Analyzing soft skills and problem-solving skills is also necessary because they measure cognitive competency as well as behaviors and values, and these traits give insight to a person's likelihood of performing well and staying with a job.

"I've work with many organizations to reduce their turnover, and they have had success anywhere from 20 to 40 percent just by incorporating the soft skills and the problem-solving skills into their hiring strategy," Graham-Leviss explains. 

An HR department can measure these skills by creating a team of hiring managers to define the competencies for superior performance and list the relevant behaviors associated with each competency, Graham-Leviss says. The hiring managers should also observe current top performers and create interviewing questions that focus on behaviors associated with the defined competencies.

An HR department might also decide to use an assessment tool to measure these skills, Graham-Leviss adds. Assessment tools are often already validated, and they provide specific benchmarks for HR departments to follow when selecting candidates. Interview questions and candidate comparisons are also available through many of these systems, which reduces the workload for hiring managers.

Social media as a recruitment tool

Social media has taken over how business is done today, and hiring is no exception. Facebook, Twitter and particularly LinkedIn have all been commonly used when assessing candidates, but now social media is also becoming a more popular way to communicate with potential employees, as well, Graham-Leviss says.

In fact, XB Consulting recently hired a high-level employee through social media. XB Consulting's recruiter targeted potential candidates after viewing their experiences listed on their social media profiles, and then narrowed down the list based on XB Consulting's benchmarks. The candidate who was eventually hired had a compelling social media presence, fit the job criteria and became the company's new vice president of sales.

Social media is also helpful because it allows an HR department to look at its current employees to compare their backgrounds and experiences to job seekers, Graham-Leviss says, which allows an employer to set up certain benchmarks based on its existing talent.

"Companies can use social media to look at current employees and their skills or experiences," Graham-Leviss says. "It saves time, and it can have great information, depending on how descriptive a person is."

Using recruiting services

Graham-Leviss also says more HR departments are relying on outsourcing recruitment services, which is a heavily growing trend, for hiring purposes. A recruiting firm typically hires for both permanent and temporary workers for volumes of positions across different markets. For an HR department to take on that recruiting task alone, there could be a significant cost and loss of labor.

For instance, if Bank of America needs to hire 800 tellers across the U.S., it could try to use its own HR department to staff the open positions, Graham-Leviss says, but a recruiting firm already has a trained team and resources in place to find the right candidates for an outsourced cost. With such a vast number of hires, outsourcing recruitment efforts may be seen as a more affordable option.

"Companies are finding that outsourcing recruiting services is more cost effective," Graham-Leviss says. "Most RPO companies have a good strategy in place. They have trained recruiters, they partner with assessment systems, and they do all the work for you. I think many companies look at that as a time and money saver. It's one of the fastest growing segments in the recruitment industry as it relates to the staffing industry."