These days, agility is an essential quality for staying competitive. This means being able to react quickly to changes the market imposes (or better yet, anticipate them). To achieve this, all company processes must allow managing changes quickly and efficiently. Many times, when agility is lost, it is necessary to hire a person to face the changes as quick as possible, 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), recruitment timings can be long due to the difficulty of finding and recruiting 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 the resources that we know we may need in case of a waiver 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 the 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 that can be contacted when the need arises.
This works the same as regular processes, but with the difference that it is constant, i.e. it is maintained over time. For example, a company that regularly hires Java developers could constantly post notices and call and evaluate candidates to always have a portfolio of possible candidates that can be called when needed.
It is important to have some considerations 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 should be simple and short, so as not to consume the time of the company and the candidate beyond what is necessary. Ideally, you should use an online test that the candidate can answer from home and perhaps a short telephone interview to level expectations and gather some additional information.
Focus efforts on searching for the positions that are most likely to be demanded and/or those that present the greatest difficulty in searches.
Referrals are a good source of candidates for this type of process, as good references from the company can make it attractive to apply for a possible future position.
This technique can be used by companies of any size, even with low recruitment volumes, as long as efforts are well focused and there is transparency towards the candidates.
Implementing an ongoing selection process can greatly help improve a company’s agility and ability to quickly recruit the right people. It is important to complement this with a good onboarding program to ensure that the recruit is up and running as quickly as possible.
Although this type of selection process can function as a classic process, some alternatives 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 you are evaluating potential candidates remotely or running programming contests, Evalart can be a valuable tool thanks to its practical online programming tests. To learn more about Evalart follow this link.