5 Tips to Simplify the Hiring Manager Experience When Sourcing External Workers

Posted: 03/25/2021 - 09:00
Here are five tips to help you scrutinize ways to simplify sourcing external workers to create a better experience for your hiring managers.

5 Tips to Simplify the Hiring Manager Experience When Sourcing External Workers

If you’re in Talent Acquisition or Procurement, you know all too well that hiring people – whether employee or non-employee – can be complex and time-consuming. When you’re busy with the day to day, it’s easy to get distracted from tackling process improvements. Yet, it’s not hard to simplify and modernize procedures for your hiring managers. Some simple improvements can make sourcing external workers a more streamlined process.

Below are five tips to help you start scrutinizing ways to simplify sourcing external workers to create a better experience for your hiring managers:

1. Keep It Streamlined

One of the main criticisms about the hiring process, in general, is that it can be overwhelming when dealing with several top candidates. To improve the process, ask yourself:

  • How can key hiring manager activities be streamlined?
  • How can approvals and reports be accessed via mobile devices?
  • How can interview scheduling be simplified?

By identifying best practices and reorganizing or removing outdated processes, HR or Procurement has the impetus to drive change. For example, you can work with your hiring managers to create a list of questions in which candidates must have certain qualifications to make it to the next level of consideration.

Additionally, by using technology, time and expense approvals can be made on-the-go via a mobile device. And basic calendaring systems can simplify interview scheduling, avoiding the back-and-forth of time availability for all parties, especially your hiring managers.

A typical Vendor Management System (VMS) can handle some process simplification for requesting external workers, enabling the hiring manager to make key parts of hiring more efficient. However, a VMS will not give you nor the hiring manager key insights into your total talent workforce that includes non-employees as well as employees.

2. Solve Selection Dilemmas with Data

When faced with hiring decisions for selecting non-employees, talent acquisition now has more analytic tools at its fingertips than ever before. Two of the top critical questions on hiring managers’ minds can be answered with data: 

  • What will help drive success in this role and at your company?
  • What are the talent market dynamics influencing your hiring for this role at this particular location?

To get insights with analytics, many HR and Procurement professionals use either free tools or purchased tools (i.e., your HRIS for success profiles; your ATS for pipeline reports; and Glassdoor for salary, reviews and competitor insights). These tools are helpful as you hone-in on gaining insights into your candidate pool as well as get a more holistic view of individual candidates. Technology solutions that the company already owns may include an analytics capability, so check into that before investing in an additional solution to avoid cobbling together data from disparate systems.

3. Use Technology to Simplify Hiring

Digital checklists are one feature that can help streamline the hiring process. These enable hiring managers to move quickly while meeting your organization’s hiring requirements. Configuring checklists by job type or even by geographic location can help hiring managers evaluate candidates based on role-specific requirements, as well as guide them through each step.

You can also tap into technology that gives you structured interview guides. These give your hiring managers a consistent framework, which will assist you to more judiciously vet candidates. Structured interview guides also help hiring managers and recruiters stay aligned on role requirements so that the process can move forward smoothly and effectively.

Even more important, these tools promote a high degree of reliability, validity, and legal defensibility compared to unstructured interviews as each candidate is asked identical questions.

You can further enhance the interview and evaluation process by using scientifically backed behavioral assessments, some of which are known as personality tests. These assessments objectively show your hiring managers how well-suited candidates are for a specific role with uncanny precision, taking the guesswork out of candidate evaluations while simultaneously keeping hiring managers on track.

One such longstanding example is the DiSC profile system. Others may be more closely aligned with questions that specifically advise whether the candidate is suited for a specific role such as marketing or accounting.

4. Outsource Your Sourcing

Creating a single entry point for hiring managers to go for requesting workers (employee, contingent, project, freelance, etc.), regardless of how or where those workers are sourced or managed, results in a streamlined request process for true total talent management.

Systems using this approach streamline the process to request data, correctly classify the request to reduce compliance risk, route it for approval, dispatch it for sourcing and flow worker data back into the system.

This helps reduce confusion of which system to use for various types of non-employees, eliminates duplicate and re-entry of requirement details, and improves Net Promoter Scores (NPS) for hiring managers for HR shared services as a measure of their performance.

One solution to request external workers is to layer complementary services such as using ServiceNow with a VMS. You create a digital workflow that connects systems, apps, and data using their platform. This ensures end-to-end visibility resulting in a better hiring manager experience.

Another option is to use an Extended Workforce System (EWS) that integrates with your Human Capital Management (HCM) system. By using a single global access point to request external workers, your organization can create one place to go for hiring managers to request and manage all classifications of workers, whether employee or non-employee.

Because all people-related requests are initiated through their access point known as the Front Door, this ends the confusion about where a manager should go for different types of workers. As a fully self-service software, the system guides inexperienced managers, while providing streamlined processes for experienced managers to make the process as easy as possible.

When you are able to capture all requests through one place, it ensures you receive optimum multi-channel sourcing. Additionally, you gain insight into your total talent for a complete picture of all workers, not solely external workers.

5. Centralize Your Hiring Team

One of the most advantageous structures for larger organizations’ hiring process involves creating a dedicated, centralized hiring team that handles the entire process – from sourcing to onboarding – in one department. Until a new non-employee is in the final stages of interviewing, only the recruiter, hiring manager and candidate should have interacted to that point.

Centralization is crucial to more than just getting a requisition request and the subsequent steps needed to fulfill the position. A truly centralized team involves one task force-type group that is involved in developing not only sourcing strategies, such as the one mentioned above, but also is key in other factors. This includes identifying top talent, coordinating and tracking the process throughout the interview and background check stages, and ensuring a smooth onboarding process that is consistent with that of the employees in your organization.

To bridge the gap between non-employee talent acquisition and talent management once they are onboarded, an organized centralized team is vested in the total experience for hiring managers and candidates.

A centralized team also allows for autonomy and provides an environment for lean operations to quickly identify ineffective processes and execute changes quickly, freeing up the hiring manager to concentrate on their role within the hiring process.

Simplifying processes in the talent acquisition workflow for non-employees is not only critical for a great hiring manager experience, but improved processes will also create a better experience for your candidates by default, helping to build your company’s brand.

Region: 

About The Author

Neha Goel's picture

Neha is the Vice President of Marketing at Utmost, the first Extended Workforce System. With over 15 years of experience in the contingent workforce and HR tech industry, Neha joined Utmost in 2020 to help drive brand awareness and demand for the company's award-winning solution.

Prior to joining Utmost, Neha led marketing and go-to-market efforts for several high-growth VMS and MSP providers, including SimplifyVMS, Workspend, and DCR Workforce. She has consulted with multiple staffing and workforce solution firms in the contingent workforce space. Neha has written several articles for SIA's staffing Stream and SIG's Future of Sourcing, been featured in industry podcasts, events, and webinars, and was named to multiple leadership lists including SIA Global Power 150 - Women in Staffing list for 2019 and SDCE 100 Pros to Know 2019.