On the business end, finding the right applicant can be a challenge. You’re looking to fill a critical position as quickly as possible, but you’re also looking to ensure that the person you choose is a perfect fit for the role. Project managers need to walk a thin line between speed and caution, as they’re all too aware of the potential costs of choosing the wrong applicant.

You want to make sure that, when you land on hiring an employee, you can do so with confidence; that the hours of work putting them through the hiring process, training them, and providing day-to-day support aren’t wasted. But you also recognize a need to speed your “time to value” – to close the gulf between your ideal hire and your soon-to-be chosen
candidate with confidence and efficiency. The challenge is
a daunting one, but not impossible.

Knowledge management techniques establish an infrastructure that puts all the information in the hands of critical decision-makers up front. In short, you can arrange your organizational framework to collect and secure all relevant applicant data, creating a comprehensive portrait of who you’re about to hire. By ironing out organizational kinks that slow the hiring process, knowledge management techniques speed the hiring process – and with the information available, points you toward the candidate you want to hire.

Let’s talk about the benefits of knowledge management for recruitment.

Enhancing Compliance

Knowledge management techniques govern how information is used and transferred within your organization. They can also streamline access to records without compromising confidentiality. Often, when considering the right person for a project, you’ll want to have access to potentially sensitive information. But you’ll also want to be able to store that information in compliance with federal and state guidelines. And effective knowledge management can help you do so.

For example, you may need to access and transfer pre-employment medical records without compromising confidentiality. Pre-employment medical exams are critical for determining whether an applicant is physically able to handle the strain of certain tasks, which in turn helps improve workplace safety. This information can also help employers stay in compliance. However, as you can imagine, the applicant will want their results handled discreetly and in line with state and federal regulations.

As an example, let’s explore how a would-be employee’s drug test results might proceed through a well-managed workflow:

●      The applicant arrives at their local clinic at the appointed time and signs a consent form to share their results with you.

●      The applicant takes the test, and their sample is sent to the lab.

●      After about 2 business days, the results are reported to the employer by the lab.

●      These results are uploaded to a single source of truth like a CRM, and connected automatically to the applicant’s profile.

                  -  Alternatively, if done manually, they are emailed directly to the hiring team, who then share the results with key decision-makers via email chain.

●      All stakeholders are aware of the results, and they are kept within a regulation-compliant record system until a hiring decision has been made.

This method has essentially revolutionized the healthcare industry, pivoting the entire sector toward providing results quickly and efficiently to all stakeholders – and it has quickly taken over many others.

While we’re describing the use of these methods for pre-employment screenings, it can also have a much wider variety of use cases. You can track and note how different factors affect your employees’ productivity, from regular drug testing to casual Fridays, and use those insights to drive revenue.

We should take a moment to note that while tools like CRM solutions help facilitate this approach, they are not necessary per se. As long as your workflow is structured to provide secure record access to all decision-makers, you’re taking a knowledge management-minded approach to hiring.

Leveraging Tools to Seamlessly Transfer Knowledge

Now that we’ve explored an example of what seamless knowledge transfer looks like, the natural next question is “How does that work?” The above use case covered two opposite ends of a spectrum – CRM implementation and ye olde email chains. But you don’t have to choose between uprooting your entire infrastructure with a massive investment in tech or settling for the status quo.

There are actually a wide variety of collaborative tools available that can serve as a single source of truth for your team – and they don’t require multiple millions to get off the ground. Some of these collaboration tools are:

●      Project Management Software. Tools like Asana, Jira, and Wrike allow employees to access, build, and collaborate throughout workflows from a single platform. With an easily navigable interface that allows users to create, assign, and track progress on tasks, these software solutions connect employees across departments to ensure what needs done, gets done.

●      Messaging applications. Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Workvivo all serve as centralized hubs for team communication. These communication applications often provide built-in options for scheduling and hosting team meetings, video-calling, and scheduling, as well as optional notifications letting others know when they’re occupied with other responsibilities.

●      Visual collaboration tools. Platforms like Lucidspark and InVision allow the more design-minded employees an opportunity to gather digitally and provide a shared workspace for them to manipulate. They can use these platforms to share their design concepts, gather feedback on designed assets, and share the final product with others outside their team.

Aside from benefits like boosting productivity as a whole, applications like these ensure that, as an applicant proceeds through pre-employment screening, the whole team is aware of their progress. With real-time updates either offered as an automated feature or provided by hiring staff, all stakeholders will be able to assess and convene on the viability of a candidate as their process occurs.

Don’t leave your next hire up to chance. With knowledge management tools and techniques, you can be more confident than ever that your chosen candidate isn’t just filling a seat – they’re your ideal candidate, and they’ll work with you for years to come.

Amanda Winstead is a writer from the Northwest US area with a background in communications and a passion for telling stories. She has been following Knowledge Management for several years and it's one of her favorite topics to explore.  Along with writing she enjoys traveling, reading, working out, and going to concerts.

If you want to follow her writing journey, or even just say hi you can find her on Twitter or LinkedIn or check out her portfolio.

Featured Blog: Leveraging Knowledge Management to Detect and Address Employee Burnout