There are a number of reasons why a company may have difficulty filling an open position. One is simply a tight labor market where there are just a limited number of job candidates available.
But a company’s hiring practices and procedures could also be causing problems in hiring people. Here are a few of the bottlenecks that may be slowing things up.
1. Inadequate job description
You may not be getting the type of person you want because the job description is not accurately portraying the kinds of skills, knowledge, and experience that you’re looking for. It could be that the description is simply outdated and that the demands of the job have changed. Or it could be that you haven’t looked closely enough at the skills that are actually required to do the job.
Before publishing a job description, you need to be sure that you know exactly what you’re looking for in terms of skills and experience, and then you need to accurately describe those requirements in the description itself.
2. Problematic interview process
This also could be causing problems and finding the right people. To begin with, you need to make sure hiring managers doing the interviewing are experienced and knowledgeable about how to conduct an effective job interview. For many hiring managers, interviewing is simply one task among many and they may not be particularly well versed in how to do it effectively.
You need to make sure the questions are focused directly on the skills that are needed for the job and produce the information needed to determine whether the candidate has those skills or not. Each candidate should get the same question so that it’s easier to make a comparison among them. Interviewers should also take notes so they can more effectively review the different candidates and their performance.
3. Interminable hiring process
Before beginning the hiring process you need to make sure you have all your ducks lined up. In other words, everyone is on the same page. You know that everyone will be available to review resumes and also for interviews so that the hiring process does not become unnecessarily bogged down and drawn out.
You should have a preset schedule worked out for each stage of the process, and you need to stick to that schedule so that it doesn’t go on too long. This is another common reason why companies have trouble filling positions– they take too long for the interview process and end up losing good candidates as a result.
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