Talent acquisition is a multi-stage process where candidates undergo various application steps before getting hired. The unfortunate reality is that it is a labor-intense system, with the hiring manager and recruiter often handling all of the work on their own. Ask any one of them, and you will hear about the overabundance of applications and the demanding task of filtering through them to find the best candidates. The quality of talent suffers under the weight of all that work on one person’s hands. It’s not easy, but as many companies are starting to realize, there is a better way. The future of talent acquisition lies in collaborative recruiting!
Understanding Collaborative Recruiting
Collaborative recruiting is when employees from various teams in a company become involved in the hiring process. Collaboration comes from the shared responsibilities that separate memebers share as they navigate the entire hiring process. All parties involved join a hiring team where different members handle talent sourcing, candidate interviews, applicant selection, and the eventual onboarding of new hires. It lightens the load that hiring managers or recruiters would often carry alone.
This presents a shift in traditional talent acquisition strategies, offering a new approach to hiring with several notable benefits for all parties involved.
How Companies Benefit From Collaborative Recruiting
Organizations that shift to collaborative recruiting report numerous advantages to the talent acquisition operation. Here are some of the most notable benefits.
Better Talent Acquisition
Involving more people in the hiring process guarantees a more thorough assessment of potential hires. There are more hands on deck, more eyes looking through the applications, and more people getting a feel of the applicants in consideration. The natural result is a better crop of candidates, as the chosen applicants usually meet and surpass the requirements for the required role.
Helps Find Better Cultural Matches
Every company has its own culture, and each employee has a personal opinion on what it means to work there. Including more people in the talent acquisition process allows teams to identify candidates that best align with the company culture. Each team member gives their assessment based on their perception of the culture. Together, these assessments would provide a complete picture of how well a candidate would settle in and thrive in a specific workplace. Simply put, collaborative recruitment allows organizations to find people who would best embody and share in the company’s values, standards, and behaviors.
Promotes DE&I
Unconscious bias is a problem that continues to plague many workplaces. Numerous studies show ways different biases affect hiring practices. Collaborative recruiting presents an opportunity to challenge these biases directly; it considers the perspectives of many people throughout the whole operation. Simply having employees from different backgrounds as part of a hiring team brings new outlooks to candidate assessment.
Where unintended discrimination may have led to a biased selection of candidates, collaborative recruitment presents a rich selection of qualified individuals from all walks of life. It allows for a fair assessment of all applicants and results in inclusive and more diverse hires at the workplace. As DEI hiring efforts challenge many organizations, collaborative recruitment could be the key to overcoming it.
A Quicker Hiring Process
Like anything, things end quickly when you share responsibilities among many individuals. Traditional talent acquisition strategies had hiring managers handling the recruitment process alone. It’s a setup that often had many tasks falling on one person. It was both stressful and time-consuming without any external help.
With collaborative recruitment, companies report quicker, more effective processes. A 2014 Stanford study found that people working in a collaborative workplace tended to be up to 50% more effective at completing their tasks. This further speaks to how much more streamlined the hiring process becomes when more people are involved.
Applicants Benefit From Collaborative Recruiting Too!
The beauty of collaborative recruiting in talent acquisition is that it doesn’t just help the company looking to fill a specific role. It offers benefits to candidates as well.
A Better Applicant Experience
Collaborative recruiting allows hiring managers and recruiters to save valuable time. This means they now have the opportunity to dedicate more energy to preparing the best possible application experience for potential hires. They have more time to focus on the candidates who, in turn, get a more in-depth look into the organization as a whole. While speaking with different company employees, a potential hire can get a feel for the culture and see how well they might fit into it. A poorly prepared recruitment process is likely to leave a bad impression, but team-based hiring is the equivalent of a company putting its best foot forward for the candidates.
Higher Employee Retention
Getting a look into a company’s culture is an option that collaborative recruiting offers potential hires. Throughout the different stages of the application process, candidates experience the organization’s shared values and practices firsthand from other employees. They interact with people who may share similar backgrounds as well. It helps them get a feel for how well they will fit into an organization. Naturally, the better the cultural fit, the better new employee retention rates. After all, people tend to stay longer with organizations they fit well in.
Collaborative recruiting doesn’t just improve talent acquisition practices for companies. It also increases organizational efficiency. Teamwork in any form breeds camaraderie and motivation among staff. The benefits of employees working in these conditions cannot be understated at any level of an organization. It may all start with the hiring process. Still, collaborative recruiting can quickly become the pillar by which companies set the pace for success in the long run.
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