7 Ways to Fast-Track Your Hiring Process Without Sacrificing Quality Candidates

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Today's Question: How do you keep the hiring process moving along quickly without sacrificing the quality of your hires?

The answers below are provided by members of FounderSociety, an invitation-only organization composed of ambitious startup founders and business owners.

1. Clearly Define Role Requirements

Loosely defined requirements can bring the hiring process to a crawl. It's important to decide if the hire is someone you need to perform certain tasks on a particular project versus someone who can fill a more general role in the longer term. Regardless of the type of position, contractor or full-time, having clarity up front will help you make faster decisions between similarly qualified candidates.

— Alberto Fonseca, Therapy Exam Prep

2. Use Automated Software for Early Filtering

We use our marketing automation system to follow up with candidates who upload their resumes. Then, we segment them and automatically send out calendar links to schedule their first calls. That weeds out 50 percent of people at each stage so we don't waste our time with candidates who are just blasting out resumes.

— Todd Giannattasior, Tresnic Media

3. Review, Validate, and Test

Always put a candidate in front of the company subject matter expert, clearly convey the skill set required, and validate that the candidate's experience fits the role. There is no point in spending time training a candidate who is missing fundamental skills for the role.

After you've validated their skill set, give them a test. See how proactive, timely, and professional they are.

— O. Liam Wright, True Interaction

4. Hold an Honest Pre-Interview With Qualified Candidates

Before bringing anyone in for an interview, we like to make sure the individual truly wants the job. If there are any issues that might be a deal-breaker – like the need to have a quiet, distraction-free home office – we make sure to bring them up in a video pre-interview to let the candidate decide whether the role makes sense. That way, by the time they come in, we know they're truly invested.

— Kathryn Hawkins, Eucalypt Media

5. Rate Them Against the Role, Not Other Candidates

It's so, so easy to rate candidates against one another rather than against the role you're trying to fill. We spend a lot of time defining the role before we begin taking applicants. Then we, as a team, rate each candidate against that role rather than against each other. This not only removes bias but also ensures we're not simply settling for the best of the candidates we currently have.

— Mike Jones, Resound

6. Ask Them to Respond Over Video

When I have several interested candidates, I often send them a list of questions and ask them to record their responses on a web camera, or a microphone if they don't have a web camera. This allows me to share the responses with my employees and choose the best candidates for in-person interviews.

— Ajmal Saleem, Suprex Learning

7. Batch Candidates in Stages

We find that focusing on each stage of the hiring process helps. For example, posting job listings to multiple sources on day one and two generates an influx of applicants. Then, move into the interview process and then the final stages. If there are candidates in multiple stages, it'll drag out the hiring process and you could potentially lose qualified candidates.

— James Hu, Jobscan