Introduction:

Have you finalized your HR agenda for the year? Have you considered your organization’s business objectives and initiatives for the year? This blog post is essential to HR professionals seeking to make an impact and achieve their professional goals for the year while also ensuring that they receive all of the tools they need to succeed. If this is you, keep reading. If not, I invite you to read on, as this might be you in a role soon to come!

In my 17 years in HR, I found that aligning the HR agenda with the overall business strategy has always been a good idea. There are a couple of reasons why I decided to master this skillset:

You’ll have a better chance of getting all of the bells and whistles (or your desired outcome) if you can justify this option as favorable to the business.
The “powers that be” will generally have more respect for you if you know you respect their business enough to consider the impact on the bottom line.

For example, a retail company may want to ensure that it is at least 90% staffed 3-4 months before the start of its peak season. The additional 3-4 months is a great time to prepare and train all new hires for the peak season. If the ideal candidate is a hard-to-find candidate, considering what might be perceived as low compensation, the HR professional has to consider these factors:

Timing
Time it takes to review candidates
Interview coordination
Background checks
Drug screen
Coordination of day one

How would you approach this aggressive goal?

Stressed is the word of the month for the HR or recruiting professional, given a short but utterly doable deadline to meet. Then why stress out? Don’t! You are highly talented and capable of filling these roles in the allotted timeframe.

Plan:

Plan this strategy out like your life depends on it. Let no stone go unturned.

Organize:

Could you create a checklist, a pros and cons list, and other tools to achieve results quickly and keep you organized?

Delegate:

Work with partners, direct reports, and colleagues who would be useful. This is a good time to ask yourself: Do you have everyone who should be included in your process?

Optimize:

If your ATS has bells and whistles that can help you streamline your process and get quicker results, take the time to turn them on and optimize your system’s capabilities.

I’ve been there. In fact, not too long ago, I was positioned right in the middle of such organized talent chaos. While we are busy hiring ten employees, three more employees resigned. It’s like a direct smack in the face or a complete waste of time. In this and many situations, the HR professional should also consider (and quickly) the essential means of recruitment. In other words, the HR professional should know what processes, systems, and teams he or she has at his or her disposal to post jobs and review candidate qualifications. If there is a lack of solid technology, recruiting process, etc., then there is greater risk of not meeting any deadline.

Introduction to JazzHR

In my experience, I looked towards technology to assist in most of my heavy lifting. I implemented an exceptional HR technology called JazzHR. To give you some history, my former employer was not used to change and halted at the thought of change at every stage. Do you think this sounds familiar to you? I took some time to research affordable applicant tracking systems (ATS), and I eventually found JazzHR through many internet searches. I also knew that I could not do all the hiring myself. I gained senior-level buy-in for implementation after completing a trial run and testing positions at the corporate office, warehouse, and store locations. I then re-engaged the regional leaders in hiring, presented training, and began getting the system up and running.

Key System Notes on JazzHR:

JazzHR Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is built on collaboration, automation, consistency, and compliance. This means hiring managers and other key stakeholders who want to be involved in the hiring process on a connected “Hiring Team” will have access to review, “Screen,” and “No-Go,” and coordinate the interviewing of candidates seamlessly. The first step is building out the intended hiring process. This will differ from organization to organization. I found that the simpler the hiring process is, the better.

Hiring Process:

In most organizations, the hiring process comprises candidate screening, hiring manager interviews, executive interviews, background checks, and hiring. The hiring process can be modified or duplicated at any time; you should consider how many requisitions you currently have the modified hiring process assigned to. Depending on the department or department head, you can also choose to have multiple hiring processes. Essentially, you are assigning a posted job to a hiring process.

Automation

Remember that the ATS also has automation capabilities based on triggering an event. For example, once the applicant is moved from Candidate Screening to Hiring Manager interview, an automated email containing a link to a more formal employment application can emailed to the candidate. This way, you will complete the formal employment application before the candidates arrive for an interview.

End-user Training

We were all set after building the system with job descriptions and granting access to interviewers and managers. Not really. Even though the system is flawless, training must still be emphasized for personnel who have never used such technology. With any system, you have to test, test, and do more tests to cover as many possible situations that may present themselves. The system has an easy dashboard to review what candidates were at what step in the hiring process. The following piece was getting managers used to using all system functions. The system is built on the concept of teamwork and collaboration. I say all this: no matter how robust the platform or easy-to-use functionality is, an internal tool or system can only be implemented with proper employee training.

Integrations

JazzHR also integrates with Indeed, ZipRecruiter, and other recruitment tools to simplify your recruiter’s life. The system is also connected to automation, emails, and triggering events.

Since we used ADP for payroll, the JazzHR system also runs seamlessly with payroll, allowing for the quick import of new hires.

Onboarding:

The onboarding process is essential for any company. Get it right, and you have a confident new hire ready to take on about 65% of the situations that come his or her way and with a solid understanding of who does what and when. Get it wrong, and you find yourself with rash walk-outs and/or resignations.

Most managers need to understand onboarding with new-hire paperwork. The two concepts are different. New-hire paperwork is a process built under onboarding and should be completed 1-2 days after the new hire’s start date. Onboarding, my friends, can take anywhere from one month to 6 months. Onboarding is the process in which your organization brings onboard new hires and familiarizes them with policies, procedures, the employee handbook, company culture, etc. Consider, what happens during your new-hires first 90 days?

When it comes to JazzHR, successful onboarding is built into the mix. If you have a connection to your HRIS, you must take the applicant through onboarding to hire and import them to your HRIS.

The onboarding module at first seemed ghost-like. Where on earth do I go to onboard a candidate? If you’re like me, you probably expected to see an onboarding tab or link to access onboarding. Onboarding in JazzHR is embedded into the recruitment module. All actions you decide to take on a candidate have to be done in their candidate profile. If the hiring manager diligently follows the process, you can see what’s happening in real time at a glance.

You can expect to receive emails or phone calls from leaders who are happy to communicate that they hired a qualified candidate but for a location or area of business that has yet to be posted. Most of us in HR understand that a job has to be opened systematically before a candidate can be systematically hired for that intended job. Plan to go over and keep going over this concept until you are green in the face. It will take hiring managers time to understand that part of the functionality.

Overall, the JazzHR platform is a winner for small and medium-sized organizations that want to hire quickly. Please feel free to contact us for a free demo.

Since this new recruiting platform was your “ask,” you must make it successful, and therefore, it shouldn’t be attached to any extremely negative feedback. Bring the results you promised to bring when you made your business case.

Part II

Next, we will talk about onboarding in detail with the new hire paperwork.

Recruiting and Business Strategy Alignment