With rapid business growth comes the need for solid foundations; without them, overnight success will only yield fruit for one season. The true measure of a company’s long-term future is how it scales up in response to its growth, and whilst there are, of course, many aspects of a business to tend to, its most crucial facet – its cornerstone, if you like – is its team of people.

Finding (and retaining) the right talent is key to continued success. So the question is: as a rapidly growing business, how do you attract, assess and hire the talent you need?

Simplicity and efficiency are totally key, and these can be achieved by automating your hiring processes. Investing in the right hiring tools during a business’ nascent stages equates not only to a slick, stress-free recruitment process, but to really smart hiring decisions. An Applicant Tracking System(ATS) like Stryve brings all of the pieces of the hiring pipeline together into one beautifully streamlined system that does all the hard graft for you.

Hiring begins with attracting a pool of potential talent. Show them who you are as a business; your mission and values; your story and culture; what you can offer. Brand your business to be a place where people want to work. This branding should spill into your hiring processes, too. Craft a robust and attractive branded site via your ATS from which to share roles, with compelling job descriptions and company information. Get the word out there that a great business is looking for great talent.

Automating a hiring flow doesn’t mean that it can’t be personal: in fact, it should be.  An efficient hiring process not only gives your recruitment team more hours in the day, but shows that you respect and value the time of others. Hiring via an ATS keeps candidates engaged and informed every step of the way.  In a competitive job market, a protracted, indecisive hiring flow means you could easily lose out on star candidates because another recruiter got there first. Using an ATS to hire demonstrates what a smooth and fair hiring process looks like, giving a positive external impression of your company, whether or not a candidate is successful.

The means of assessing candidates should be balanced, systematic and transparent, and an ATS makes this possible.  A primary function of a hiring tool is automated CV parsing. Forget hours spent sifting: an ATS takes all the resumes received for a role and automatically pulls out the key info to pre-populate candidate profiles, so you can easily see if they match your job and person spec. You can then filter based on a number of factors such as skills, location and experience.

Once candidates are in the system, you can design custom job flows with tailored hiring stages, to give all parties a complete picture of the hiring pipeline. Automated actions at each stage of the hiring flow – such as emails and event notifications – means that candidates are constantly in the loop and guided through the process without a hitch. Colleagues, too, are kept consistently updated via the system, with tagging, collaboration features, updates and action tracking.  An ATS also takes care of the admin and, importantly, ensures all data is processed and stored in a GDPR-compliant manner, making your life easy, and your company’s processes legal and transparent.  

Using tags attached to your live jobs and relevant data points, you’re able to fairly score candidates to establish their suitability for a role. Members of your team can like, vote and comment on candidate profiles, ensuring all opinions are taken into account, and keeping the process open and professionally sound.  Including peers in the hiring process is an additional step in assessing suitability: your employees on the ground have a deep understanding of the day-to-day and the nitty-gritty. A longer-term effect of such an approach is that you’re fostering a business that encourages discussion and shared decision-making, factors proven to motivate people.

There is also the option with an ATS to redact certain information to prevent bias from creeping into the equation, helping you to not only build a good team, but a diverse one. A rapidly growing business needs to represent multiple perspectives in order to be a truly responsive, dynamic and adaptive force. CV redaction cements an equitable process so that people are employed for the only things that matter: their skills, experience, and ability to smash it out of the park.

Diversity in hiring not only strengthens a company’s capacity for success, but enhances a company’s culture in general. Nurturing a culture and atmosphere of inclusivity, respect, optimism and openness is the way to not only attract new stars, but to retain the amazing people you’ve hired – because it’s all well and good finding the talent, but what follows is just as important for a company’s success. A happy, engaged team is a hardworking team; it’s really rather simple.

As your company grows, so does the need for new people, and as new hiring flows come round, it may be that you recall a candidate from a past flow that may not have been quite right for that particular role, but would be absolutely perfect for the next one. An ATS stores past candidate information(in an entirely GDPR-compliant manner) so that you can build a pool of people potentially perfect for future roles. In all likelihood, if a candidate had a smooth, albeit unsuccessful, experience with your company last time, they will consider giving you a second chance. Never underestimate the power of respecting all and any potential candidates during the hiring process, and how it impacts on your business’ reputation.

Your company’s culture, its people and its processes are inextricably intertwined.  No good comes from burying your head in the sand in any of these areas, even if rapid growth and instant success might suggest there is no need. Know who you are and get your processes in order so you can start hiring in the best way: it doesn’t need to be complicated. With each and every smart hire, a business becomes a little stronger, its decisions more dynamic and its culture more sustainable.  The right hiring tools can help a rapidly growing business build the team it needs to continue on its upward trajectory, and to truly flourish.