10 Important Hiring Tips for Startups in Post COVID Era

One major reason is that unless you don’t put effort into hiring the right talent, the operational functions suffer. Eventually, that impacts the organization’s performance. However, it is important to plan your hiring campaigns with a specific purpose when the economy is down amid the pandemic.

Right from the costs, several openings to creating an experience to retain your best employees, everything is important.

Recruitment remains powerful, always.

“I think HR will change drastically in the coming months, particularly in hiring and training,” says Emily Goodson, CEO of Culture Smart, an HR consulting firm.

And that’s proving to be the reality for most HR professionals. The studies by Guardian state the pandemic took away almost 195 million jobs around the world.

However, as a start-up company, if you can adjust and adapt to the current situation, now is the right time to hire the right candidates as there’s a large pool of job-seeking talent to enrich your organization with the best skills. Not to mention, today’s workforce is already gearing up to operate 100% remotely and still perform their best.

10 Important Hiring Tips for Startups in Post COVID Era

These days, candidates see the job market as an opportunity to temporarily alter their financial crisis. So, as a result, competition is becoming fiercer to find the right candidate. If you look at the market, right now — there’s a huge opportunity for start-ups to showcase that they can offer a lot more than just paychecks to their employees.

Having said that, in this article, we’ll see a blend of tips for hiring in the post-COVID-19 era and how start-ups can create an environment to retain their best employees.

We’ll also see how being flexible, creating a pleasant learning environment, and encouraging your employees to give their best impact on your business’s growth.

Here’s Are The 10 Important Tips For Hiring In The Post-COVID-19 Era:

• Use Technology for Streamlined Flow

If you dig deeper, you will understand that HR professionals have so much to do with paperwork. So, if they do not use the power of technology, there will be a pile of manual tasks knocking at your door.

Technology is one important aspect that helps HR professionals to manage communications, collaboration, and maintaining productivity, especially during these uncertain times.

With overwhelming changes like corporate office closures, temporary suspension of visa appointments with the government, HR teams have a lot to keep track of. By introducing advanced solutions for HR solutions, organizations can implement technology to combat the major challenges and shave streamlined services.

When you have a solution for managing your HR operations, it streamlines all your information processing. Your teams will have all the necessary tasks with a good track of various documentation throughout the process.

So, when there are instances of issues, this solution will help facilitate cross-team communication and functionality at the most normal capacity possible. Also, tech enables HR employees to self-serve and provides them the flexibility and speed to operate.

• Consider Remote Hiring

As per the latest data, applications for remote jobs rose by 105 percent only in March. Before the pandemic turned our lives upside down, it was easier to attract talent with events and meetups.  With more jobs going remote, it is time to move your hiring process online with virtual events, networking with different platforms to connect with the right candidates.

Many organizations like Hacker Rank hosted a two-day online fair where candidates could connect with tech companies from across the US.  Adopting software like SkillSurvey, LinkedIn Talent solutions, hosting events, sourcing, tracking, basically automating everything gets quick. For the online test, there are programs line CodinGame that generate gamified coding assessments.

Hiring Global Talent

If you are open to hiring global talent, use platforms like Uplers Talent Connect, Toptal, WeWorkRemotely. Hiring global talent doesn’t require start-ups to set up international entities for international hires. However, you need to create a mark for yourself so that candidates know that you are open to hiring and moving forward.

Create new JDs aligned to your hiring goals. After that, you can implement the process of remote hiring to attract, screen, recruit, and successfully onboard the employee. This way, remote hiring will save you much time and help you acquire the right talent.

• Be Flexible for Roles

A recent survey found that 7 out of 10 workers are more likely to change the job industry soon. Also, 1 in 5 remained unemployed because of the pandemic. Therefore, when we say that you need to be flexible for roles, considering career shifters is also an important task you would want to be open for. If you understand it thoroughly, career shifting is psychologically enriching for the person. So, you will be onboarding people who are culturally fit.

It can be harder for recruiters to spot relevant skills in a career shifter. However, as a start-up, you would want to shift the recruitment approach in the right way. So, while hiring career shifters, analyze where they could fit in. For example, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was a computer scientist. Having flexible jobs come with long-term goals as well.

Another classic example is the hospital industry. Hospitals hire people having more than one skill. The employees are then allocated the areas with the greatest need—for example, an emergency room, ICU, operation rooms, etc. So, overall, having a skilled workforce perform multiple tasks could be a great option as they help during emergency times.

• Focus On Skills

The primary focus while hiring remains majorly on ‘Specialist’ or ‘Years of experience.’ However, today when hiring the right talent is the ultimate goal, job titles and years of experience may restrict your search horizons.

Right now, your organization needs someone who is a multitasker – someone who can face adversity, communicate calmly, and handle the situation calmly. So, when you evaluate the candidate from a job title, your chances of finding the right person also decrease.

The first thing you can do to change is by writing a listing that emphasizes the problems that need to be solved. Instead of resumes, ask applicants to submit their work portfolio and review their achievements.

While conducting an interview, it is essential to gauge their mental stage. You could try asking questions like how they cope with the pandemic, what skills they want to learn in the future etc. Pay attention to how they interact, their body language, and how they think on the spot. This will help you understand if they’re a good fit or not.

• Redefine your ICPs Standards (Ideal Candidate Profiles)

Due to virtual work, or new technologies, the roles have been changed. So, it is time to redefine your ICPs as well. Because of layoffs, and fewer opportunities, right now, a good number of people are suffering.

Hence, it is time to redefine your new targets. Refining your ICPs will help you clearly in finding the right candidates adequately. When we say refine your ICP, it doesn’t mean transforming the entire set of requirements.

Here are some quick steps you can take to build ICP:

1. Define the job requirements and to-do list
2. Keep the company culture and vision in mind
3. Consider the performance of your top and bottom candidates
4. Pay attention to soft skills
5. Consider how you would connect with the candidates
6. Prepare worst-case scenarios to be prepared

After these steps, work on developing an ideal candidate profile. This strategy will help you attract quality candidate profiles, speed up the recruitment process, and eventually get the best candidates.

• Adopt AI-based Tools

It is never too late to implement AI in your organization. With the current pandemic situation, it has been harder for start-ups to stay afloat in such a competitive market. Of course, you would need to allocate some budget for investing in AI-based tools. But this is when you need to manage your costs smartly. But before that, let’s understand why having AI-based recruitment can be a win-win solution for your business.

Think about your current scenario. The entire process of sourcing the right candidate profiles from the talent pool, screening the profiles, mining the right candidate list, to hiring the right talent will take almost 10-15 days. Think of all the costs involved as well. Implementing AI could minimize the days and costs and give you the most suitable candidate for the job. Sounds interesting?

At the starting of the article, when we talked about the importance of adopting the technology, this is like leaping ten steps higher. AI takes your recruitment process to the next level by streamlining it, eliminating any extra steps, and ultimately giving you the results. There are many recruitment tools available in the market. You assess your needs and choose the one that suits you best.

• Improve your candidate’s experience

After you find your one ideal candidate, it is essential to provide them the experience that keeps them retained with your organization. Most organizations tend to skip this step the most. Or they are likely to stick to the old-school methods. The technique here is to view your candidates as potential long-term customers that you need. So, work on providing the best experience they crave for.

You could organize various engaging activities that help them sharpen their technical skills. You could also try engaging your team members with each other through various team-building activities. This helps them in being more creative and takes them one step closer to your organization. Introducing and encouraging a learning environment would also take your organization to the next level as you are investing in your assets.

As an instance, you need to identify the funnel and candidate experience process specifically for your organization. The most basic version includes pre-screen, screening, virtual interview, manager’s approval, and finally onboarding the employee.

Based on your organization’s goals and vision, you could introduce activities that could take place at each stage. You can focus on the five T’s when evaluating this. The five T’s include Tools, Techniques, Technologies, Talent, and Timeline.

• Train your Recruitment Team

One of the most significant assets of your organization is your recruiting team. After working things out for the hiring process, it is time to take an in-depth look at your team. You need to ensure that you have the right people operating for your job. Evaluate whether they will be able to perform with the changes you bring for hiring?

Also, how well they can communicate. If they lack at some point, it is also essential to measure their technical skill level, and will they be able to elevate with new platforms and processes? The key here is to build a skilled team that knows their job.

• Say Yes to Outsourcing

One needs to take care of many aspects before hiring a candidate, and this is one out of the many. Today more and more organizations are exploring outsourcing as one of their key sources for getting work done. Outsourcing can be your choice when your hiring volumes are lower. It could be a cost-effective option.

There are fantastic experts available to rely on for having the optimum talent. Before considering outsourcing, do your research and make sure that you are considering specializing in the type of recruitment you are looking for. Work on multiple bids and ensure you are making the right choice.

There are many reasons like higher volume of requirement, locational challenges, which enables companies to outsource the work. People also have clients that outsource their entire teams. One biggest benefit of outsourcing talent is that it eliminates the struggle with recruitment, extra costs, and technology. If needed, you could also outsource a small portion of our work to gauge the capabilities of your outsourcing partner.

• Build a talent pool and stay in touch with quality candidates

Today it is important to have a solid pipeline of prospects. Because you never know when you will need a new profile. So, having an established pipeline of candidates can help you rebound recruitment whenever needed. It is a part of having a powerful employer strategy. The critical part is to touch with the ones you feel you would want shortly.

Over to You

It is essential to understand that not all your employees are the same. You need to discover their abilities discover and nurture their skills. Maybe they never know what skills they had. In this situation, offer educational courses or mentorship programs. It is more like an investment to bettering your team that will benefit your start-up in the long run.

Recruitment is the ever-evolving branch of the business. So, it is more important than ever to pay heed to this department. It could be the first step towards the success you need to thrive.

The pandemic has made us all rethink in terms of what’s possible and adopt the new normal. It may seem scary, but you need to redefine it innovatively. So, tighten your seat belts, get passionate, and you are just one step away from finding your best candidate.

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