5 Hiring Best Practices to Start in 2023

According to the latest Labor Department report, there are still more jobs than people to fill them: about 1.7 positions open for every available worker. 

Starting a new year in such a tight talent market—combined with the knowledge that organizations tend to increase hiring in January—paints a challenging landscape for talent acquisition teams that don’t have updated strategies for staying competitive.

2023 Hiring Best Practices 

Hopefully, you’ve made changes to your hiring process in response to the pandemic, the Great Resignation, and the rise of hybrid work arrangements.

Now, as we prepare to start another new year, it’s time to adjust your hiring strategies further to enhance the candidate experience, increase engagement, and prioritize speed.

In 2023, it's time to: 

• 1) Invite Candidates to Talk With You Before They Apply
• 2) Host Virtual Recruiter Office Hours
• 3) Connect Candidates to Your Employees
• 4) Streamline Your Interview to Offer Process
• 5) Start Hosting One-and-Done Hiring Events

Read on to learn why these 5 strategies will modernize your hiring process in 2023.

1) Invite Candidates to Talk With You Before They Apply

There are many ways to offer candidates opportunities to engage with you early. Two of the most effective are recruiting chatbots and hosting virtual informational events. A recruiting chatbot can answer questions 24/7 and collect basic contact info so you can follow up with candidates. Informational events with recruiters and hiring managers allow candidates to learn about your organization and its culture and ask questions. You can even host virtual events for specific roles or departments, to target certain talent niches.

Our research found that nearly all (98%) of candidates who attended a virtual hiring event on Brazen said they are as likely or more likely to pursue a job opportunity when there is the option to join a virtual event as the first step in the process.

2) Host Virtual Recruiter Office Hours

Holding regular virtual recruiter office hours is a newer trend that gets great results in terms of enhancing the candidate experience and boosting engagement. Advertising set office hours allows candidates to meet on their time and terms and with a mobile-friendly platform like Brazen, candidates can easily hop on a virtual event wherever they are—from home, on a train, or even in their car during their lunch break. They don’t even need to download an app.

Recruiter office hours are also easy for your team to manage. You can staff these virtual events with a few as 1-2 recruiters on rotating shifts, and recruiters can multi-task between candidates if traffic has a lull. Many large employers, like Uber, are using this strategy and are so pleased with the results that they plan to scale them up in 2023.

3) Connect Candidates to Your Employees

Over the years, job seekers have consistently reported that they trust an organization’s employees to tell more accurate and transparent stories about culture and the employee experience than recruiters and hiring managers. Because of this, putting candidates in direct contact with current employees can be an effective way to showcase your organizational culture and build trust with candidates. As a bonus, this strategy aids recruitment marketing and supports diversity hiring. It reinforces that your message is real and not just a slogan or an advertising campaign.

Some of the most effective virtual hiring events to connect candidates with employees are:

• Employee Resource Group events. These types of events can center on organizational culture or tackle bigger social issues.
• Day in the Life events. These offer a “behind the scenes” look at what it’s actually like to work at your organization, with stories and testimonials from real employees. Add a live Q&A session with an employee panel for added engagement!
• Meet our Leaders events. Events that highlight your organization’s leaders are attractive to lots of different types of candidates and can be used as a way to engage further with talent you first met at an industry event, multi-employer career fair, or through other channels. (This is another strategy Uber is using to get results.)

4) Streamline Your Interview to Offer Process

The first step in streamlining your hiring process is to pay attention to what happens between the first interview and the job offer, for successful candidates. Often, this is where the most lag occurs. Look for opportunities to tighten up this timeline and make it as short and sweet as possible.

Brazen customers use virtual recruiting to speed things up. “We track 60 different metrics, so we can see exactly what’s going on, and we have seen our times drop by over 10 days since adopting virtual recruiting,” said Cathy Henesey, VP of Talent Acquisition at AdventHealth in a recent case study.”When you add that up across the number of hires we do each year, that’s significant, and that’s 100% because of virtual. To be able to move the needle in such a measurable way makes a real difference in what we do—every day a position is not filled is very expensive. And shortening that time to hire also enables our organization to better serve more people.”

Other strategies for streamlining the middle and bottom of your recruiting funnel include the following.

• With each candidate, conduct a minimum viable number of interviews with only the most essential interviewers.
• Evaluate candidates and make offers as fast as possible. (The longer they wait, the higher the chance you’ll lose their attention.)
• Educate hiring managers on what the change in talent pool means for the hiring and offer process. (This clears a big barrier to speeding up the process.)
• Don’t wait for the ‘best’ candidate if you have a great one. If you interviewed someone who would be great now, don’t wait to see if someone better comes along. Educating hiring managers is critical to making this approach work so ensure they understand the need to compete with speed.

5) Start Hosting One-and-Done Hiring Events

One-and-done hiring events emerged as a way to condense the hiring process down to as little as a week or two, including event planning and promotion, conducting the event (with screening and interviews) and even extending job offers during the event or within a day or two after.

Speeding up the hiring process like this has loads of benefits.

• Improves the candidate experience
• Helps control hiring costs
• Frees up time and energy to focus on building relationships
• Helps you better compete for top talent

Start 2023 Hiring Strong

The right planning now will help your team hit the ground running in 2023. While it may take some work to educate your hiring managers on the importance of these shifts, the effort will be worthwhile when they experience the results. Using these best practices to streamline and speed up the hiring process will help you improve the candidate experience, compete for top talent, and hire your organization’s future leaders.

Like this post? Try these!

• 5 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid in 2023
• How to Accelerate Your Hiring Process with Virtual Hiring Events

• Don't Let Your Application Form Narrow Your Talent Funnel

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