Culture Branding

How existing employees can help you hire

How existing employees can help you hire
Orla Hodnett

Orla Hodnett

HireHive

Nobody understands the requirements of your company better than your existing employees. Tools like recruiting software certainly help your efforts, but engaging with your employees gives a great starting point. They know the strengths and weaknesses in the team, so they will certainly know the right candidate for the job when they see them.

Including your colleagues in the recruiting process will give you unrivalled insight into their experiences, which will help you make better hires. All it takes is a little communication with your existing team.

Who better to get on board as ad hoc recruiters?

Employee referrals

Your existing employees are likely to be well connected industry experts and they are likely to have a good understanding of the various roles at your organisation. Who better to get on board as ad hoc recruiters? Employee referrals are a cheap and quick way of recruiting, with an exceptional success rate in long term retention.

An employee referrals program is relatively easy to implement - the trick is keeping it up. Every so often send your team an email advertising open roles. It is also a good idea to offer some kind of reward to acknowledge your employees’ efforts. Who knows? They may know the ideal candidate.

Data gathering

As stated already, your employees are a tremendous resource for insights into candidate experience. They have a unique understanding of the recruiting requirements, but what about the factors they are not even aware of? Any data gathered by your recruiting software will give you solid data on how successful hires come about.

Think about your top performers: what was unique about their skills set? What was different about their interviewing process? Did you try anything different at the onboarding stage? They will give you key information on all steps of the recruiting pipeline.

Involve them in the interview process

It is always important to get a number of perspectives on a topic. This can help you get clarity on a topic that has been plaguing you. It can help you reach consensus with your team. It introduces new ideas and approaches. With that in mind, why not include your colleagues in the recruiting process?

Senior team members should certainly have an input in the interviewing process, but the whole team can help put together job specifications or interview questions. Your team has a unique insight, which you should make full use of to ensure successful hires.

If you want to make positive improvements to the recruiting process, who better to ask than your current employees?

Employee feedback

Who knows your company back to front? Knows the skills that a successful candidate will be using every day? Who has the attitude required to get the job done well? Your existing employees. If you want to make positive improvements to the recruiting process, who better to ask than your current employees?

A questionnaire or interview with your colleagues and teammates will help them to share their experiences with you. If they can let you know what was good or bad in their screening, interviewing or onboarding experience, you can ensure that your recruiting strategy is working for you.

Involve your team in onboarding

Everybody remembers their nerves and jitters in their first couple of weeks in a new job. You were paranoid you would not remember your boss’ name. Oh and you had a number of run-ins with the photocopier. Remember the time you accidentally parked in the CEO’s reserved parking. You and your colleagues may be able to allay this anxiety for new hires.

By including your team in onboarding, you will quickly integrate any new hires into your team. The buddy system is always a fantastic idea, to help answer the types of questions everyone has. It also helps start on the job training with those who understand the job requirements best.

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Hilary Dempsey Head of HR at Life Credit union

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