What makes an efficient recruiting process? Too many recruiting teams are stuck using methods and technologies that don’t support their growing needs. But contrary to a common misconception, teams often don’t need to overhaul their entire operations and tech stacks to make measurable differences.
All it takes is a drive to do better work faster and a few simple steps to build the efficient recruiting process that your team needs to be successful.
Step One: Adopt a Growth Mindset
We talked recently about adopting a growth mindset when it comes to diversity recruiting, but the same theory applies to your existing recruiting processes. If you or your team find yourself saying, “But that’s how we’ve always done it…” then it’s time for you to get to work.
According to Dr. Carol Dweck, “people with growth mindsets believe that success is determined by effort.” With mindsets often arising from an organization’s culture and messages that leadership shares, leadership can emulate the growth mindset they want to see in their teams to make optimization and growth a standard practice rather than a stressful change.
Step Two: Audit Your Existing Process
You can’t grow if you don’t know where you are. Start by asking, “Why do we do things this way?” Be open to critique and foster a safe and inclusive environment where everyone feels open to delivering feedback in a kind and productive way. The key to a successful auditing process is honesty and transparency across the board!
Understanding the triumphs and pitfalls of your existing recruiting process or tech stack allows you to optimize the areas that must be optimized and continue efforts in the already successful ones.
While your team is incredible at communicating, you may find that they need help with using their internal data. Focus on bringing in the right tech to help and let them continue to excel at working with candidates.
Step Three: Build Structured and Repeatable Systems
Does your team have a structured and repeatable process for recruiting, or is it a guessing game every time they get a new requisition? Setting clear expectations of what needs to get done will help your recruiters manage their work more efficiently and provide candidates and applicants with the transparency they crave for a positive experience.
Repeatable processes can also minimize errors and make sure that everyone is treated fairly. While it may take some time to build suitable structures, the effort is worth it for higher efficiency, better transparency, and equal treatment.
Don’t forget: Get input from hiring managers! How often do they want to be communicated with? What should the interview process look like? Getting their input and guiding them with your team’s expertise brings collaboration and promotes the talent advisor role your recruiters deserve.
Step Four: Bring in Quality Automation Where You Can
You’re likely already using automation, but are you using it well?
The best foundation for automation is quality data. Make sure that your data is normalized and structured to use automation to the best of its ability. Automation and machine learning can be used in tons of places throughout your process, including sourcing and scoring.
We explored how to use machine learning to read and then search through millions of data points in seconds.
Remember that you can also use automation in more unexpected ways like automated pipeline building and internal mobility. Don’t be afraid to try new things…that’s what the growth mindset is for!
Step Five: Track Metrics Regularly
Do your recruiters know what success looks like? Are they able to easily track their metrics and understand where they may need extra support? By prioritizing what metrics are most important to your team, recruiters can focus their efforts on those metrics.
If possible, have recruiters review each requisition to see where they succeeded, where they’d like to grow, and share what tools they may need.
Step Six: Communicate, Communicate, and…Did We Mention? Communicate!
Automation systems make sending updates to candidates a breeze so, if your team hasn’t already, enlist their help! But it’s not just candidates that should be communicated with for an efficient process. While candidate communication needs to be a vital part of any recruiting strategy, communication amongst the hiring team is also critical.
Regular updates build stronger relationships, aligns expectations, and increases engagement.
Work together with the hiring team to decide on the best communication plans. Then, stick to the plan. Reaching a compromise between everyone’s needs and abilities to build a strategy may take some back and forth, but the planning will save time in the long run.
Step Seven: Reassess and Grow
When you’ve found a recruiting workflow that helps your team hit their goals and get people hired, it’s natural to stick to it. And you should! But schedule regular times to check in on the process. Whether it’s once a quarter or once a year, keep an eye on what’s working and what’s not.
Remember that growth mindset you’ve built! Ask the tough questions and look at the results to find what’s working and what’s not. Working directly with your recruiting team to learn about the roadblocks they’re facing and where they’ve felt successful will also help to continue your team’s growth!
Building an efficient recruiting process is more like running on a track than racing towards a finish line. With the role of near-constant optimization and growth, it can feel like you’re running in circles. As you get stronger and more efficient, each lap will get easier and easier. Before long, your team will become the successful industry leaders you know they are.