Currently, the hiring methods are undergoing a significant transformation. Amidst the new techniques being introduced, lateral hiring is rapidly gaining attention. Companies use this strategic approach to hire experienced professionals who can instantly contribute to the business.
According to a study, 69% of organizations are dedicated to hiring lateral candidates, demonstrating a significant shift from traditional strategies.
Unlike other hiring strategies, lateral recruitment concentrates on people with a proven track record, industry knowledge, and specialized skills. Organizations can attract and onboard the best fit efficiently with a comprehensive hiring process.
In this article, let's look at the five essential steps for a streamlined lateral recruitment process.
What is lateral hiring?
It is a strategic recruitment approach that hires experienced people outside the company to fill vacancies for mid-to-senior-level posts. Contrary to entry-level hiring that picks fresh graduates, this hiring approach focuses on people with unique skills and industry experience.
These candidates need minimal training and can contribute to the business instantly.
Importance of Lateral Hiring
This hiring type is a vital strategy for companies looking to gain an advantage in the competition by hiring top talent. Here are a few reasons why this approach is important:
- Access to Specialized Skills: Organizations can instantly hire experienced candidates with skills that might be lacking in the current employees, ensuring innovation and business continuity.
- Boosts Organizational Growth: By hiring experts with leadership competency, organizations strengthen their existing workforce and scale operations efficiently.
- Enhances Workforce Diversity: Hiring people from diverse backgrounds brings new perspectives, problem-solving, and creative skills to the company.
- Faster Onboarding & Productivity: Since candidates being hired already have relevant experience, they don't need extensive training, allowing them to bring faster, productive results.
- Saves Time & Resources: Rather than hiring fresh graduates and training them from scratch, organizations employ experienced people who can bring results, decreasing hiring costs.
Understanding Talent vs. Performance Calibration
Talent acquisition and performance calibration are essential hiring strategies for developing a robust workforce. Lateral recruitment concentrates on hiring experienced candidates.
Performance calibration ensures that the existing workforce is assessed without bias and aligns with organizational goals. Both strategies have a crucial role to play in workforce planning.
Key Differences Between Lateral Hiring and Performance Calibration
The table below showcases the difference between the two:
Why are both essential for HR and leadership teams?
HR and leadership teams should implement both strategies as they offer a variety of benefits, such as:
- Business Consistency and Competitiveness: A mix of experienced hires and well-performing existing employees ensures organizations stay competitive and agile.
- Balanced and Fair Talent Management: Performance evaluation removes biases, while lateral recruitment brings diversity and new ideas.
- Improved Growth and Retention: Honest performance evaluations result in higher employee satisfaction. At the same time, external hiring introduces leadership opportunities.
- Optimized Employee Performance: By hiring skilled professionals and assessing existing employees correctly, companies can maximize efficiency and productivity.
- Strategic Workforce Planning: Lateral recruitment helps fill instant skill gaps, and performance calibration ensures that internal talent is nurtured for growth and success.
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The Lateral Hiring Process: Step-by-Step
This hiring approach needs a comprehensive approach to ensure that the right talent enters the company. With AI-driven tools and skills evaluations, organizations can simplify this process. Here is the step-by-step guide.
Step 1: Identifying the Hiring Need
Before beginning the hiring process, HR teams should evaluate the organization's workforce needs, skill gaps, and long-term objectives. Some important questions to seek answers for are:
- What role(s) should be filled instantly and why?
- What are the required experience and skills?
- How are the new hires going to contribute to business growth?
A comprehensive hiring approach ensures that the strategy aligns with business goals.
Step 2: Sourcing and Shortlisting Candidates
HR teams have to use multiple source channels to discover the right candidates. These channels include:
- Internal talent mobility for in-house expertise promotion
- AI-powered skills inference tools that evaluate resumes and forecast candidate potential
- Referrals, professional networks, and job portals
iMocha, an AI-powered skills intelligence platform, can help companies discover candidates with potential, ensuring a more effective and broader talent pool.
Step 3: Skills Assessment and Evaluation using iMocha’s Skills Assessments
Evaluating candidates is important for ensuring hiring success. iMocha offers AI-powered skills assessments that help with:
- Customized assessments according to industry needs and job roles
- AI-drive proctoring to remove the chances of cheating
- More than 3,000 ready-to-use skills for soft and technical skills evaluation
These assessments help companies filter high-potential candidates, ensuring only the right ones are moving ahead.
Step 4: Conducting Competency-based Interviews
A competency-based interview helps companies assess candidates' technical expertise, leadership qualities, and problem-solving abilities. With iMocha's AI-driven automated video interview, companies can:
- Conduct quick evaluation with automated scoring
- Get AI-driven insights for measuring response quality, tone, and body language
- Use structured question formats to ensure an unbiased process
This helps conduct interviews fairly and allows recruiters to make data-backed decisions.
Step 5: Decision-Making and Offer Negotiation
Once the four steps are completed, decision-makers must evaluate candidates based on the following:
- Interview performance
- Skills assessment results
- Compensation expectations and cultural fit
Effective negotiation ensures the chosen person feels valued while being hired within the budget. Clear, transparent communication on expectations, career growth, and benefits will help strengthen the chances of securing people with high potential.
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Best Practices for Using Skills Assessment in Lateral Hiring
To ensure the effectiveness of hiring, the skills evaluation should be strategic. Here are some best practices to implement:
- Choosing the Right Assessment Tools for Different Roles: One assessment cannot be used for different roles. Use relevant tests, such as portfolio reviews for creative jobs, situational judgment tests for managers, and coding tests for tech roles to ensure effectiveness.
- Customizing Assessments Based on Job Complexity: Personalize tests based on the available role and job requirements. For instance, a specialized test would be appropriate for an expert, a scenario-based evaluation for mid-level, and an essential skill assessment for entry-level candidates.
- Avoiding Bias in Skill Evaluations: To ensure fair hiring, use AI-driven proctoring, blind assessments, and standardized scoring. Structured evaluations further avoid favoritism.
- Using Insights from Skills Intelligence Platforms to Refine Hiring Strategies: A skills intelligence platform can provide AI-driven analytics that helps predict future skill demands, benchmark talent, and evaluate hiring trends. Companies can also monitor data being assessed to optimize hiring and enhance efficiency.
Conclusion: The Future of Skills-based Lateral Hiring
By implementing skills-based hiring, companies can attract candidates with high potential instead of simply choosing based on resumes. AI-powered skills intelligence platforms like iMocha simplify discovering, evaluations, and interviews by decreasing bias and enhancing accuracy.
HR leaders must concentrate on skills, use automation, and balance hiring with internal talent growth to ensure this hiring strategy is implemented effectively. With skills intelligence evolving, real-time insights and predictive analytics will reshape the hiring process.
FAQs
How is lateral hiring different from traditional hiring?
The lateral approach concentrates on onboarding experienced candidates possessing specialized expertise and skills. Traditional hiring generally focuses on fresh, entry-level people. Unlike freshers, lateral hires don't require extensive training, decreasing the time and cost spent on recruitment.
What challenges do companies face in lateral hiring?
From talent deficiency to high salary expectations, selection bias and cultural fit issues, companies face plenty of challenges.
How does skills assessment help in lateral hiring?
Skills assessments ensure accurate measurement, enhancing the chances of unbiased decision-making. AI-powered tools like iMocha evaluates behavioral, cognitive, and technical skills, assisting employers choose the right candidate.
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