Hiring for skilled trades positions can be a volatile process. During one hiring cycle, it may take dozens of applicants before you find a rockstar trade worker. It could even take several months or more to find a viable applicant for several months. And of course, there’s always the chance that good hires will leave your company for new opportunities, making you need to start all over again.
All that time, expenses, and other resources can take their toll on you, your team, and your bottom line. Just last year, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) reported that employers spend $4700 per new hire on average.
Knowing how to speed up the hiring process will save you time and money. Let’s dive into six proven strategies you can use to expedite your recruitment efforts.
Why Is Speeding Up the Hiring Process Important?
Last year, the skilled trades industry experienced a 49% drop in Gen Z applicants — contributing to the already-existing shortage in applicants for skilled trades jobs. So, when highly qualified applicants do come around, it’s critical to make the hiring process as fast and efficient as possible. As the saying goes, you’ll want to “strike while the iron’s hot” before your competitor scoops up that applicant instead.
Doing everything you can to expedite the hiring process will improve the chances that short-listed candidates will sign with your company, giving them a more robust candidate experience with your business from the start.
The benefits go both ways, too. The sooner you fill that vacancy, the more your company will:
- Alleviate the heavier workload from your existing team.
- Operate like a well-oiled machine and be better positioned to take on additional contracts.
- Alleviate the experience of a lengthy, resource-heavy hiring process (saving you time, money, and more).
How to Speed Up the Hiring Process
Trades industries are facing a labor shortage in the U.S. The growing skilled trades labor shortage means you’re hiring in a candidate-centered job market. These six proven strategies will show you how to speed up the hiring process and secure the best talent.
1. Defining a Clear Job Description
Besides your company’s reputation and online reviews, the job description you advertise will be the job applicants’ first glimpse into the role and your company culture. Creating a clear job description chock-full of the essentials will allow applicants to easily visualize whether the position (and your company) are right for them.
What do we mean by including the “essentials” in your trade job description?
- State minimum and nice-to-have candidate qualifications, certifications, education, experience, and more.
- List all relevant responsibilities for the role.
- Include the salary range and other benefits and perks.
- Offer a clear picture of your company culture – details enticing the candidate to work for you.
2. Streamlining the Application Process
Anything you can do to automate and streamline the application process is better for your company and the applicants. The simplest and most affordable way is to hire a world-class team of recruiting experts to handle every stage of the application process.
Almost 92% of all job applicants won’t complete the process because of the length and complexity of the application. When streamlining the process, consider which steps are necessary. In short, determine what you must leave in place and what can go.
3. Leveraging Technology and Social Media
Today’s Gen Z applicants won’t likely walk through your doors and inquire about open positions. They enjoy the convenience of job searching at their fingertips. Almost 56% of Millenials and 62% of Gen Z job applicants use social media for job hunting.
Take full advantage of every free and low-cost opportunity possible, such as:
- Ensuring your website is up-to-date with current contact info, job openings, a job applicant portal, social media links, and more.
- Creating a social media presence across multiple platforms and syncing them to ease management
4. Implementing a Structured Interview Process
Recruiting skilled trades workers involves one or more remote or face-to-face interviews. Those interviews don’t have to be time-consuming for you or the job applicants.
Using a structured interview process has its advantages. First, by using the same set of interview questions with every job applicant, you’ll reduce the likelihood of interviewing bias or errors. This is especially effective when multiple candidates apply to the same role — allowing you to compare and contrast their responses and sift out the top candidate from the pool.
5. Utilizing Practical Skills Assessments
Let’s face it — a resume can only tell you so much about a job applicant. Instead, top candidates can show off their skills during a practical skills assessment test. At the same time, you’ll have a front-row view of how they’ll likely perform on the job.
Depending on your trade sector, consider using one or more of the following methods to assess your applicants’ skills:
- On-site skills tests that reflect the duties they’d perform on the job.
- Game-based or Virtual Reality (VR) assessments.
- Problem-solving activities to assess their critical and creative thinking skills.
- Time-based tests to determine efficiency and safety knowledge.
- Hypotheticals and other scenario-based assessments.
6. Partnering with a Hiring Agency
Finding skilled candidates with what it takes to perform well on the job and thrive in your company requires a helping hand. Partnering with a full-service hiring agency can expedite the hiring process. The hiring agency will get to know your business and what makes it tick before connecting you with a potential team member.
Work With Your Handz, for example, specializes in creating customized hiring strategies designed to target not only the most highly-skilled applicant pool out there, but also those candidates who will align best with your company’s core values and culture.
Speeding Up the Hiring Process by Working With Professionals
You know when to delegate to get the job done right. In this case, to hire the best team member, you’ll need to know how to speed up the hiring process and create an ideal candidate experience (and offer) that no top candidate could refuse.
Work With Your Handz is a professional staffing agency on the front lines of hand-crafting an efficient and thorough hiring process for companies like yours. From getting to know what your business stands for to pre-screening applicants, facilitating interviews, background checks, and more, we’ll take the hiring process off your plate so you can focus on what you do best — running your business.
Contact Work With Your Handz and let our team show you how to speed up the hiring process so you can secure your ideal candidate and leave your competition behind.
