The recruitment process can be long, exhausting, and cost your business a lot of money. However, the time taken over considering resumes, conducting phone interviews, video interviews, in-person interviews, assessment evaluations, and a whole plethora of other stages is important to ensure you hire the right candidate.

In order to make the process run as smoothly as possible so you can make an offer to the best and brightest talent, hiring training helps your recruitment staff be as efficient as possible and know what to look for and what to ask.

What is hiring training?

Hiring training is the process of providing HR staff and other employees who recruit new team members with new skills and knowledge. This can include how to be more efficient, how to save time, and how to negotiate, as well as interview training for those directly involved with interviewing candidates.

Training also ensures employees have all the necessary knowledge to make the recruitment process as fair, impartial, and inclusive as possible.

Training can cover a range of topics and techniques, including:

• Attracting top talent
• How to spot the right candidates
• How to match role requirements to specific skills
• Preparing for interviews
• Interview techniques
• Communication (including non-verbal) and active listening
• How to test competencies
• Evaluation criteria
• Subconscious biases
• Anxiety and how to deal with it

Courses can cover a broad range of topics, or for employees looking to focus on a specific area of development, shorter, more detailed courses can help upskill and refresh.

What skills are required for recruitment?

From writing a job spec to making a candidate an offer, the interview process has many stages. Each of these stages requires different skills, and each can be developed to ensure recruitment goes as smoothly as possible. Important skills for working in recruitment include:

Communication

Liaising with recruitment agencies, speaking to potential candidates, interviews, rejections, and offers - employees will be communicating during the entire process. Communication needs to be concise, accurate, open, and honest, all while they remain approachable but professional.

A big part of communication is also non-verbal. Both an interviewer and an interviewee will subconsciously use non-verbal cues that can say a lot. Hiring training allows your employees to look out for this and be aware of their own.

Flexibility

Even with thorough planning, things don’t always go as expected, whether it’s candidates not having the skills they claimed they did or top talent being offered a role elsewhere. Being flexible ensures your hiring team can overcome any unexpected issues that may arise.

Resilience and patience

As we’ve already highlighted, recruitment is a long process. It’s important that recruiters are resilient so they don’t let impatience lead to poor decisions that could negatively impact your company.

Project management

Hiring for any specific role can be treated like a single project, from the moment the need is identified to the day the new starter comes into the office. As such, project management skills allow employees to oversee every aspect of the process so it’s as productive as possible.

Emotional intelligence and empathy

Being self-aware and aware of their own emotions - as well as the emotions of candidates - is vital for those working in recruitment. It ensures employees have a broader understanding of others and helps them to build relationships.

What is inclusive hiring?

Inclusive hiring is more than about ticking a box or covering yourself from a legal and moral standpoint. It’s also about ensuring your business has the competitive edge by having a wide and diverse range of viewpoints, backgrounds, experiences, skills, and talents.

Inclusive hiring practices should be a key focus of your entire recruitment process, to ensure all applicants have a fair and equal opportunity. Hiring the best candidate should be based on knowledge, skills, and experience, and not beliefs, lifestyles, or backgrounds.

Why is inclusive hiring important?

Inclusive hiring is important from a legal and moral standpoint. However, when you take into consideration diversity and inclusion in recruitment you open your business up to a wider pool of talented candidates.

By making sure your business hires fairly you’ll be in the best position possible to service your clients and customers. You’ll also build a good reputation as an inclusive employer, which is highly desirable.

Building a diverse and inclusive workforce can also have a positive impact on profits, with one study finding that diverse companies produce 19% more revenue.

How can hiring practices be improved?

While your hiring practices may be strong and you regularly hire top talent, there are still improvements your business can make.

• Build a reputation as a desirable employer to attract top talent by offering flexibility, inclusivity, perks, and rewards, and inviting regular feedback.
• Be accessible to potential candidates by being open to questions.
• Be transparent with everything the role and your business offer, and don’t omit salary from job ads as this can put off suitable candidates.
• Always keep the process moving and don’t delay things, as this can cause disruptions and frustrate interviewees.
• Encourage interview training for recruitment staff so they maximize their time when meeting with candidates.
• Embrace social media, as many jobseekers use platforms to find opportunities and engage with businesses.

The benefits of hiring training

Hiring training develops and improves the skills and knowledge of your HR and recruitment staff. Doing this has a wide range of benefits not just to your employees’ and candidates’ experiences, but to your business as a whole.

The benefits of training allow your business to:

• Create accurate and honest job ads
• Attract top talent within your industry
• Build a strong brand image
• Streamline your entire recruitment process to speed up making offers and save your business money
• Hire consistently
• Ensure diversity and inclusion practices are adhered to at all times
• Improve the interview process so your business can be confident it’s asking the right questions and getting the right information from your interviewees.
• Create a smooth, reliable and consistent onboarding routine

How can employees take hiring courses?

Training courses can be taken in a number of ways, either in-person or online. In-person training is usually done in a classroom environment and led by an experienced tutor. However, in-person sessions can be time-consuming and expensive, especially if it involves travel and accommodation. These courses may also require employees to spend time away from their day-to-day responsibilities for a day or two at a time.

Online training is a flexible and cost-effective way for employees to learn, and can be done in and around other tasks. eLearning courses cover a wide variety of topics relevant to recruitment, including interview techniques and project management. eLearning is completely self-directed, so employees can learn on any device at any time - even during the morning commute.

What are the best online hiring courses?

Online hiring courses can be broad and cover all aspects of recruitment, or short and focus on a single topic. Some of the best online courses include:

• Hiring Practices
• Interview Techniques
• Legal Aspects of Interviewing
• Professional Interviews
• Safer Recruitment
• Strategic Recruitment and Selection of New Talent
• Diversity & Inclusion in the Workplace

Ready to enroll your teams in hiring courses?

At Go1 we have a wide range of hiring training courses available to access right now. For more information on how Go1 can help train your recruiters, book a demo with a member of our team.