually works.’ … If it works, great. If it fails, also great because we learned a lot, and it was only a test, right? We didn’t put all our eggs in one basket,” said Sackett.
• Avoid excessive customization of applicant tracking software: “What you’re asking [the vendor] is … ‘Hey, will you break your software so that three years from now I’ll be super [angry] at you and [switch to] something else?'” he said.

Candidate Engagement and Chatbots

Additionally, to hire more people, HR must rethink its approach to candidate engagement. To illustrate how recruiters often ask for too much information from a candidate too soon in the application process, Sackett mock-proposed marriage to an attendee in the front row.

“We immediately go, ‘What’s your Social Security Number? Have you ever been to prison? What’s your blood type? Are you on drugs?‘ [They’re] like, ‘I just want to know if maybe I would want to work for you. Why are you asking me to marry you?'” he said. This approach, he argued, can be off-putting to potential candidates and hinder efforts to hire more people.

“We have to start acting like marketers, where little by little we gather the information that we really need,” Sackett continued, noting that the way HR chatbot technology interacts with applicants has really improved thanks to conversational AI developed by companies like Paradox, Fountain, Dalia, Humanly and Sapia.ai.