5 Ways to Make the Hiring Process More Collaborative

From improved employee engagement to improved hiring results, collaborative hiring is something every organisation should consider for its recruitment process. We aren’t just talking about the collaboration between recruiters and hiring managers, but involving a mixture of other employees in the process too.

A collaborative hiring model means getting other members of the team involved – helping to speed up hiring decisions and reduce unconscious bias. Getting a variety of people involved in the process means the overall decision does not always fall to the same person, and with the input of various team members, any potential biases may be overturned.

Google has a great way of going about this process, getting groups of employees to participate in the interview process and submit notes to a hiring committee, meaning that the hiring manager doesn’t actually get to make the final decision. But what other ways are there to help improve collaboration, when resources are often shorter than the likes of Google?

1. Applicant Tracking Systems

We’ve said it before, an ATS is a recruiter’s best friend. Applicant tracking systems often come with features to help you improve the collaboration in your recruitment process, so when used to their potential they can be key to introducing more collaborative hiring. Sharing notes and ratings with other people involved in the hiring team makes it easier to make collective decisions, while allowing you to create a more diverse hiring team to help ensure you’re hiring the right talent.

2. Referral programs

An employee referral program is a way for organisations to find candidates by asking their existing employees to recommend someone for the role from their existing network. It has proven to have many benefits, from reducing hiring costs and improving employee retention.

Giving your employees the opportunity to voice who they believe would be a good fit for the role allows everyone in the team to get involved in the process, even if that’s only to make the recommendation. It’s said that employees hired through referral often prove to be a better cultural fit within a team, leading to benefits such as improved retention.

3. Video interviewing

Getting employees involved in the interview process can often be a scheduling nightmare, which is why many organisations choose not to do so. Using video interviewing means that any employee in the organisation can be given access to completed video interviews, allowing a variety of people to get involved in the decision making process.

While this one of the many benefits of one-way video interviews, but this applies to live video interviews too. Using a platform, like Shine, which is designed for recruitment, means that live video interviews can be recorded and shared throughout hiring teams.

4. Social recruiting

Allowing employees to get involved with social recruiting efforts is a simple but effective way to improve collaborative hiring.

From getting your employees to share job postings to even allowing them to source potential candidates, social media can be a powerful tool. Content shared by employees often receives a lot more engagement than content shared by an organisations channel, and candidates are more open to applying when they hear from a current employee of an organisation (rather than upper management).

5. Values Based Recruitment

Values based recruitment is an approach to hiring which focuses on values and behaviours, and ensuring there’s an alignment between a candidate and the organisation or team.

Here at Shine, our values based recruitment tool creates a benchmark of existing teams by getting them to take part in a 15-minute values exercise, which is then used to assess the fit between that team and the candidates. While the direct involvement here might be lower than other methods, a strong values alignment brings many benefits. From improved productivity and increase employee retention, all your team have to do to get involved in hiring the perfect talent is participate in the benchmarking exercise.

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Collaborative hiring is about being able to make the most of your teams involvement and skills to be able to identify the right talent. Feeling involved and being able to have a valued input in an organisation is key aspects like creating an engaged workforce and improving employee retention. Plus, knowing that your team pre-approve of their co-workers increases the chances of there being a strong culture fit!

With collaborative hiring leading to such an array of different benefits, adjusting your recruitment process to be more collaborative means a positive effect of company culture and overall results. Try and include employees who are in different positions to the candidate (both above and below in hierarchy) to make the decisions even more diverse and effective!