Continuous IT Selection Processes as a Technique to Optimize Recruitment

These days, agility is a vital attribute for staying competitive. This means being able to react quickly to the changes the market imposes (or better yet, anticipate them). To achieve this, all of a company's processes must allow it to manage change quickly and efficiently, and often, where agility is lost is when a person needs to be hired quickly to face the change and this takes a long time.

For many positions, such as IT profiles (although the concept presented in this article applies to other types of positions as well), hiring times can be long due to the difficulty of finding and onboarding suitable candidates. This is because of the high demand on the one hand, and the lack of resources with the necessary qualifications or sufficient capacity and skills on the other.

One technique that allows us to speed up selection processes is maintaining a continuous selection process, where one is constantly searching for profiles that might be needed in the future. A clear case is resources that we know we may need in case of a resignation or to increase the capacity of a team where profiles similar to the current ones are required. A case that requires a little more vision corresponds to profiles that might be needed in the future, but for which there is still no clarity.

In both cases, a company can benefit greatly from a continuous selection process, where the focus is on identifying and pre-screening potential candidates so they can be contacted when the need arises.

This works exactly like a regular process, with the difference that it is constant, that is, it is maintained over time. For example, a company that regularly hires Java developers could constantly post job ads and call and evaluate candidates so as to always have a pool of possible candidates who can be called when needed.

It is important to keep some considerations in mind when managing continuous selection processes:

• The process must be transparent from the outset. That is to say, the candidate must be informed that the search does not correspond to a current need, but offers a possibility to be considered in the future.

• The process must be simple and short, so as not to consume the time of the company and the candidate beyond what is necessary. Ideally, you would use an online test that the candidate can answer from home, and perhaps a short phone interview to align expectations and gather some additional information.

• Focus efforts on searching for the positions that are most likely to be in demand and/or those that present the greatest difficulty in searches.

• Referrals are a good source of candidates for this type of process, since good references about the company can make the proposal to apply for a possible future position attractive.

• This technique can be used by companies of any size, even with low hiring volumes, as long as efforts are well focused and there is transparency toward candidates.

Implementing a continuous selection process can greatly help improve a company's agility and its ability to quickly bring in the right people. It is important to complement this with a good onboarding program to ensure that the new hire is productive as soon as possible.

Although this type of selection process can work like a classic process, there are some alternatives that can help make them more effective and also more attractive to potential candidates. One thing that works very well is to organize programming contests or hackathons where the general public is invited to participate. Prizes or other incentives may be offered. From the results of these contests, it is possible to obtain a list of potential candidates for future hiring.

Whether to evaluate your potential candidates remotely or to run programming contests, Evalart can be a valuable tool thanks to its practical online coding tests. To learn more about Evalart, follow this link.