Top Ways HR Can Ease the Burden of Filling Your Open Positions

Are vacant seats internally stressing you out?

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Trying to find well-qualified job candidates who fit in with your company’s culture, while balancing your many other projects, can be enough to make you scream! 

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In 2021,SHRM reported the average open position takes 27 days to fill. While there’s no newer report, what we’ve seen recently in the marketplace gives us evidence that it takes even longer now. 

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What can Hiring Managers Do?

You don’t have to languish in interview hell, trying to find that perfect new hire from piles of unqualified applicants and resumes. Here are the top ways you can ease the burden of filling your open positions and get on with the other tasks on your plate. 

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Related Article: The 7 Most Costly Mistakes Companies Must Avoid During the Hiring Process

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1. Implement a Referral Program 

Your current happy employees are often the best sources to mine for other well-qualified candidates to fill your open roles. Getting a referral cuts through the recruiting process, which saves on your time to fill positions. 

If you don’t have an employee referral program, design one and announce it as soon as possible. Make it enticing for employees to participate by offering incentives like cash and extra time off. 

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2. Promote from Within

The search for your perfect candidate needs to start within your company. Before you look outside your company, is there someone who works there now that would be a great fit for your open role? Hiring from within offers benefits like already knowing the person’s work ethic, skill sets, career goals and personality. Plus, they already understand the company culture and management style. 

It can save time and reduce turnover by giving current employees a shot at open roles before opening them up to outside job candidates. 

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3. Getting Too Many Resumes? Execute a Stronger Screening Stage

If you’re spending tedious hours weeding through stacks of resumes trying to find candidates to interview, your job description may be too broadly written. 

Use your job description as a tool to proactively screen out job candidates who don’t fit your role. Clearly state your requirements for education, experience, systems/software and the skill sets necessary for the job. Consider requiring an exercise that showcases the candidate’s skills as part of the resume.  A detailed requirement section in your job description will cut down on unqualified resumes, and save you time. 

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4. Not Getting Enough Resumes? Advertise the Position in More Places

If the resumes are barely trickling in, not enough people are seeing your job advertisement. Maybe you only posted it on your website, or your company’s social media pages. 

If you feel like you threw a party and nobody showed up, you need to think about where you posted the job. Post it on other websites and share it through other channels. The more people who see the job ad, the better your chances of finding a well-qualified candidate to hire. 

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5. Work with a Professional Staffing Firm

If your recruiting and hiring efforts are taking up too much time, or not yielding promising results, it’s time to hire a staffing firm to handle the burden for you. 

An experienced staffing agency knows how to leverage the job description to attract high-quality candidates. They may also have the perfect candidate already ready to go in their pipeline! 

Working with a staffing partner frees up the time your team would spend on the hiring process, reduces your time to fill positions, and gives you a better-quality pool of candidates. 

Already working with a staffing firm, but still having issues filling your roles? It may be time to find a new staffing partner that can get better results. 

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6. Focus on Passive Candidates

Hard workers that aren’t actively looking for a job can be great additions to your team. But how do you reach them?
Share your open role on social media and ask your employees to share it to their networks. This is a good start toward reaching candidates who aren’t persuing the job boards. 

As mentioned in point 5, working with a professional staffing firm can help you reach passive candidates. An experienced recruiter will have a long list of past candidates or candidates not actively on the job boards that may be open to making a lucrative move. 

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Trying to fill open positions puts stress on you and the company. Your employees may have to pick up the slack, things can easily fall through the cracks, and the hiring process is, let’s be honest, a pain. 

Take steps to make your hiring efforts less painful. Promoting from within, encouraging employee recommendations with a compelling referral program, weeding out non-qualified candidates earlier in the process, and posting the opening in the right places are sure to help decrease your hiring time. Hiring a professional staffing firm will completely take the burden off your shoulders and give you the freedom to spend time on your many other projects.

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