Skip to content

How to Find Top-Tier Candidates for Your Next Hiring Cycle

“Be curious. Use data. Leverage imagination. Be an expert. Be an enthusiast. Be authentic. Know your competition.” – Jim Stroud, HR Consultant

It’s common practice for companies today to track and measure various metrics when it comes to their hiring process. These metrics help them make smarter hiring decisions, which ultimately play to the strengths of the organization. Most frequently tracked metrics or KPIs are things like the source of the hire, the time it took the hire, and the number of applicants in that process. The quality of the hire is also gaining traction as a metric for many recruitment agencies and employers alike.

There are obviously many benefits to knowing these metrics and understanding where this quality of hire comes from. In the long run, it can help an employer consistently source such top-tier talent over time. This article will aim to walk you through how to improve the quality of the candidate hires consistently and get top-tier candidates every, single time.

Before you can improve the quality of your hires and get those top-tier candidates on your roster, you need a plan. To carry out this plan, you need to assess where you currently stand with the hiring strategy. Once you understand the quality of hires, you can set goals for the future. This can be a six-month plan or a one-year plan or even longer. This first step of analyzing and planning is essential to carry out a quality hiring process, successfully.

Work with Hiring Manager to Find Top-Tier Candidates

Getting on the same page as the hiring manager can work wonders for your hiring initiative.

Putting an Intuitive Hiring Process in Place

As an employer, you need to keep in mind that candidates who are on the hunt for a job have many options to consider. They will want to go for a job that compliments and lets their strengths shine. Your hiring process needs to be sensitive to this. If the hiring process is too long, daunting or requires them to fill out 100 pages of forms, they will drop that option. When you want top-tier candidates that thinks on their feet, your recruitment process needs to be lean.

Cooperate with the Hiring Manager

Running along a parallel road as the previous point, you need a collaborative hiring process. The hiring manager is often the first point of contact for candidates. They have seen it all and done it all when it comes to the recruitment process. One very simple way to improve the hiring process is to get on the same page as the hiring manager. When you work together in a fluid and dynamic manner, you both can line up hiring expectations and best practices to produce ideal results. A good place to start is by defining the job role, qualifications and benefits for one. This brings us to our next important point.

Set a Clear Definition for the Job

If there is one thing that top-tier candidates hate is vague job descriptions. People want to know exactly what they are signing up for. Hence, everyone would be better off if you provide a clear overview of what the job entails, what the company expects and all those little details in between. By being precise, you create a targeted approach to a niche audience, therefore attracting only the candidates you are looking for, instead of a mountain of applications unrelated to the position. In that way, it serves a dual purpose. You want to give candidates the job description, accurate title, benefits, salary, work culture, and about-section for the company and what you expect from them.

"Your human talent is your most important talent."

- Carla Harris, Wall Street Banker

Collect Pre-Hire and Post-Hire Data

This is another preemptive step that is crucial to the improvement of the overall process. By collecting pre-hire and post-hire data, you can measure performance and make better decisions going forward. As a bonus, you are making decisions with factual, hard data, which is a sure-fire way to improve the quality of your recruitment.

A good example of this is how predictive analytics can be used to screen candidates with an assignment. On the other side of the fence, we have post-hire data which comes in the form of manager performance reviews, bonuses, employee performance metrics and so on.

Leverage Automation and AI

With digitization taking a front-row seat in this post-pandemic era, more and more companies are turning to solutions like artificial intelligence and automation to speed up business processes. The same is true for hiring and recruitment. AI solutions allow you to take advantage of machine learning, which in turn can aid with job ads, resume screenings, candidate assessments and so on.

With automation, you can streamline processes like recruitment and even reference checking! A perfect example of this is Credibled, which is a cutting-edge automated reference checking web application that allows you to fast-track reference checking while adhering to industry best practices.

Organizing a trial day can help both you and the candidate.

Organize Trial Day for Your Top-Tier Candidate

Organize a Trial Day for the Candidate

You know how we test-drive a car before we invest a significant chunk of money in it? Well, why can’t the same be true for employment and recruitment? If you think about it, hiring someone is a long-term investment. We recommend that you initiate a trial day with the candidate. This will not only give the candidates a sense of what exactly they will be doing, but it will also allow you to assess them. It’s a win-win.

This is also a great opportunity to see how they fit in with the rest of the team and the company culture. You would be surprised how much you can learn about a person after working just one day with them. Think of it as an on-the-job interview.

Polish the Onboarding Process

You know what they say about first impressions, right? You only get one. A big reason why candidates often jump ship so quickly after being recruited is that they had a sub-par onboarding experience. It is the first working interaction they have with the company and it tells them how much or how little the company cares about them.

By polishing up your onboarding process, you can boost your employee retention numbers and hang on to those top-tier candidates.

Review and Improve

Once you have implemented all the changes and have allowed a few months to pass, it’s time to reassess. Take some time to evaluate how well all the steps put into place are working and see what might be lacking. It’s pretty much what you did at the first step. After you have an idea of where you stand and what needs improving, get to planning!