5 Hiring Mistakes to Avoid in 2023

Toxic work culture is the driving force behind the Great Resignation, which is projected to continue well into 2023. As these job seekers evaluate their employment options—and other passive candidates continue to grind in unhealthy environments while waiting for the right opportunity—it’s more important than ever for talent acquisition teams to center the candidate experience by streamlining the hiring process, prioritizing what matters most to job seekers, and treating candidates like human beings instead of statistics.

Here are five obsolete hiring practices that talent attraction professionals can let go of in 2023 to reinvent and reinvigorate their recruitment process.

1. Stop Forcing Candidates To Fill Out A Long Application As The First Step (Seriously!)

Sending candidates straight from a job ad to an impersonal, lengthy application form can be a huge turn-off, and causes many job seekers to simply continue their job search elsewhere. Luckily, the solution to this problem is fairly simple. Use virtual hiring events as CTA instead of a time-consuming application.

By engaging with candidates through virtual hiring events much earlier in the hiring process, you can dramatically improve the experience and boost engagement. Our research found that 76% of candidates who attended a Brazen event said they are more likely to pursue a job opportunity when there is the option to join a virtual event as the first step in the process. Driving job ad traffic to virtual events can attract more candidates and keep them engaged longer, setting you up for success later in the recruiting funnel.

2. Stop Losing Candidates Inside Your CRM. Keep Tabs on Your Talent.

If you are using an application near the top of your funnel and continue to do so, you might inadvertently lose talent in your candidate relationship management (CRM) tool or applicant tracking system (ATS) due to automated filters you likely set up when there were more applicants per role than you could ever dream of screening personally.

Don’t neglect your talent database. Instead, keep your community engaged through regular communication, invitations to informational events, and updates about new job openings. Communication is the primary differentiator of a good candidate experience, according to the Talent Board’s benchmark research.

Prioritizing an exciting and engaging candidate experience can help. “Our recruitment focus is on building relationships,” said Cheryl Petersen, Associate Principal and Regional Talent Resourcing Leader for Arup in the Americas Region. “It's about getting people to understand our work environment, and letting candidates know what we have to offer, particularly if they’ve never heard of ARUP before.”

3. Stop Missing Your Silver Medal Candidates. Reengage Them!

For every new employee you hire, there are likely at least a couple of candidates who seemed like a good fit for your organization but not for that particular position. Re-engage with these ‘silver medal candidates and nurture those relationships to build a healthy pipeline for future openings. This is a perfect opportunity to share invitations to informational and culture-oriented virtual events, as well as notices of other job openings that might fit their skills.

Passive talent in your pipeline is another overlooked opportunity. Create a strategy for cultivating relationships with passive candidates. It might look similar to the one we suggested above, with virtual event invitations and relevant job postings.

Lori Burt, Executive Director for Talent Acquisition from City of Hope talked about how her hiring team optimized their recruitment practices during our recent Healthcare hiring tips webinar,

“So this year we'll be launching a CRM, hopefully with a chat bot. Both of those tools help keep candidates interested. Again, it's all going to be about candidate engagement. We [also] use registrants from other Brazen events who showed up or maybe didn't show up at the last event and we just keep pinging them. We just launched the Employee Referral site, so we have all of that information that we can capture too, and all of those people are added into our invitation list moving forward. Most of those people didn’t apply [in the first place], but they did give us a resume or enough information where we can go through and screen them for specific roles. It not only allows us to reach out to those applicants ahead of a hiring event, but it also helps us reach out to those candidates after the event if we know that there are really talented people in there who maybe didn't get the offer this time, but could in a later round or for another job.”

Data can also help you keep track of which conversations were had with different candidates, as well as where they left off for long-term candidate nurturing. 

As Bobbi Oxendine, Senior Manager for Diversity Hiring at Uber said during their diversity hiring webinar (click here to watch it on-demand!), "one of the strengths of using Brazen is how much data you can get from those events. We're a data-driven company, so we utilize the data about how many people clicked into our virtual hiring event, how many people registered, and how many people showed up. Furthermore, we also use the data to track how many people engaged with our representatives and core services leadership team who were a part of the event. We used those notes to send back to them to say, 'Here's who you engaged with, and here are some of the notes if you need to refresh on what those conversations were'. There's so much power in the Brazen tool, and I will always give so much credit to my coworker Michelle Thompson (Global Sourcing Leader for Uber), for having the forethought and the foresight to bring this tool into Uber."

4. Stop Only Focusing On Short-Term Hiring Needs. Instead, Play the Long Game. 

Today’s top TA teams need to always be sourcing and nurturing talent in your pipeline. Always. No matter how many positions you need to fill this week, this month, or this quarter, longer-term planning and strategies are incredibly important, and you'll need to keep your hiring process consistent with your employer branding from start to finish. This is especially true if there are specific demographic, ethnic, religious, social, or marginalized groups you want to target. 

“Nowadays, companies are really being held accountable for the things that they say and advertise, especially by their prospective candidates” Michelle Thompson, Global Sourcing Leader for Uber explained in a 2022 webinar HireBlackNow. “Part of the challenge that we face at Uber is to match the candidate experience (i.e. the questions asked, the makeup of the hiring panel, interviewer styles, etc.) to the expectations of the diversity candidates we worked so hard to attract, so that a base comfort level is established from start to finish, and job seekers know that we are making efforts to embody our DEIB goals across the candidate journey.”

Oxendine agrees: "I am a long-term thinker, so everything that I do is set for both now and the long game that you have to play, especially as we continue to have a talent shortage. If you do the things that give you a hit now, but don't help you in the long term, then you are already behind because in some areas the talent just is not there long-term. In terms of events, while some of our leaders look at our events as a way to grab people right now, I look at them as an effective tool for community building. Hiring events through Brazen are more than just hiring events; they are an opportunity for us to introduce ourselves or introduce you to a community of people that you may not have engaged with before.

Did we have some short-term impacts? Absolutely. But for me it is building that community or pipeline, however you want to think about it, to engage with both now and on ongoing basis. Because in six months or a year someone may be in a different space than when they first came to our event. If they listened to us and they liked Uber then, they'll still think of us when they're ready to make a move. As long as we keep engaging them consistently, we'll be supporting the pipelines and the communities that we built for the long term. You simply can't ghost people anymore". 

5. Stop Using The Same Drawn-Out Hiring Process From 2019. Speed Up!

Closing in on three years since the beginning of the pandemic, there is no returning to any normal we knew before. What candidates want has forever changed, and employers everywhere need to embrace and adapt to our new normal in order to remain relevant with candidates and effectively compete for top talent.

So what can you do? First off, don’t assume candidates will bend over backward or wait forever to work for you. In a tight talent market, employers need to do more (and offer more) to stand out. Indeed research found that only 37% of candidates hear back from a potential employer within a week and 44% hear back within a few weeks. Moving faster can set your organization apart from competing employers. TalentBoard research found that if you get an offer out within ONE WEEK of the final interview, candidate experience increases by a whopping 67%.

Virtual hiring events are the most effective way to accelerate the hiring process across industries. Our research found 73% of recruiters say their time to hire with virtual hiring events is as fast or faster than in-person hiring events. And many Brazen customers are saving time with virtual hiring. AdventHealth cited virtual events as saving an average of 10 days across all their job requisitions.

Avoiding Hiring Mistakes in 2023

By steering away from ineffective hiring practices at the top of the year, your TA team can attract more quality candidates and build a more engaging candidate experience so you can more easily identify and hire candidates that are a good fit for your open positions and your organization. As competition for top talent remains high—and candidate preferences drive recruiting outcomes—employers can’t afford to hang on to outdated practices. 

Updating your hiring strategy to leverage virtual recruiting events, clear obstacles in your recruiting funnel, and speed up the hiring process will help you meet (and crush!) your 2023 hiring goals. 

Like this post? Try these!

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

• How to Accelerate Your Hiring Process with Virtual Hiring Events
• Work Smarter, Not Harder; Using Technology to Amplify Great Candidate Experiences

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