57 The Takeaways • Know which talents, skills and experiences are necessary to fill the role you’re hiring for. If you hire for a position without this focus, you may end up hiring talent that isn’t talented in what you need. • Certain skills are necessary, and experience is valuable. However, you may need to think out- side the box when it comes to industry knowledge. Don’t miss out on great talent because your focus is too narrow! • Make sure you’re holding out for top talent. You don’t want to fill a position just to have it filled, because it’s very likely you’ll end up hiring sub-par talent that either won’t stay long, or won’t achieve the level of success your team could be reaching. • You should also ensure that your company can provide what the candidate is looking for. In- come potential and company culture are extremely important across the board. • Use technology to your advantage. It will allow you to streamline your process, save time, and provide a better, more personalized experience for the candidate. • It pays to fill up your talent bank. Recruit to your bank like you’re actually making a selection. This pre-qualifies candidates as those whom you already know will be a good fit the next time an opening occurs. Are You Connecting with the Right Platforms? Technology also has the ability to make your job easier and help you to more effectively connect with candidates. Using Skype, Face- time, and other similar services in place of the traditional phone interview allows you to communicate with Millennial candidates on the platforms they already use regularly and tend to prefer. Similarly, the video ele- ment of these services can even allow you to replace a stage of in-person interviews without the fuss or expenses of traveling to your offices. You should also be accelerating the menial processes of candidate selection by allow- ing technology to handle some of it for you. Instant replies, for instance, can inform can- didates that their resume has been received and lay out pertinent dates for your selection process. In fact, 67% of business utilize AI to save time, per the LinkedIn report, by auto- mating processes like screening and schedul- ing candidates (56% and 42%, respectively). While technology should never replace criti- cal points of consideration (e.g., interviews, observing auditions), AI can process data so much faster than a person can, it will save significant time when you have a high vol- ume of candidates to consider.