With the country still climbing back to normal in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, many firms are focusing on the future — and they expect recruiting to be a significant issue in the coming year.

More than 80% of adults are expected to search for new jobs in 2021. While many of those workers will end up staying in their current position, the trend is for employees to make a switch.

Still, as many as 30% of companies anticipate spending less on recruiting this year than they had in the past, which means that these same firms will need to do their recruiting on a budget. While this presents some difficulties for HR teams, it also means there is an opportunity to set up a hiring process that better leverages all available tools.

Want to hire better candidates while cutting your cost per hire? Here are some tips for improving your hiring process.

Emphasize the Search for Top-Quality Candidates

When it comes to recruiting, there is a misconception that a bigger pool will get you better results. While you need at least some depth to your hiring pool to find the right person, your focus should be more on identifying the quality candidates from the pool of applicants you do receive. Even in a relatively shallow pool, you are still likely to find some candidates with a high potential JobFit, or suitability for a given role.

While some steps — like posting your job announcements to the right boards — can produce higher-quality applicants, one of the best ways to evaluate talent is to incorporate skills testing into your application process.

With eSkill, you can set up your applicant tracking system (ATS) to automatically send out a skills test link to each potential hire, which they then complete as part of their application.

When you are recruiting on a budget, skills tests can provide a tremendous return on your investment. As soon as a candidate finishes their test, their results are sent to the user-friendly eSkill Testing Dashboard, where you can sort candidates based on their scores. Even better, you can look at each respondent’s results in-depth so you can see how they performed based on the difficulty of the questions they were given.

Skills tests allow you to quickly weed out candidates who lack key skills. For instance, when you are hiring for a developer position, you can administer the Web Developer job test from eSkill’s extensive library of subject-based tests. Alternatively, you can combine this test with other assessments, allowing you to zero in on the specific skills that your unique position requires. That way, you avoid wasting time and effort reviewing applications from candidates who are unlikely to be a good fit.

Avoid Wasting Money During the Interview Process

While in-person interviews will likely remain an important part of the hiring process, they should be reserved for only the most qualified candidates, usually the final two or three hopefuls.

Video and audio tools make it much easier — and cheaper — to interview candidates in earlier rounds. Interviewees have largely come to accept these remote interviews as part of the hiring process.

With video and audio questions, eSkill’s skills tests offer you another alternative. Instead of a live interview, you can choose from existing interview questions or add your own content, letting the candidate record their response to the questions.

You can then score each response according to your own criteria, such as verbal communication, clarity of thought, and so on. Others can also grade the videos, and you can sort candidates by the team’s overall response.

Start Building Retention into the Recruitment Budget Process

One component of the recruitment budget process that is often overlooked is retention. An HR team’s work does not end with a candidate being hired. Instead, hiring is just the beginning of a relationship that lasts as long as the employee continues to work with the company. Retention starts the moment they accept their employment offer!

When you want to retain employees, start by considering their professional development. That process can start with skills testing. Skills tests allow you to create a skills and knowledge profile for each employee, letting you see where their strengths and weaknesses lie. This allows you to identify the kinds of professional development that would benefit the employee’s knowledge base while also encouraging personal growth.

Once the employee has gone through training, skills tests provide an easy way to measure progress. Simply administer the skills test again and compare the results to their previous test. You should either see improvement based on training or areas in which the employee remains deficient. You can then repeat the process, helping your employees to remain engaged in their own development.

Interested in Making Skills Testing a Part of Your Hiring Process?

Learn how eSkill’s Pre-Employment Assessment Tests can provide you the boost you need when you are recruiting on a budget. Request a demo today.

The post How to Set Up a Hiring Process When Recruiting on a Budget appeared first on Topics Talk.