When you’re running a business with multiple locations, you want to empower your team to find the best possible fit for every role at every location.
And that’s a nuanced challenge.
According to McKinsey, 20 to 30 percent of critical roles aren’t filled by the most appropriate people. Their study also revealed that high performers are a whopping 800% more productive than average performers in that same role.
So, how can you best conduct your employee recruiting across multiple locations?
Here are seven multi-location recruiting tips for businesses eager to find top talent.
Best practices for recruiting talent across multiple locations
Standardize your hiring process to maintain consistency and fairness.
If each of your locations follow the same steps when making hiring decisions, you can ensure standard practices are being followed at each of your locations while reducing the risk of compliance issues that may arise when different parts of your business are following different policies. .
Leverage existing employee networks.
Your employees are often the best advocates for your organization. They are, in essence, a key part of your brand. That’s why you should leverage their passion and enthusiasm via a referral program that supports your employee recruiting efforts at each of your locations. A referral program can help you find more talented, enthusiastic teammates, and it can save you money.
Some estimates put the average cost of a new hire north of $4,000, not to mention the months of waiting time that could be circumvented by the right referral. That’s money you can invest back into your employees through a referral program.
Foster cross-location collaboration between hiring managers.
It’s always a great idea to not only introduce your different location’s hiring managers, but also find consistent reasons for them to connect and swap advice based on the recruiting challenges (and triumphs) they’ve experienced at their respective locations.
By learning from each other, your hiring managers can adapt similar successful practices and aid your recruitment efforts both locally and across your organization.
Employer branding at the local level
Establish consistent employer branding as well as local branding.
Your brand is an essential part of the employee recruiting process. It’s both the image you project and the feeling you give your current and prospective employees.
In the context of employee recruiting, one of the most powerful components of your brand is the recruitment process itself. When your recruiters make their initial contact, are they conveying your organization’s values? Better yet, do they know your values — and how to best communicate them?
Lastly, are your brand and your values embedded in each appropriate step of the recruitment and hiring process? Like all top-tier organizations, your goal should be to build brand recognition everywhere you operate. When it comes to operating multiple locations, consistency is a key ingredient to that effort.
Develop location-specific job descriptions.
What works for one location might not work for another. To enhance your multi-location recruiting, make sure each of your job descriptions relates to the demographics, skills and experiences that align with your respective locations. For instance, your prospective employees in Austin may be excited by certain aspects of the job, while prospective employees in San Francisco are excited by something completely different. (As you can see, understanding your audience is key to all facets of recruitment.) Further, location-specific job descriptions will also help you remain compliant with local employment guidelines in each of the business where you’re based,
WizeHire has developed a robust guide to job descriptions for you to use as you see fit. Our hope is that these descriptions serve as a valuable template that will vary based on each of your location’s specific needs.
Enacting change at scale
Leverage technology for each location.
Consistency is key, and virtual interviews have been proven to streamline the hiring process. You don’t necessarily want one of your locations using virtual interviews while another doesn’t offer them at all.
Once you’ve adopted the same hiring process across each of your locations, it’s time to think about scaling up. What that looks like varies based on your organization, but it might mean adapting an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) to take some of the logistical workload off your hiring managers — and allow them to focus on cultivating authentic, personable relationships with their current and prospective employees. More time for your managers is always a bonus: They can focus more on what matters and less on administrative tasks. You can also utilize online assessments to filter applicants and sharpen your focus on the best fits.
Establish clear communication channels to facilitate seamless exchanges of information.
Speaking of relationships, it’s impossible to have one without solid communication. No matter what technology you may adopt, organizations should make sure anyone involved in the hiring process has a clear understanding of the steps and an easy medium for sharing information amongst peers.
Ready to find the best possible fit for every role your growing business? Wizehire can help. Get closer to hiring the right fit.
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