Finding the ultimate strategy to achieve fast and efficient talent recruitments is the Holy Grail of HR in startups. Looking for the best-skilled workers could be critical when it comes to the execution of urgent projects, as well as it is usually a complete headache for recruiters and CEOs.

Most of talent selection squads will find themselves frustrated because of the pressure of a whole company stressed by the same ambition: “we need an expert for the project right now” some might say, before realizing the fact that people cannot be manufactured.  

As we know solving an HR crisis, such as the sudden leaving of a chief employee, is not a typical topic at business school; and as we understand the struggle of needing specific profiles in your team urgently; we’ve written a series of tips to help you find suitable workers for your company with─drumroll, please─speed.

1. Make the best killer questions that you can

Everyone knows that questionnaires are a vital part of recruitment. Most of the HR teams understand how important it is to have a right interview guide when they filter profiles. However, some of them─hopefully not your case─might be using highly predictable and poorly productive inquiries.

That problem sometimes could be linked to another important one: the limitation of powerful questions in the interview phase. Surely a decision that in most of the cases will drive bad applicants to the interview room, without any previous barrier.  Candidates will always prepare themselves for what’s typical in a job’s selection process. Professionals that have been seeking opportunities might be accustomed to the questions that are commonly asked in the interview room.

As the LinkedIn influencer James Caan says, traditional questions won’t break candidates down nor take them out of their comfort zone. Likewise, if the challenging questions don’t appear since the very beginning, filtering profiles gets even more complicated.

That’s why it is so important for companies to set a complete funnel strategy based on powerful and demanding questions which responses can provide determinant information for recruiting.

The pickier the questions, the faster the process.

2. Consider automation

In a decade where digital optimization has gone from military issues to domestic affairs, it would have been surprising not to have the same progress in HR for companies. That’s why, with the aim of keeping recruitment frameworks updated, several applicant talent systems were born.

This kind of HR software allows companies to automate the whole recruitment process. There are lots of free, paid or subscription examples that have an important benefit in common: they can fasten the selection of several candidates through automatic evaluations.

Some of the most famous selection software products are Ongig, Jobsvite, and Taleo.

3. Use old data

Another important benefit of having an applicant talent system is that many of those software services include a database feature, which is extremely useful when it comes to urgent recruitments. In the past some profiles might’ve been rejected when other candidates were selected, but they might be still looking for job opportunities in your company.

When your business has an organized and clean database of profiles, recontacting turns less tricky and it becomes an amazing alternative to find suitable profiles with swiftness.

3. Use social media

We’ve recently pointed out the importance of the usage of social media in recruitment. According to Glassdoors, 79% of the people that is looking for a job opportunity is using social media with frequency, that is to say,  your future employee could be among your followers on Instagram, Facebook or, ideally, LinkedIn. This last platform is the perfect one because it’s a professional social network. There, connecting with people is also having access to their resumé.

Using social media during the selection phase can speed up the whole process, because they go beyond whoever might be in the applicant pools.

4. Find referrals

Trusting in your current employees is not just a good idea for the organizational health, but they can also be very useful for recruitment. In fact, trusting on referrals could be a fast way of finding good human resources to fill a team. Employees are familiar with the culture of the organization and its specific needs, so that they might be good spokesperson for the selection process.

Asking your workers for references of professionals in their own field makes easier to approach that guild. That’s why HR teams should consider including referrals as an alternative strategy to approach people of specific professional backgrounds.

5. Use applicant pool services

Some companies might feel reluctant about making any important investment in subscriptions to applicant pool services, especially because some alternatives are completely free. However, platforms such as AIESEC’s Opportunity Portal, offer highly productive results.

This global applicant service helps companies from all around the world find young international professionals to apply for their opportunities as paid or unpaid interns. A whole network of recruiters based on 126(+) countries works 24/7 to find suitable interns for any job position that is posted in the portal.

Therefor, this is not only an option that’s making the work of HR easier for startups, but it’s getting companies closer to international and highly skilled talent. Most of AIESEC’s applicants in the global portal are simply waiting to be accepted to take the experience immediately.

Other services like the LinkedIn job posting service are also recommended due to the high level of effectiveness the platform has as a applicant pool.

Conclusions

Companies that are looking to speed up recruitments should focus on digital optimization and on the usage of channels that have historically been considered as alternative. Since unexpected HR crisis might arrive, colateral plans for finding urgent talent are very important. Taking into consideration options such as applicant talent systems or AIESEC’s Opportunity Portal could be a life-or-death resolution when it comes to the accomplishment of projects that lack of good human talent.