How Docusign Can Help Improve the Hiring Process

The talent wars are upon us, and the battle doesn’t end with a job offer—it extends into the onboarding experience, considered the final step of the recruiting process. Today’s professionals are often mulling multiple job offers simultaneously, and a pleasant HR experience can dissuade your best and brightest candidates from defecting to the competition.

Let’s explore how Docusign can help companies improve their recruiting, hiring and onboarding tactics.

Make the right first impression

In a tight labor market, your organization must get off on the right foot. According to a recently-released Cella survey, 30 percent of people who lost interest in a position abandoned their candidacy because of a poor first impression. Millennial and Gen Z applicants have higher expectations than previous generations, which include the desire for cross-channel communications with companies.

This means that employers need to deliver seamless recruiting, hiring and onboarding experiences anytime and on any device. Glassdoor research shows that more than half of candidates look for their jobs on their phones. More than 35 percent of job seekers prefer to use the device to apply for jobs as well.

And experience matters once employees are hired, too. With many of today’s candidates being presented with multiple job offers, a poor onboarding experience could entice them to quit their new role in pursuit of another opportunity.

Gallup found that only 12% of employees strongly agreed their companies do a great job of onboarding. If new hires are bogged down with paper onboarding documents to complete, it does not make for a great first impression.

Reduce hire time

Time isn’t just money. A sluggish hiring approach can also cost you talent. The Cella survey also found 25 percent of candidates abandoned a job prospect because the process was too lengthy. You can significantly reduce the time from offer to acceptance by sending a digital offer letter to eliminate printing, signing, scanning and back-and-forth mailing of paper documents.

Docusign eSignature helps streamline the process and integrates with most standard HRIS tools to spare HR professionals from having to manually enter and reenter data.

Of course, extending an offer and securing a signature is just the beginning of an often-lengthy onboarding process. With eSignature, you can automate the transfer of  employee data from the offer and employment agreement into your HRIS. From there, you can also connect other steps such as issuing new-hire digital paperwork to initiate payroll. HR departments can easily tailor workflows for time-sensitive documents or customize requirements based on roles and region. Completed forms are automatically transferred to a central, secure and easily-searchable repository.

Improve the employee experience

With employee turnover at an all-time high, the right onboarding processes can play a key role in fostering a long-term relationship with new hires. Organizations with a standardized onboarding process experience 62% greater new hire productivity, along with 50% greater new hire retention. Such statistics underscore the importance of creating a welcoming experience on a new hire’s first day by helping them feel comfortable rather than burying them in paperwork.

The Docusign Agreement Platform for HR helps facilitate a positive start by replacing a slow, manual onboarding with a digital, smart and seamless process. Employees can digitally sign new-hire forms, go through the I-9 verification process, review benefits materials and agree to comply with non-disclosure agreements—from virtually any device.

A more efficient agreement process frees up time for your new hires to meet with colleagues, settle into a new routine and take in the company culture.

Embrace remote and hybrid work

It’s now clear that remote and hybrid work are here to stay. A recent PwC study found that nearly 60 percent of people who can perform their job duties remotely are continuing to work from home and plan to do so long term. It means that employees will expect to easily access the same applications, tools and data as they would when sitting at a computer. If HR can’t send forms quickly and securely to candidates wherever they’re located and on their chosen device, the company risks losing them, especially if those candidates are millennials or Gen Zers that demand mobile-friendly experiences.

And during a time when a remote candidate could be based across the country—or the other side of the world—it’s important to equip yourself with tools that can facilitate a remote onboarding process.

Salesforce is among the companies utilizing Docusign to recruit and onboard employees. The cloud-based software company uses our integration with Workday to recruit global candidates quickly, without chasing signatures or managing piles of paperwork. It’s a vast improvement from their previous, paper-based approach.

“Docusign has changed the way we recruit and hire employees,” said Summer Ford, Salesforce’s senior director of recruiting operations. “At this point, the team can’t believe that we used to manage hiring by sending everything out on paper.”

Docusign can help your company win the hiring war and battle through an improved onboarding process. A modern system can help give your new employees a more positive experience while freeing up time for them to meet colleagues and absorb the company’s culture.

Get started now with a free Docusign trial.