A Guide To Finding The Best Lateral Hiring Platform For Your Recruitment Needs

Everyone knows that hiring is not just about finding the right talent but also about training and retaining that talent. It’s why companies employ a mix of traditional and modern-day recruitment solutions to find the right fit for the role. This includes partnering with lateral hiring platforms to fulfill their recruitment needs. 

Lateral hiring refers to the process of hiring experienced individuals for a role, usually from outside the organization. It’s a form of specialized hiring for niche roles or executive positions. 

It’s not for entry-level positions and companies look to hire individuals who have the specific skill set and/or experience missing in their current workforce. These individuals ideally require minimal to zero training to start the job. Consequently, the talent pool is often made of passive candidates i.e., candidates not actively seeking a new role. 

With most functions moving online, digital solutions are becoming more and more common. That stands true for recruitment as well. However, considering the cost of sourcing, training, and retaining talent, finding the right hiring platform is critical to a company’s success. 

Before we dive further into how a lateral hiring platform can help, or ways to find the best one, let’s first understand what exactly is a lateral hiring platform. 

What’s A Lateral Hiring Platform?

A lateral hiring platform is a software or digital tool that helps organizations meet their lateral recruiting needs. A lateral hiring platform can help organizations automate their entire hiring process, or parts of it, depending on the requirements.

Features of a Lateral Hiring Platform

Hiring platforms offer a wide range of services, but there are certain common features that lateral hiring platforms exhibit: 

1. Posting vacancies: Lateral hiring platforms allow organizations to post vacancies, and specify the target audience. 
2. Candidate pool: A platform that has expertise in hiring laterally is likely to have ready access to a talent pool. Thus, these platforms are more likely to succeed in sourcing the right candidates, even for tough-to-hire roles. At the very least, they can significantly save time and resources that an organization may spend in sourcing candidates through other means. 
3. Screening and assessment tools: Most lateral hiring platforms offer screening and assessment tools that recruiting teams can use to filter through the applications and shortlist the best talent for the role. 
4. Managing profiles: A salient feature of any good lateral hiring platform is the ability to track and manage candidate profiles through each step of the hiring process. Right from the time a candidate is approached for a role (or applies for a role) to the time the offer is made, hiring platforms allow hiring managers to keep track of the candidates. This, in turn, makes it easier to collect data for various recruitment metrics. 

Why Use A Lateral Hiring Platform?

Though traditional recruitment practices have the advantage of human touch, there are several flaws in the process as well - it requires excessive time, manual labour, and money. Traditionally, recruiting relied on only screening resumes to shortlist candidates, which is not always an effective way to find the best talent. 

There are several advantages of using a lateral hiring platform, such as: 

1. Saves Resources: The biggest advantage of a lateral hiring platform is that it helps save time, manual effort, and money. This makes the recruitment process more efficient. 
2. Wider Talent Pool: Organizations get access to a wide talent pool on a single platform, and don’t need to tap into multiple sourcing channels. 
3. Better Assessment: Since hiring platforms constantly work to source and screen talent, they are well-equipped to develop comprehensive yet novel assessment frameworks. These assessment tools are well-suited to evaluate both, technical and soft skills. Talent acquisition teams can use these assessment tools to find candidates that best suit the role and fit into the organization. 
4. Improved Candidate Experience: A positive candidate experience can go a long way in convincing a potential candidate to accept the offer - especially in the case of lateral hiring, where passive candidates make up the talent pool. Lateral hiring platforms streamline the recruitment process and enable better engagement with candidates - thereby, improving the candidate experience. 
5. Data-driven Decision-making: Hiring platforms allow recruiters to manage profiles and track candidates’ data throughout the recruitment process - enabling them to make data-driven decisions.

How Can Unstop Help?

Unstop provides a host of advanced talent solutions for any and every recruitment need - including lateral hiring. Here’s a look at the five-step process for lateral hiring followed by Unstop: 

Understanding requirements

At Unstop, we start with understanding your core requirements, right down to the minutest details. This ensures that the candidates identified meet the specific requirements. 

Building a Framework

A framework is key to hiring successfully. Thus, Unstop focuses its attention and expertise on building a competence framework - one that is tailored to the role and based on the job description.

Selectively sourcing candidates

When it comes to lateral hiring, audience outreach makes all the difference. Since you’re looking for candidates with a specific set of skills and experience, it’s important to selectively target suitable candidates - those most qualified for the role. 

Thorough assessment

After sourcing the right set of candidates, it’s time to use curated assessment tools to evaluate candidates - testing them for the requisite expertise, skill, and experience. This is where Unstop’s collection of popular and personalized assessment tools comes in handy. 

Hiring backed by data

By using Unstop’s comprehensive assessments and detailed analysis, organizations can make hiring decisions that are backed by data. 

While hiring platforms are easy to find, selecting one that best suits your needs is no piece of cake. Here’s what sets apart Unstop as a hiring platform: 

Interested in finding out more about Unstop’s lateral hiring solutions, and how a single platform can help fulfill all your recruiting needs? Explore the platform here.

Finding a Lateral Hiring Platform: Things To Keep In Mind

Here are some key points to keep in mind when looking for a lateral hiring platform that best fits your requirements: 

Alignment with your goals and culture

If you’re looking for a platform to collaborate with, it’s important that it understands your end goals, and fits with your company culture. For example, as an organization, you may have set criteria in place to screen resumes. A hiring platform that is unable to meet those terms is not one to partner with. 

For this, it’s also important that all departments involved in hiring for a role have complete clarity on the end goal and the purpose of using a hiring platform. This includes discussion on budget and timelines. This avoids unnecessary confusion and delays. 

Past reviews

Always look for past records or reviews of how a platform has served recruiting needs. This gives you a fair idea of their approach and range of services. 

Track results

Hiring platforms are employed to meet a particular need. Thus, track results to evaluate if the hiring platform is meeting those needs. If not, you may need to tweak your strategy or change your platform. 

If you’re interested in availing of Unstop’s lateral hiring solutions, you can reach out to sales@unstop.com or opt for a 1:1 consultation by submitting a request here. #BeUnstoppable in your journey of finding the right talent. 

Suggested Reads: 

1. Lateral vs Fresher Hiring: Which Is A Better Choice?
2. Lateral Hiring: A Complete Guide To The Process, Its Benefits, Challenges & Best Practices
3. Step-By-Step Approach To Building A Winning Campus Recruitment Strategy
4. What is Campus Recruitment? How To Tap The Untapped Talent?