It’s no secret that there is a sharp increase in the number of people seeking new jobs. With tertiary students graduating in a few months, there will be a fresh influx of new blood that’s entering our job market in Singapore.
As a recruitment agency in Singapore, that deals with manpower services BGC Group has seen a 200-300% increase in the number of job applicants, since the start of the circuit breaker. If your company has been thinking about hiring new talents who are previously missing in numbers, now is the best time capitalise on a larger talent pool. Below, we outline the best hiring secrets that HR professionals should not miss out on!
1. Defining the job’s purpose and function
The first step to hiring the best talent is to first understand who you are looking for. Begin this by forecasting your company’s growth in manpower and services.
Some questions to help you get started are:
Are you planning on increasing the number of employees?
Which department requires most of the numbers?
How is the turnover rate for the organization like?
Is diversity important to the organization? If so, how are you going to achieve it?
What kind of affirmative action policies will you adopt and how transparent will you be with the public?
When considering the business services you offer, you should think about the relationship between a department’s function and cost to the leadership team’s ideal business goals. As a hiring manager, you may want to consider:
How much of your revenue are you planning to budget for your employees’ salary?
Are you planning to develop more services targeting a different demographic?
What kind of talent do you need for said services?
Once you have answered these questions, you should have a rough idea on the function that new hires are expected to fulfil under your employment.
2. Assessing your prospective employees
Candidates should be assessed in three ways; their job, team and organisation based competencies. This is to ensure that the employees you eventually hire are able to work both independently and collaboratively as a team while being a good fit with the company culture.
A. The importance of job-based competencies
Job-based competencies are an important metric to assess the candidate’s fit for the job. It represents how well a future employee will be able to accomplish and meet the expectations of his role. To measure job-based competencies, you should look at the candidates skills and experiences. Do they have the right skills for the relevant job scope? If not, will their existing skills allow them to pick it up quickly? Looking through their resume, do they have any unique skills or experiences that would bring value to the jobs?
B. The importance of team-based competencies
In a collaborative environment, it is important to hire candidates who excel in team-based competencies. This will ensure that the candidates are able to integrate smoothly and work well with the current systems present in the team. During the interview process, ask the candidates what kind of teams they worked in before and if they enjoyed it. Through this, you will be able to get a sense of the type of working environment they are looking for. Is the candidate suitable for the agile, cooperative team environment your company offers? Or are they more suitable to handle independent projects that require determination and self discipline?
C. The importance of organization-based competencies
While employees provide the company with their service, jobs are a two way street. No candidate would want to work in a firm with no advancement or learning opportunities. You should enquire about what candidates are looking for in their work experiences and consider if your organisation can provide for them, assessing them for their organization-based competencies. After all, a good working culture that fits the employee results in more productive workers and a lower turnover rate. With the circuit breaker in effect, it is ill advised to conduct face to face interviews. Instead, you should be digitizing your assessment process.
Learn more about conducting digital recruitment.
3. On-boarding the hire
Once you’ve chosen the candidates to hire, the next critical step is to onboard them. Many companies vastly underestimate the importance of this step, expecting the new hire to be “plug and play”. Even when they make an effort to integrate the hire, it is mostly just making the necessary introductions and hoping for everything to work out. This is not optimal as it doesn’t reduce the friction of the employee’s integration process and much is dependent on the specific people that the employee meets.
To improve job satisfaction and reduce turnover rate, HR should set up an integration plan for each new hire. One such way could be assigning them mentors that will help to familiarise them with the company’s processes and people. This will allow the new hire to have a familiar face in the company, allowing them to navigate the company culture seamlessly. An example of such methods can be found in Google which assigns a peer buddy to help build a new hire’s social network as well as perform routine check-ins.
4. Reviewing the process
The most effective way to conduct the recruitment process is to continuously review it. As a hiring manager, you should actively reach out to your employees for feedback on the hiring process. What were the reasons why they chose to work with your organization? What did they think could be improved on?
Another aspect that many companies forget about are those that rejected offers. Considerable effort should be made to understand why they rejected their offer. Was it a competitor that offered better benefits? This will allow you to tailor your recruitment strategies to the candidates that you are looking for and improve retention rates. Glassdoor is a good website to conduct reviews like this! Learn more about improving the engagement rate on Glassdoor here.
It is best to leave the intricate details of hiring to expert recruiters. Let BGC Group take over your hiring needs whilst you deal with the other aspects of human resource management. Learn more about how BGC Group can help you.
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