Why wait until you onboard new hires before building trust? Start at the beginning of the candidate’s journey and establish transparent recruiting practices. Here, we explain what’s great about being more open in talent acquisition and how it can enhance your relationship with your employees.
Why Do You Need Transparent Recruiting Practices?
According to SHRM’s research, just by providing pay ranges in your job postings, candidates are already 73 percent more likely to trust your organization.¹ The salary is considered one of the most important factors in taking a role. Since candidates decide based on this factor, it’s only reasonable to share them.
However, this is just one aspect of recruitment. Being transparent is not just about disclosing the job’s expected salary range. It includes the entire process, from reading the job descriptions to understanding every step of the hiring process and gaining constructive feedback despite the results. But before we jump into that, let’s talk about why you need to include transparency in talent acquisition.
1. It attracts the best talent, even the passive ones.
About 70 percent of top candidates are passive candidates—or those who need a little push to get off their comfy seats.² They are people you may consider a great fit for a specific role, although they aren’t currently seeking a job opportunity. How can you expect them to apply to your company if you aren’t transparent?
Transparency in your process makes it easier for job applicants to connect with you. You don’t have to give them cheat codes to ensure they get the job. Instead, tell them some of the questions you’ll be asking and what scenarios they might expect in the interview room. You can even give them a heads-up on how they might impress the interviewer.
This way, they can better prepare and align themselves with the people they’ll meet. Being transparent in your process ensures that you’re attracting people who resonate with your company’s mission, vision, and values. This helps attract engaged and dedicated people who will likely thrive within your organization.
2. It improves retention and employee job satisfaction.
Attracting the right individuals directly enhances your retention rates. By setting realistic expectations, sharing all responsibilities, what tools they’ll be using, what processes they’ll need to follow, and what kind of company you are, you’re allowing candidates to assess whether they’re fit for the job or not. As we stated, it’s not just about sharing the job’s salary. Yes, that would likely set every applicant’s pay expectations, but it won’t guarantee they’ll stay for long.
Be transparent about what to expect from the job, your company culture, and what growth opportunities await them. Your potential hires are likely to achieve higher job satisfaction. In turn, you’ll reduce turnover rates. Employees are more likely to succeed in an environment that aligns with their individual needs and career goals.
3. It helps establish a strong company brand.
Positive employer branding is very important today. People can easily access company websites, review marketing, history, and brand image, as well as visit peer reviews online. Interested applicants, in particular, prioritize social impact, career purpose, diversity efforts, and more. Your company’s reputation is a key ingredient in attracting and retaining top talent.
Being transparent in your job posts, job description, background checks, and recruiting process can increase the chances of attracting these individuals. Aside from your recruitment process and job posts, you may want to showcase your company brand on social media websites. This leads to higher trust with potential candidates and improves your credibility as an employer.
10 Ways to Implement a Transparent Hiring Process
Transparent recruitment processes require intentional hiring practices. Ultimately, it improves the overall candidate experience, leading to better employee retention. Here are 10 hiring practices that you can adopt in your organization:
1. Craft Clear and Honest Job Descriptions
Avoid writing generic descriptions. Start with a detailed explanation of the skills, knowledge, and expertise needed for the job. You may also include what soft skills you prefer with candidates, like communication or time management. Lastly, don’t forget to mention your development programs. This adds to transparency on your part, and candidates would love to know that you invest in your employees’ professional growth.
2. Design a Fair Assessment Process
Measure your candidates’ skills and suitability for the role. You can use a standardized test. However, remember that roles adapt, and you may need to update your tests. Overall, evaluate candidates based on their expertise, potential, and transferrable skills, rather than solely relying on their work history, credentials, years in the industry, or connections alone.
As an additional tip, make sure to remove all unconscious bias in the process to ensure a diverse and inclusive hiring process.
3. Conduct Consistent Interviews
Evaluate your candidates on the same grounds. No one would really like to know that they’ve been interviewed in a different way, asked different questions, or worse, evaluated through unrelated criteria. When you enter the interview room, you should already have prepared a list of questions, including follow-ups. Strive for consistency in your interviews.
4. Communicate Regularly with Each Candidate
The hiring process involves assessing multiple candidates. Some of them may not even be in the same phase. It’s easy to get lost in the process and forget to follow up or attend to candidates in the application process.
However, it would be good to maintain constant communication. Some of them might need clarification. Others are carefully weighing multiple job offers. Maintaining communication will help build your relationship with them and ensure that you attract top candidates to your organization.
5. Don’t Gatekeep the Salary
Yes, it can sometimes be strategic to withhold this information. However, it will only push away potential hires. While it’s common for employers to disclose salary offers at the end of the recruitment process, there’s a risk of misalignment and disappointment. Also, more and more companies (60 percent out of a surveyed 5,700 by Payscale) are already sharing their salary information, some due to transparency laws.³
6. Share Your Timeline
Just as you maximize your time to find worthwhile applicants, candidates also value the time they spend applying for jobs. Let them know when they can expect a response, how many interviews will be conducted, or how many hiring managers they’ll meet. If there are obstacles that might extend the recruitment process, make sure to inform them.
7. View Feedback as Growth Opportunities
Providing positive feedback is always easy. However, it can still be helpful to deliver bad news to your applicants. Communicate their results and explain why they were not the best fit for the position. This can help them handle such news constructively. It allows rejected applicants to improve in their future applications and leaves them with a positive impression of your company in spite of a negative result.
8. Document Your Steps
Keep detailed documentation of each stage of the recruitment. This will safeguard your company from legal challenges and aid you in analyzing the entire process.
- Are there bottlenecks?
- Are there unnecessary steps?
- Can you improve the hiring process?
- Is the process effective in finding qualified candidates?
- Did your candidates perform well after being hired?
9. Train Your Staff
Educate your HR teams to provide a psychologically safe environment for applicants. Involve discussions in promoting equal opportunities, understanding employment laws, learning new interview skills, and applying DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) best practices.
10. Lead Your Teams
Lastly, be an example to your current employees. If you want to foster transparency, influencing your teams is one of the most effective ways to achieve this. Show transparency in all your interactions. Be honest with your clients, employees, partners, and vendors. More than practicing transparency, this will establish a stronger culture and create a lasting impact across your organization.
Access inclusive job opportunities with Horizon America.
At Horizon America, we strive to understand our clients’ needs and provide them with the right candidates. We take our time and listen to your challenges. It’s not just about providing talent, but making sure our candidate fits in with your organization, regardless of whether you only need temporary or temp-to-hire staff.
Give us a call today and build your team!
References
- “New SHRM Research Shows Pay Transparency Makes Organizations More Competitive, Leads to Increase in Qualified Applicants,” SHRM, 14 Mar 2023, https://www.shrm.org/about/press-room/new-shrm-research-shows-pay-transparency-makes-organizations-competitive-leads-to-increase-qualified-applicants
- “Transparency is Key: Unveiling the Benefits of Transparent Hiring Processes,” 01 Hire, 26 Apr 2023, https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/transparency-key-unveiling-benefits-transparent-hiring-processes/
- “2024 Compensation Best Practices Report.” Payscale, 2024, https://www.payscale.com/research-and-insights/cbpr/#module-5
