Accelerating Your Recruitment Process
We are in an era in which dramatic swings in labor market supply and demand are commonplace. First we don’t have enough candidates and then we have too many unqualified candidates making it hard to sort through and find those gems we want on our team. There’s a buyer’s market and then it’s a sellers market. We had ‘The Great Resignation‘ then ‘The Great Regret.’ And if we waste time with a bulky selection process, we lose those candidate, who themselves are up against the clock, either to act on offers or pay their bills. You need to accelerate your recruitment process.
You’re probably concerned that a faster process will lead to rushed decisions and less-than-ideal hires. I’d like to address this concern and talk about why and how you can run a speedier talent acquisition program without sacrificing quality.
Why Speed Matters in Recruitment
The Best Talent Won’t Wait Around
The most folks with the most sought-after knowledge, skills, abilities, relationships, and certifications often have multiple offers on the table. Often, they would also have the option to forgo working for a company at all, if they’ve experienced success as business owners or independent contractors. They’re on the market for a limited time, and if you’re not quick to engage, interview, and offer, another organization will.
Vacant Positions Cost Money
Every day a position remains unfilled, your company loses potential revenue. Whether it is because the missing productivity, overly burdened employees, or missed goals and opportunities, the cost can be significant, and it’s pointless to go into detail here just how many ways a company can get crushed by vacant roles. It touches every part of the organization from sales and revenue ops to customer service and brand reputation. A swift recruitment process makes sure that you have more time for the substantial parts of talent acquisition: the transition from acquisition to management – from the point of offer to getting the new hire oriented and productive.
Candidate Experience is King
A lengthy and complicated recruitment process is off-putting. Go on social media and see the vast number of social media posts blasting companies by name for their inefficient, tone-deaf, lazy, and sometimes petty recruiting programs.
In another popular and more recent example, Samy Jones @WinTheJob goes after specifically after hiring managers, in a TikTok series:
@win_the_job Bad Hiring Managers Part One #hiringmanagers #badhiringpractices #winthejob #corporateredflags #jobmarket2023 ♬ original sound – Samy Jones, Win The Job
Don’t invite frustration and anger at your slow-moving process. Apply people operations concepts to your talent acquisition, and follow this checklist:
A positive experience in the candidate phase is so important that it will determine whether they choose to engage further, and is a primary cause of candidate ghosting. It’s not just about speed; it’s also about respecting candidates’ time and showing that you as a company value effectiveness and not going through the motions.
Strategies for Accelerating Your Recruitment Process
Optimize Your Job Descriptions and Job Ads
Clarity is key. Ensure job descriptions are precise, to the point, and reflect the true necessities of the role. That same key applies to the job advertisement, of which the job description is just one component. This will filter out unqualified applicants and attract the right talent from the start. Job ads should have:
- Short but clear job titles
- Inclusive language
- Included benefits
- Accurate salary ranges
- Cross-platform formatting
- An employee value proposition (EVP)
- A brief description of the organization and its culture
If you have marketers on your team, get them involved in the review of job advertisements. They already understand how to structure, deploy, and measure the success of ads, and would have valuable insights into how to best position your job ads to get accelerate new applications.
Leverage Tech Effectively
Use ATS (applicant tracking systems) software to manage job applicants. You’re never too small to streamline the way you take in candidates, and even if you’re pre-revenue, you still won’t have much of an excuse not to use a something like Notion, ClickUp, AirTable, or Monday to build an ATS from scratch and manage it out of a single platform that’s basically free to use without the bells and whistles. Ask not if it works for you, ask if it’s good enough for the people you’re trying to attract.
Streamline Interviews
Number of interviews is becoming the most highly reported dissatisfaction with recruitment processes. Adding interviews with people who are neither the direct report, the hiring manager, or the CEO/department head don’t add a lot of value and aren’t endearing people to your organization. If possible, the direct reporting manager for the role should be the hiring manager. It brings a level of validity to the interviewing process and makes the selection decision more important for the hiring manager. Basically, they need to be able to live with the decision and put effort into the process.
Consider combining first-round phone and video interviews into one. Then, use structured interviews (with common rubrics) to ensure no illegal or off the wall questions get asked, and to ensure all candidates are evaluated fairly and quickly. Where possible, empower a dedicated team to make swift hiring decisions – i.e. designate a talent acquisition team that includes the hiring manager. Note: they don’t have to be “HR” – that’s a misconception that HR generalist is experienced in recruitment. To be great at recruitment, one must “become” the job in which they are hiring for, which is something the average HR generalist may not have had the opportunity to do in their careers.
Communicate Like a Pro
Keep candidates in the loop. That doesn’t mean that you should write custom email replies, send manual texts, or make phone calls to every candidate and at every stage. Automated, but personalized emails using triggers and dynamic placeholders keep candidates informed without the need for manual email replies. Email templates should be in human voice, with a bit of character and attitude to keep it human.
Implement Continuous Improvement
Adopt a system of continuous improvement within the recruitment process. Build feedback into your system, and I mean 360 degree feedback, which includes feedback and recommendations from:
- Candidates
- Former employees (via public ratings and exit data)
- Talent Acquisition team members
- HR & People Ops team members
- Marketing team members
- The hiring manager
- Peer group of the role that is being recruited
- Department heads and executive leadership
While not all feedback may be useful at the moment, when aggregated, feedback can form actionable trends that tell you exactly what needs to be improved in the Talent Acquisition program next.
Put these tips in place and you’ll become a talent magnet, drawing in candidates at an accelerated rate.
Need to Recruit Now? Talk to us first.
Accelerate your recruitment process with Poprouser. From sourcing and screening candidates to onboarding and training, we’ll help you build a high-performing team that drives business success. Talk to us today and see how we help you find and keep the best people for your organization.
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