Talent Acquisition In Crisis - How BPM Can Ease The Recruitment Process

Recruitment has always been one of the more problematic aspects of a business. On the one hand, it’s not one of a company’s primary functions, and therefore often gets pushed to the back of the tasks priority queue. On the other hand, it is vitally important for a business’ continued existence, as both expanding and compensating for turnover necessitate the acquisition of new talent.

2020 has put recruiters in an awkward position. With so many companies going under, unemployment reaching record levels, one would expect that a recruiter’s job would be easier. After all, the larger potential applicant pool should increase the possibility to gain access to heretofore unavailable high-quality workers.

While that may be the case in theory, the situation on the ground is it’s never that simple.

Workers becoming unavailable for unknown amounts of time at a moment’s notice is an ever-present danger to companies in these times of crisis. This state of events pretty much means that companies can’t afford to halt or wind down their recruitment and networking efforts – but they now need to do that on a tighter budget because they are also likely suffering the repercussions of the current crisis.

In order to make this possible, companies need to streamline and optimize their business process as much as possible. BPM software is uniquely positioned to help companies do that in a variety of ways.

Be a Good Company

The first step toward making your recruitment easier is making sure your company is appealing to work at.

Being commercially successful is helpful in this regard, but not necessarily enough to attract employees. Suppose your success is achieved through exploitative practices or toxic company culture, turnover rates will be horrendous, and you will create a bad image of the company sooner rather than later.

Conversely, if you implement good business practices, such as openness, transparency, honesty, effective communications, responsibility, initiative, etc., you will boost both productivity and employee satisfaction.

Naturally, every individual business will have to figure out how to do this on their own and judge which good corporate practices are right for their unique situation. However, regardless of your scale or craft, employing a BPM solution can help you implement those practices, and thus improve your business and make your company a more welcoming and preferable place.

Update Your Hiring Practices

Updating your hiring practices to accommodate the new normal is a must if you want to improve your recruitment process.

The current set of crises may well require serious evaluation of your preferences regarding new employee qualifications. If you’re hiring remote workers, you might want to prioritize those with sound technical, time management, and communication skills. Furthermore, online interviews and recruitment, in general, are fast becoming the norm rather than the exception – so you may want to account for that as well.

Reimagining is already an arduous business process – but it is more manageable if you have the right communication tools to do the job. A good BPM solution does wonders when it comes to this sort of thing and can be invaluable in various other situations when business processes need to be updated or even reimagined in their entirety.

Whether you need to figure out how to reduce the number of decision makers, skip unnecessary steps or just organize communications better, a BPM solution can be a great help to you.

Look for In-house Solutions to Your Recruitment Issues

Companies need to keep in mind the fact that they don’t always need a new hire to fill out newly emergent or freshly vacated positions. If you examine your organization and business processes carefully, you may well find that a current employee is already qualified for the job and can just be re-hired at a new position.

This is especially useful if the vacant spot requires a particular set of skills that are hard to acquire, or if the new job requires the worker to hit the ground running. If you can manage to hire someone from your own company to fill that role, at least you’ll spare yourself the bother of having to train them from step one, and they’ll already be familiar with company culture and practices.

Failing that, another great way to make your recruiters’ jobs a lot easier is to get other employees involved as well. Incentivizing workers to recommend suitable candidates for vacant positions should not be underestimated because it has proved to be a viable method for finding new talent.

While a BPM software is not the only way to go about performing the previously discussed steps, it speeds up discussions and promotes transparency, which smooths out any bumps in communication. Communication, in turn, is key to putting the above mentioned efficient practices into action, which is why BPM is invaluable when it comes to recruitment.

Make Sure Everyone is on the Same Page

Devising and introducing new practices when it comes to recruitment on paper is one thing. Making sure that everyone who’s involved in the process in any capacity is committed to following those practices and up to snuff is another.

Clarifying essential details, both when it comes to policy and to logistics and organizational issues, is crucial for recruitment. Failure to do so may result in delays that discourage prospective employees and lose the company valuable human resources that could have proved invaluable for the business.

The fact is that in times of high unemployment, people looking for a job can grow desperate very quickly. Even if they aren’t strapped for cash at the moment, the overall mindset in a crisis is that you can’t afford to wait around for unreasonable amounts of time for an interview. Competition is fierce, after all.

This is why companies need to be as expeditious and decisive as possible when making assessments and scheduling interviews, which makes effective communication between HR and management crucial. Implementing a good BPM solution can go a long way towards helping you with that, as it speeds up the back and forth between departments or teams dramatically.

About the Author

Mariela Kashukeeva is a Marketing Executive at SaaS BPM, a productivity process management system solution designed to manage the recurring activities of teams and entire organizations. With over 2-year experience in SEO, she is responsible for establishing collaboration opportunities with high-authority websites and creating amazing content.