case study how to improve recruitment process

DEI in 2024 is a more polarized topic than in 2020 – Check out our recent survey and get the insights Download the report

• Inside HR |
• Stories & Insights |

How to improve your recruiting process

Improving your recruiting process involves crafting clear job ads, enhancing candidate sourcing, building talent pipelines, increasing recruitment efficiency, effectively evaluating candidates, and enhancing candidate experience. Each step contributes to a more efficient, productive, and pleasant recruitment process for both candidates and hiring teams.

Nikoletta holds an MSc in HR management and has written extensively about all things HR and recruiting.

Refined recruitment processes are efficient, productive and pleasant for both candidates and hiring teams. Here are a few ways to improve your recruiting process:

Craft clear and attractive job ads

Effective job ads help you evaluate candidates on job-related criteria. Work with your company’s hiring managers to create job descriptions that:

• Provide useful and specific details about open roles. When listing job duties, mention projects your new hire may undertake or teams they will work with. Distinguish between “must-have” and “nice-to-have” requirements so as not to discourage candidates who could learn secondary skills on the job. As a general rule, keep your list of “must-haves” to  around 6 bullet points .
• Choose straightforward job titles. Be clear about roles you’re hiring for. Avoid using words like “ rockstar ” and suspect or clickbait titles and text (e.g. “Great opportunity for recent graduates!”)
• Promote your company. Describe what makes your company unique to give candidates compelling reasons to apply. Be specific: “We opened three new branches recently” is more precise than “We are growing fast.” Also, outline benefits and perks your company offers.
• Use clear and inclusive language. Avoid jargon and complicated sentences and speak directly to candidates (e.g. use “you” instead of “the ideal candidate.”) Avoid discriminatory language (e.g. “salesman”, “young and energetic.”) And if your company actively supports diversity, let candidates know .

Boost your candidate sourcing

Most people who are employed still want to hear about new job opportunities. Discover passive candidates with these sourcing techniques to increase your chances of making great hires:

• Source on social media. Follow conversations and people on popular social media like Twitter and more niche platforms like Reddit . Look for people with interest and expertise relevant to positions you’re hiring for (e.g. if you’re hiring for a data scientist, look into threads or conversations on big data or machine learning on StackOverflow or GitHub.)

(To source EU candidates, please refer to guidance on using social media for recruiting and collecting candidate information as per the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.)

• Attend events. Expand your sourcing by going to industry events, conferences and meetups that professionals you’re hiring for might attend (e.g. a UX Meetup to network with UX designers.)
• Use Boolean search. Boolean search helps you discover candidate resumes. Use Boolean strings on Google to find profiles on social media.
• Get referrals. Referrals are often a good way to find high-quality hires. Create and promote a referral program with incentives. Referral software can also help you use gamification  methods to drive more referrals.
• Invest in sourcing tools. Sourcing tools help you find qualified candidates for your open roles fast. For example, People Search builds complete profiles, often including an email address, resume and other social networks where your prospect is active.

Source and attract more candidates

Workable helps you build and promote your brand where your next candidates are. You’re always top of mind, whether they’re actively looking or not.

Start sourcing

Build talent pipelines

Talent pipelines are groups of candidates who can fill future roles. By sourcing candidates before roles open, you have ample time to engage them  early so you can reduce your time-to-hire  when a suitable role opens up.

Here are four main steps to building talent pipelines :

• Determine what roles need a pipeline (usually roles with high turnover or roles that are hard-to-fill.)
• Look to past candidates , former employees and interns to build your pipeline.
• Source passive candidates by combining various sourcing techniques (e.g. Boolean search , events .)
• Reach out to candidates to engage them and stay in touch until you have an open role for them.

Related :  Recruitment process effectiveness metrics FAQ

Improve your recruitment efficiency

Here are a few ways to increase your efficiency as a recruiter:

• Build checklists for standard processes. Checklists help you organize your hiring. Use them to prepare for interviews and screening calls to ensure you have all the information you need before speaking with candidates.
• Use email templates. Personalized emails are important, but you may not always know where to start. Choose templates to ask for referrals  or invite candidates to interviews . Update your recruiting email templates regularly so they rarely become stale.
• Invest in recruiting software. Video recruiting software (e.g. HireVue , Jobma ,  Spark Hire ) saves you time and money when you’re interviewing remote candidates. Applicant tracking systems can also help you manage your hiring stages, keep candidate profiles in a searchable database and collaborate with your team.

Boost your productivity

Speed up time to hire by automating repetitive tasks and emails with Workable’s automated actions.

Kick-start your automations

Evaluate candidates effectively

An improved recruitment process revolves around screening methods that help you select the most qualified candidates. Here are a few of these methods:

• Review work samples and assignments. Evaluate work samples from candidates’ portfolios or ask candidates to complete assignments as part of your hiring process (e.g. an editing exercise for Editor candidates.) If you’re hiring developers , consider using a tech recruiting platform (e.g. Codility ) that supports coding challenges and online technical interviews.
• Try tests. Ask candidates to take standardized tests . This approach can help you reduce the number of candidates you interview, thus saving hiring managers’ time. Tests aren’t perfect , so be sure to combine them with other assessment methods (like work samples) and analyze results before you disqualify candidates.
• Structure (or semi-structure) your interviews. Unstructured interviews can’t predict job performance consistently. To add structure to your interviews , prepare your questions beforehand and tie them to job requirements (e.g. prepare management interview questions to ask candidates interviewing for senior positions.) It’s a good idea to use the same questions for each candidate and score those questions using the same scale. Your ATS’s interview scorecards can be useful for structuring interviews this way.

In addition to these methods, invest in training for your hiring teams. Interview training helps teams evaluate candidates better, which improves the quality of your hires.

Enhance candidate experience

Every interaction with candidates shapes their impression of your company. A positive candidate experience is good for your employer brand and helps you build a healthy pipeline. Here are a few factors that affect candidate experience:

• Shorten your application process. Most candidates quit lengthy application processes. Applications that can be filled out in less than five minutes attract more applicants. Ask candidates to upload their resume and cover letter and complete a few qualifying questions. Stick to simple and relevant questions and avoid asking for information you can find on resumes or online profiles.
• Be informative. Use employee stories or quotes and describe your company benefits.
• Be user-friendly.  Include images and videos to personalize your page . If possible, consult a designer to make your page easy to navigate and nice to look at.
• Be genuine. Present what makes your company a great place to work and avoid overused or empty phrases like “fast-paced environment” and “core values.”
• Keep candidates in the loop. Candidates want to be updated throughout your hiring process. Set reminders to follow up with candidates you screened or interviewed. Your ATS’s built-in email templates  can help facilitate communication at every hiring stage. It’s also a good practice to send rejection emails to disqualified candidates and offer to provide interview feedback .

Improving your company’s hiring is an ongoing process. Track useful metrics to assess your improvements and identify ways to revamp your recruiting.

Don’t miss: The best interview questions to ask candidates

Frequently asked questions

Still spending too much time hiring the right candidates.

Try our best-in-class ATS software. We make it easy to source, evaluate and hire best-fit candidates – and quickly, too.

Make hiring easy

Related topics

Inside HR | Stories & Insights | Ask an Expert |

Gen z: helpless or just asking for help.

Inside HR | Stories & Insights | Hiring Pulse |

Your hiring pulse report for august 2024.

HR Toolkit | Tutorials | Sourcing |

Beat the summer hiring slump with these steps.

Backstage at Workable | News and Updates |

Ai-driven candidate sourcing: ai recruiter just got even better, new guide: calculate the roi of an ats.

Need to start saving with a new ATS? Calculate the ROI of your ATS with our template.

Popular topics

• Candidate sourcing and attraction
• Working together with others
• Maximizing candidate & employee experience
• Finding & attracting people
• Digitizing work processes
• Ensuring compliance best practices

Let's grow together

Explore our full platform with a 15-day free trial. Post jobs, get candidates and onboard employees all in one place.

Share on Mastodon

MBA Knowledge Base

Business • Management • Technology

Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study: Google’s Recruitment and Selection Process

Case Study: Google’s Recruitment and Selection Process

Google Inc., the world’s largest and most popular search engine company, is also one of the most sought after companies in the world. Due to the popularity of the company caused by its highly attractive compensation and benefits packages for its employees, millions of job applications are constantly received by Google on an annual basis. While other companies envy Google for attracting and acquiring such highly-talented and highly-skilled individuals from all over the world, the company finds it as a serious cause of dilemma.

When Google Inc. topped the ranks for the most popular companies in the world , it could no longer contain the number of applications it receives from thousands of job hunters from all over the globe. And since the company aims to hire only the best employees that fit the organizational culture and standards of Google , the company started thinking of ways to better improve its recruitment and selection process for its would-be employees.

The Google Inc management also decided to focus on the distinct behavioral characteristics and personality that separates Google employees from any other employees in other known companies. It shifted its focus from academic qualifications and technical experiences to the applicant’s personality , creativity , leadership capacities , innovative and non-conventional ways of thinking and the applicant’s overall exposure to the world. The academic qualifications and the intensive job experience just came in as second priorities of the company in choosing the best candidates for any open positions.

The Google Recruitment Process

One of the most notable statements of Eric Schmidt , the CEO of Google Inc. is that “Google invests in people.” The main reason why people from different cultures, have been dreaming of being recruited and hired by Google is that the company offers possibly the most outstanding job compensation packages any normal employee could ever enjoy.

In order to attract the best employees, Google draws them by the promise of wealth and luxury, providing their employees with almost everything an employee could possibly need, from absurdly high compensations to extravagant and luxurious benefits like gourmet food, carwash, gym, snacks, exercise classes, dry cleaning services, car services, haircuts, oil changes, massages, checkups and many more, all for free.

Another applicant who also have had experiences in the recruitment process of Google claims that his Google experience was one of the most nerve-wracking adventures of his life. The interviewers were looking for extremely bright individuals and so the recruitment method was filled with IQ tests, brain teasers, algorithms, data structures, and a lot of mathematics involved in it.

The Google Selection Process

Google is no doubt the world’s best recruitment leader. Google is known for various unique approaches that it has utilized in order to attract the cream of the crop or the best of the bests. One way is through employment branding. Google has so successfully utilized their brand in order to attract the most talented and highly-competent individuals in the world. Because of their claim of providing the best employee-employer experience supported by the many perks, benefits and high salaries that Google employees get to enjoy, Google became the most desired companies for men and women in the world.

One notable recruitment technique that Google utilized in 2006 was the targeted and unobtrusive approach to sending recruitment messages. Google crafted a simple technique to recruit the best students in certain schools and universities to work for them. They allowed people from these schools to access the search portal of Google wherein the students’ IP address would be identified to see from what organization the person belongs into. The technique was successfully executed using a minimalist and unobtrusive style of recruitment wherein below the search box, the Google system would know whether the targeted student is graduating or not and whether or not they intend to work for Google after graduation. The approach was definitely a successful micro-targeted approach. It was also in the same year when Google opened up to the idea of an Employee Referral Program. In putting up this program, Google made sure that it would deliver them a world-class employee whose personality, qualifications and work ethics reflect the Google standards.

A year passed by and Google’s attempts for recruitment innovations continued to improve. In 2007, Google developed a simple and effective assessment tool to screen its millions of applicants all over the world via an algorithm assessment tool. The algorithm technique effectively separated the top and the best performers from thousands of candidates vying for a position. Moreover, the assessment tool was made sure to successfully predict the best possible candidates from the least and the average and has managed to resolve the issue on the usual assessment tools being used by most companies, relying mainly on the academic qualifications and intensive industry and job experience.

The secret to be selected as a Google employee is that one has to think a lot like an “engineer”. Apparently, Google expects their employees to be highly quantitative and highly analytical as well as highly capable of dealing with too many data all at the same time. During the interviews, an applicant must also be able to demonstrate his skill or capacity by writing codes, intelligently analyzing case studies and brain teasers and solving algorithmic problems on the spot. Also, Google is searching for applicants who are highly practical and are capable of making something out of nothing that people can make use of.

The Google Interview Process

Since Google is known to be the ultimate recruitment and selection machine, its interview processes are also the most grueling experiences an applicant could ever have. Usually, the interviews begin using the telephone. Once the phone interviews conducted have been successful, the applicant would be scheduled by the recruitment officer and be invited for a series of five to ten interviews in one day with ten different people. For some people who have successfully undergone this process, they described it as the most excruciating employment experience of their lives as a lot of mental gymnastics were necessary to prove your skills.

Moreover, other applicants can rate and share comments on another applicant which Google can track and use as another basis for hiring or not hiring an applicant. Overall, the process was a lengthy, tedious and nerve-wracking experience which can possibly traumatize anyone whose dream is to work for one of the most prestigious companies in the world. Nevertheless, the perks and benefits are limitless and are more than enough to compensate for such a tough employment experience.

Related posts:

• Best Practices in Recruitment and Selection
• How to Improve Your Recruitment Process
• Integrity Testing in Employee Selection Process
• How Blockchain Transforms the Recruitment Process?
• Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) – Definition, Benefits and Risks
• Recruitment Process
• Case Study: Restructuring Process of Volkswagen
• Type of Tests Taken in the Selection Process
• Types of interview conducted in the selection process
• Selection Process in Human Resource Management

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Elite Human Capital

Executive search. recruitment. talent advisory. career coaching. outplacement., case studies in the recruitment process – an assessment method for gathering data on a candidate.

Recently I started recruiting for a management consulting company who uses client case studies as part of their selection process. For them, it has proven to be an effective way of gathering information on a candidate to assess suitability.

To better understand the use of case studies in the recruitment process, my assistant Laura and I did research into the topic, this blog post is to share that information with you.

An overview of case studies in the recruitment process

Case studies are used as a method of competency measuring. Competency methods can focus on technical abilities, social and behavioural skills, or a combination of the two.

Case studies are most popular in management consulting (though they are used in some other industries) since they are able to mimic the kinds of tasks that would be required in the job.

They are done face-to-face during a specified time slot or given to the candidate to complete in their own time.

See Hiring by Competency Models, Patty Grigoryev (2006)

University of Sydney, Case study interviews https://sydney.edu.au/careers/students/applying-for-jobs/interview-tips/case-study-interviews.html

Research on case study efficacy

The premise behind administering a case study as an assessment method is that it offers a level playing field, to some degree, by allowing shortlisted candidates to demonstrate their technical abilities and personal qualities irrespective of past experience and qualification(s).

Case studies enable interviewers to see the strengths and weaknesses of candidates in action, including:

• Engaging in logical and analytical reasoning.
• Thinking creatively and generating innovative solutions.
• Problem-solving.
• Working under time pressure.
• Effective communication skills, including presenting in front of one or several interviewers and using a whiteboard to express concepts.

Case studies are detailed in their nature, add cost to the overall recruitment process (because they require time and resources to administer) and are often one of the final stages in the recruitment process.

Reducing the risk of a bad hire

It is well-established that the costs of a bad hire for a business are huge, especially in leadership roles where it can affect the performance of the whole team.

The hard costs of a bad hire are estimated to range between 50% and 200% of the first-year salary. In management consulting, a bad hire cannot only affect the internal team – a poor client experience can have significant impacts from a brand and billing perspective.

Finding ways to reduce the number of bad hires isn’t easy, case studies have been developed to provide additional data points to make a more informed hiring decision. Using competency modelling methods such as case studies, it has been shown to increase success in hiring decisions, with the most significant improvement stemming from a better culture fit.

Talent Management 360, Using case studies to recruit talent https://talentmanagement360.com/using-case-studies-to-recruit-talent/

Case studies and management consulting companies

Big 4 accounting firms and strategy consulting houses like McKinsey and Bain consistently use case studies in their recruitment process, for example:

PWC appears to only use case studies in relation to taxation and when hiring recent graduates. They are described as “provide students with realistic fact situations in which a number of tax problems and opportunities can be identified”. They acknowledge that law students and business students may choose to approach them differently and give some background regarding the issues and deliverables expected, such as that students are expected to “incorporate a certain amount of tax planning into their solutions”.

https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university-relations/tax-case-studies.html

By contrast, Deloitte’s approach is broader. The case interview is designed to assess problem-solving and analytical skills, as well as logic and strategy. However, it is also designed to give candidates an insight into their prospective role, since the cases align with real projects. They clearly step out a five-step approach that candidates should use to address the case interview and give a list of helpful tips that they recommend will help interviewees get the most out of the experience. There is also an interactive case interview practice website ( http://caseinterviewprep.deloitte.com/ ) designed to assist.

https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/pages/careers/articles/join-deloitte-careers-case-interview-tips.html

McKinsey & Company who are notorious for gruelling recruitment methods, with some prospective employee’s having up to 20 interviews before receiving an offer, including a compulsory case interview.

McKinsey offer four example case interviews, which can all be found at this link:

https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing

Bain states that any candidate applying for a consulting role should expect a case interview, and those cases will be based on Bain’s client work. They provide two examples, as well as a mock interview for candidates to watch:

https://www.bain.com/careers/interview-prep/case-interview/

Capital One

Capital One also has a detailed case study guide which demonstrates what they will assess (problem solving and analytical skills) as well as providing examples:

https://jobs.capitalone.co.uk/business-analyst-case-study-guide

Time allotted

The PWC case studies are to be done in the student’s own time, but there is a general guideline offered: “The time required of the student to complete the case requirements will vary greatly, depending upon the level of tax knowledge of the individual student, their software skills, and the number and type of issues in each case. As a very general guideline, each case study, with all issues included, should require not less than 10 hours of issue formation, research, and analysis by a graduate tax student, before the final deliverable(s) are developed.”

Deloitte’s case interview preparation page states that each case is 15-20 minutes long but does not give any set time limits and there is no suggestion that responses are timed.

See PWC Case Studies in Taxation https://www.pwc.com/us/en/careers/university_relations/documents/Case-Studies-in-Taxation-2018.pdf

Measuring the responses

PWC’s case studies are designed to test both technical skills (tax knowledge, Excel ability) and broader skills such as problem solving and creativity. It is stated that the ‘deliverables’ can be in many forms including “a letter to the client identified in the case study, a memo to the client file, or preparing a ruling request for the IRS. Some case study users require oral presentations. These may take the form of a straight presentation or role-play in the setting of a client meeting, resolution of an audit, or representation of a client in a court.” Actually measuring these is not expressly dealt with, but the document does provide a set of solutions to each case study for comparison, akin to a marking key.

By comparison Deloitte is focused less on finding the ‘right answer’ and emphasises that candidates will do well by clearly demonstrating a logical thought process. Having a clear structure and acknowledging any assumptions are listed as recommendations. Possible answers are given in the example attached and they focus on having both justifications and implications for each point. It’s all about the ‘how’ rather than the ‘what’. For numerical/technical questions however, there is a clear right and wrong.

Other methods of work sample testing

There are alternative methods for collecting data points on a candidate, these include: written questionnaires, take home or in office real life job tasks, online assessment tools and group assessment centres.

One hiring manager I was recruiting for would take a full two hours to conduct an interview with a candidate. In the first hour he would cover off behavioural and company ‘fit’ questions, in the second hour he would launch into a long list of technical questions, including real case study examples from working at his company.

This thorough approach made the hiring manager more confident in his decision to hire the individual (or not hire if the candidate wasn’t strong enough).

Here are some other quality articles on evidence based interviewing and testing.

• The Case for Evidence Based Interviewing: Part 1 and Part 2
• Assessing Soft Skills

When I’m engaged to conduct a recruitment process for a client I recommend gathering as many data points on the candidate as possible – including a type of work sample, if possible.

I’m always looking for ways to help organisations recruit better. Leveraging years of experience in corporate recruiting I can assist with finding the bottlenecks and weak points in your hiring process and improving hiring outcomes.

Find out more about my services here: https://elite-human-capital.com/consulting-services/

To talk with me about how I can help, make contact today.

Share this:

Leave a comment cancel reply.

• Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
• Subscribe Subscribed
• Copy shortlink
• Report this content
• View post in Reader
• Manage subscriptions
• Collapse this bar

How to Improve the Recruitment Process: 15 Solid Tips

Recruiting the right candidate can be an expensive and time-consuming process. At an average cost of $4,700 and a 44-day hiring cycle , there’s little margin for error. But you don’t just have to sit back and accept that you’re part of another recruiting statistic.

With the right recruitment tools and tips, you can slash recruitment costs, reduce downtime, and attract the talent that your business needs. If you want to learn how to improve recruitment process problems , all you have to do is scroll down the page to discover 15 savvy tips from industry experts, from sourcing candidates to creating a killer job posting and more.

TL;DR – Key Takeaways

A bad recruiting process has high costs , and we’re not just talking about financial costs — poor recruiting practices cost companies in terms of productivity, lowered morale, higher turnover, legal and compliance risks, a tarnished employer brand, and so much more.

To improve your recruitment process, start by analyzing and measuring your current recruitment efforts and working on your employer brand and hiring strategy.

Identify your skills gaps and write better job descriptions to accurately fill those gaps. Use skills-based assessments and hiring tools such as Toggl Hire to more effectively assess the hard and soft skills of each candidate.

Re-engage your past candidates, and as new ones pour in, inform them about their progress through email notifications or custom applicant portals (investing in the candidate experience pays off more than you know).

The cost of a bad recruiting process

Improving your recruitment process isn’t just about making things more efficient internally (although we’re sure your hiring team will thank you for investing in optimizing and improving their processes); it can directly impact the company’s bottom line, both internally and externally.

From decreased productivity to a damaged brand reputation, there are numerous factors that contribute to the cost of a bad hiring process .

Hiring costs

As mentioned, the cost of hiring can easily reach at least $4,700 for each bad hire. This includes various costs at every stage of the hiring process, including:

Job board costs

Recruiter/agency costs

Interview expenses

Time spent on onboarding

Moreover, if the candidate hired has inadequate skills (because they’ve been dishonest on their resume and you didn’t properly assess their skills with skills testing), you’ll end up spending even more time and money training them for the role.

Increased employee turnover

A lousy recruitment process can be a nightmare for your company’s employee retention rate and lead to increased employee turnover . Between onboarding and training costs, poor culture fit , and a mismatch in skills, the consequences could be catastrophic. Plus, bad hires spread negativity and even impact overall productivity, so it’s crucial to get the recruitment process right.

Decreased productivity

Hiring the wrong candidate can result in lower efficiency and output, while recruiters who aren’t up to the task can make matters even worse with low recruiter productivity . Hiring employees who don’t fit the company culture or lack the necessary skills can also have a negative ripple effect on overall morale and team synergy — both massive issues that affect productivity across the board.

Lower team morale

Hiring the wrong people can be an absolute disaster for team dynamics, as 70% of US professionals wouldn’t put up with poor workplace culture. Bad hires can lower morale, create tension, and reduce overall performance and employee satisfaction. As a result, employee attrition skyrockets.

Poor employer brand

69% of job seekers would reject a job offer from a company with a bad employer brand , and strong brands attract 50% more qualified applicants . If you don’t take time to improve your recruitment process, you’ll quickly develop a bad reputation, leading to a lack of interest from top talent and difficulties in attracting them in the future.

Missed opportunities

While you’re busy hiring the wrong candidates, the right candidates are also busy — accepting offers from your competitors or other businesses who see their value and quickly onboard them to their teams. What gives? Unfortunately, it’s likely your fault; a poor candidate experience or misaligned job description could have caused them to move to greener pastures.

Legal and compliance risk

Money matters, sure. But a broken hiring process isn’t just expensive; it could also be illegal. When failing to follow fair hiring practices to attract candidates and screen resumes, you could unknowingly fail to comply with local and federal laws and regulations or introduce unconscious bias against potential candidates, which results in decreased quality of hire.

15 tips for how to improve the recruitment process

Currently, about 51% of employees are watching for or actively looking for a new job. And while that may sound grim, it’s also an excellent opportunity for you to find candidates and improve your selection process along the way.

By refining your recruitment process, you can fill your vacant job positions more quickly and attract a great new hire out of the massive talent pool of prospective employees. Just follow these 15 data-backed ways to improve your recruitment process.

1. Understand your current recruiting metrics

You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and in the recruitment and selection process, there are many recruiting metrics to measure, such as:

Time to fill

Cost per hire

Quality of hire

Source of hire

Turnover rate

Offer acceptance rate

And many others

So, start by taking stock of where you’re currently at. Your typical HR tool set will come out of the box with many different metrics to measure by default. However, our recruiting metrics template is a good starting point, too (make a copy of it and customize it to fit your recruitment team’s needs!).

Once you’ve audited your current performance, you can allocate your resources better and measure your hiring efforts even more accurately. As a result, you can make better hiring decisions and find qualified candidates more easily — all at a lower cost .

2. Develop a strong employer brand

As mentioned, 69% of job seekers would reject a job offer from a company with a bad employer brand, and 50% of employees wouldn’t work for a company with a bad reputation, even if they were offered a salary increase.

In many ways, hiring is becoming like marketing, and employer branding is what makes your company stand out from the competition. To improve your employer brand , you can:

Invest time and money in optimizing your careers page

Highlight your employees and their successes on your website and social media

Participate in job fairs and industry events

Monitor your online reviews on websites such as Glassdoor

If you’re unsure where to start, think about your company’s overall mission and vision. You can then determine how you will shape and present your culture to quality candidates .

3. Define your recruitment strategy

A good recruitment process doesn’t happen by accident. You have to create a strategy (and no, “filling open positions” isn’t a strategy, sorry). A great recruitment strategy includes elements such as:

Succession planning

Hiring goals

Ideal candidate profiles

Dedicated sourcing methods

Evaluation criteria

While you can try to incorporate these elements into your interview and screening processes haphazardly, tying them all together in a thought-out strategy allows you to monitor, measure, and optimize your hiring processes in a more organized, efficient manner. If you don’t know how to build a talent strategy, read through our guide.

👉 11 Recruitment Strategies to Attract Top Talent in 2024

Start by auditing your current efforts. For example, you might look at your current recruitment channels, whether that’s passive candidates, job boards, social media, your careers page, or an employee referral program , to determine where you’re sourcing the best new candidates .

Then, direct your focus toward improving the process through that channel. To create a structured hiring process from this strategy, think of what roles you need to fill in the future, why you need to fill them, who those people will evolve into, and what the company will look like in two or three years’ time.

4. Identify skills gaps

Don’t just hire to fill a position. Instead, take a look at your existing workforce and hire strategically to fill the skills gaps within your organization. A skills gap analysis helps you determine if you really need to look outward and hire someone new or upskill and cross-skill internally.

Workforce planning is another great way to assess your current employees’ key skills and then forecast your future company needs. Think of the areas where your company may need improvements in the future and hire accordingly.

5. Write better job descriptions

While often overlooked as part of attracting qualified applicants, job descriptions are the bread and butter of talent acquisition . When written well, a great job description can sell even a really bad job in a company that’s falling apart. When written poorly, it can make even the best candidate run away (regardless of how great the job is or how interesting the perks are).

The job description should be clear, accurate, concise, and unique enough to keep candidates engaged. Don’t copy and paste descriptions from online sources or social media (LinkedIn’s full of ’em, we know, but resist the urge!).

Use inclusive language that’s easy to understand, free of jargon, and clearly promotes the main value proposition for the role. From a technical standpoint, try to mention all the right terms that search engines could pick up, too. For example, don’t refer to the position as a “rockstar SDR.” Use a term such as “senior sales representative.”

For more tips on writing great descriptions for an open position, we have a guide full of job description tips and examples.

👉  15 Creative Job Description Examples for Inspiration

6. Use skills-based assessments

Skills-based assessments are the ideal tool for the candidate screening process . Instead of sending in a resume or a cover letter, candidates complete a skills test to show off their hard and soft skills . Depending on the role you’re hiring for, talent assessments could include coding tests, SEO skills tests, product management tests, or others.

Skills-based hiring tests have many benefits, including the following:

Lightning fast screening

Reduced bias in hiring

Improved quality of hire

Gives a realistic job preview even before an interview takes place

Improved candidate experience

To align your tests with your job posting and requirements, create an accurate job description first. Then, browse a skills assessment test from the Toggl Hire skills test library , where you’ll find a large database of pre-made (yet customizable) skills tests for various roles.

7. Test for soft skills

While you’re engaging in skills-based hiring as part of reviewing resumes and optimizing your talent pipeline , ensure you’re testing for soft skills alongside those technical skills.

Why are soft skills (which are now called power skills , by the way…the more you know!) so important? One study from LinkedIn revealed that 89% of employers think “bad hires” have poor soft skills .

As AI becomes more prevalent in the workplace, these human-like qualities are going to be a top differentiator for the best candidates. In 2024, some of the most important soft skills to test for include adaptability, critical thinking, leadership, communication, emotional intelligence , and teamwork.

8. Interview for cultural fit

Cultural fit is (often) the missing link that marks the difference between a good candidate and an amazing one. And, unfortunately, you can’t really assess cultural fit by just scanning candidate resumes.

To improve your recruitment efforts in this area, place more emphasis on culture in the hiring process right from the start . Whether on your careers page, website, or social media channels, make it obvious what your culture is all about. Highlight testimonials from current employees to show what the candidate can expect if they join your team.

Then, when job seekers apply to your job listings, screen for culture. You can do this in various ways:

Ask culture-focused questions in the interview process

Conduct panel interviews with employees in the same department

Schedule a paid test week to see how they work with others

At Toggl Hire, we schedule paid test days with all qualified candidates before extending an offer. We spend a day (or sometimes even a week) with the candidate while they perform their typical work. This allows them to get a feel for the daily tasks they encounter on the job, and it allows us to measure their personality, processes, and more.

To accurately gauge cultural fit and improve hire quality, we recommend involving multiple stakeholders in the interview process so you can get diverse perspectives about the candidate’s experience and skills.

9. Re-engage past candidates

Rejecting candidates is an unfortunate but necessary part of the hiring process. However, if you create a rejection letter tactfully, those candidates hopefully won’t get lost in the depths of your applicant tracking system.

Instead, you’ll have created a strong connection with more candidates you can reach back out to if another role opens up in the future. Because you treated them with respect (which is the bare minimum!), they’ll likely be more interested in becoming a new hire this time around. Plus, they already have experience with your talent acquisition process.

Top Tip: If you reject someone for a job role, give them the option to stay on your mailing list and get updates about new roles and company events. An applicant tracking system can help categorize candidates and automate communication so that you don’t drop valuable talent accidentally.

10. Include application progress indicators

Job candidates hate being left in the dark, with Glassdoor reviewers stating ghosting job candidates has increased by 112% since 2020 ( yikes ). Many companies make it seem like after job applicants hit “submit”, their application goes into the void. We can all do better than that.

To build. amore effective recruitment process, inform candidates each step of the way about their progress. This might look like setting up automated email notifications for the following events:

When a candidate submits their application

When they get the results of their skills test

When they get an invitation to the screening interview

When they’re asked to participate in a test day

You can also introduce a personalized candidate profile, where the candidate can access information about their application upon signing in. The means isn’t as important as the end: maintaining clear and open lines of communication with potential candidates.

11. Make data-driven decisions

Hiring with your gut is akin to going mushroom picking and hoping the one that looks great isn’t poisonous. Plus, in an age where we have more data points than we could possibly handle, hiring based on gut feeling simply makes no sense .

Savvy hiring managers should learn to leverage data from various HR tools to inform their recruitment strategies and refine their processes. For example, let’s say you find out your best candidates come from niche job boards rather than LinkedIn. Great! Now, focus on that channel exclusively.

To develop a more data-driven recruiting funnel , start measuring everything from the initial point of application to the offer. As you start taking note of different hiring metrics, you’ll be able to reduce hiring biases and improve diversity and inclusion in hiring.

12. Attend industry events

Remote work might be the future, but as any good hiring manager knows, you can’t replace face-to-face contact. Check your local and state events or frequent job fairs to see where you could represent your company in the best light possible.

Try to have some of your current employees attend these events — not just your hiring managers. They can most accurately provide qualified candidates with a glimpse into your company culture, values, mission, and vision.

13. Focus on candidate experience

80% of candidates would never reapply to a company that didn’t notify them about their application status. Candidates care about the hiring process for many reasons, but primarily, the way you treat them in the hiring process is a pretty good reflection of the overall culture.

Offering timely feedback to candidates is an excellent way to improve the candidate experience . It also helps to keep the application process short and simple (while still thorough). With tools such as Toggl Hire, it’s easier to let them know quickly if they’re not the right fit and why.

Internally, this might look like pushing recruiting teams to be more organized. Again, with a tool like Toggl Hire, you can view the candidate pipeline, where you’re able to make notes when you interview candidates, assign them tasks, and set auto-reply emails for different recruitment stages.

14. Improve the onboarding process

Did you know that just 12% of employees believe their company has a good onboarding process? That’s a shame, as onboarding is the crucial sequel to hiring. Employees with a positive onboarding experience have a 3x higher commitment to their employers .

To ensure new hires are properly onboarded, try some of the following tips:

Prepare employee onboarding guides with detailed information

Create training materials to help them get up to speed earlier

Give new hires access to key tools and processes ahead of time

Pair them with a mentor during their first weeks to ensure no questions are left unanswered

Schedule regular check-ins to ensure they’re settling into their role

During the onboarding process, schedule regular feedback sessions so you can promptly address any issues that come up. Use the feedback you receive to refine your hiring process in the future.

15. Use the right recruiting software

Recruiting tools can automate the tedious parts of most hiring processes. Hiring managers use them to reduce time spent on screening, skills assessments, interview process , and more.

Use these tools to make your life easier as an HR professional:

Applicant tracking system (ATS)

Candidate relationship management (CRM) tool

Candidate assessment tool

Interview scheduling platforms

Before choosing a tool (or numerous, which we suggest), assess your internal processes. Where are the biggest bottlenecks, and what is causing you to lose great applicants? Once you know what needs fixing, you can take a look at different types of tools and compare their features, scalability, and pricing.

Improve your recruitment process with Toggl Hire

If your recruitment process feels like it’s stuck in the 1990s and job seekers are avoiding you like the plague, think of it as a chance to evaluate your current efforts, find out what you’re doing wrong, and improve it.

As you start to implement a recruitment process improvement plan, introduce skills assessment tests in your workflow. With Toggl Hire, you can improve the candidate experience and the quality of hire while filling positions faster and removing unconscious bias.

It’s not too good to be true — you can have all that and more with Toggl Hire. Get started now for free to see! If you’re not ready to test a new tool just yet, watch this video to see how it works.👇

Mile is a B2B content marketer specializing in HR, martech and data analytics. Ask him about thoughts on reducing hiring bias, the role of AI in modern recruitment, or how to immediately spot red flags in a job ad.

Subscribe to On The Clock.

Insights into building businesses better, from hiring to profitability (and everything in between). New editions drop every two weeks.

You might also like...

Related to Talent Acquisition

12 Creative Recruitment Campaign Ideas to Inspire You

22 Creative Sourcing Strategies to Attract Passive Candidates

Remote Employee Onboarding Checklist

Take a peek at our most popular categories:

making HR better, one HR pro at a time

13+ HR Case Studies: Recruiting, Learning, Analytics, and More

Reposting a piece from the blog over at Lighthouse Research because I know not all of you subscribe over there!

While much of the work we do at Lighthouse Research & Advisory focuses on quantitative research studies, we do a fair amount of qualitative research as well. We’ve collected case studies over time (and continue to) that highlight interesting approaches and examples of innovation within human capital management. The list below offers a wide variety of industries, examples, and flavors for you to learn from.

Want to see another topic or example not listed here? Comment below and and I will see what we can do to find that for you!

Wal-Mart, Automation, and Compassion Training

Walmart’s Fastest Growing Line of Business is Delivering Experiences

The Motley Fool: Blending Talent Management and Engagement

Motley Fool: The Coolest Talent Processes You’ve Never Heard Of

Chipotle: How Internal Mobility Reduced Turnover by 64%

Internal promotion-how Chipotle reduced turnover by 64%

Adtran: Using Hackathons for Employer Branding, Employee Development, and Retention

Using Hackathons for Branding and Retention

Stout Advisory: Performance Management, Peer Feedback, and Employee Engagement

How to Radically Change Your Performance Management Practice [Podcast]

H&R Block: Seasonal Hiring, Strategic Recruiting, and Hiring Manager Communications

Patagonia: measuring the roi of hr programs, hr strategy, employee perks and benefits.

Measuring the ROI of HR Programs is Critical: Here’s How Patagonia Does It

Hot Chicken Takeover: Employee Benefits, Corporate Culture, Leadership, and Social Responsibility

Can a Business Grow Competitively While Doing Social Good? [Podcast]

AlliedUniversal: Talent Acquisition, Employee Referrals, and High-Volume Hiring

How Does AlliedUniversal Hire 90,000 Workers a Year? Referrals and PURPOSE [Podcast]

Duie Pyle: Remote Worker Engagement, Blue Collar Challenges, and Competitive Recruiting

Talent Lessons from the Transportation Industry [Podcast]

Ohio Living: Core Values, Company Culture, and Employee Recognition

We’re Only Human 39: Ohio Living Serves 70,000 Clients Annually with Core Values

Cox Enterprises: HR Analytics, Business Impact, and Strategy

We’re Only Human 53: How to Partner with Your Talent Analytics Team

McDonald’s: Learning Measurement, Business Impact, and ROI

Southwest airlines: corporate culture, employee perks, and employee engagement.

We’re Only Human 40: How Southwest Airlines Lives and Breathes Corporate Culture

HJF: HR Technology Selection and Implementation, HR Leadership, and Modernization

We’re Only Human 55:The HR Leader’s First Year on the Job

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

You Need a Skills-Based Approach to Hiring and Developing Talent

• Ryan Roslansky

Three strategies for managers.

The economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to leave more than 140 million people out of work and another 1.6 billion at risk of income loss. Unfortunately, many of the jobs lost simply won’t return. At the same time, certain companies and industries like logistics and manufacturing can’t hire fast enough. Shifting to a skills-focused approach is a viable solution to an evolving workforce dilemma. Evaluating employees and new hires based on their skill sets instead of their work history can help level the playing field — and help companies realize the talent they already have. It also makes talent pools more diverse and often makes hiring more effective. The author offers three ways for companies to upskill and reskill their existing workforce and take a skills-based approach to hiring new employees.

With the global economy experiencing massive change, upskilling and reskilling have taken on a renewed sense of urgency . Success through these transitions requires major shifts in thinking about how hiring and employee development are done.

The economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic is expected to leave more than 140 million people out of work and another 1.6 billion at risk of income loss. Unfortunately, many of the jobs lost simply won’t return . At the same time, certain companies and industries like logistics and manufacturing can’t hire fast enough. Shifting to a skills-focused approach is a viable solution to an evolving workforce dilemma.

Workers often don’t realize that the skills they have for one job can be easily transferred to another — nor do employers. Take food servers who lost their jobs due to the pandemic. More than 70% of them have the skills needed to succeed in customer service, which is currently one of the most in-demand jobs on LinkedIn. Had servers and people hiring for customer service specialists known they already had many of the required skills, we may have seen a significant shift of out-of-work food servers into in-demand roles instead of seeing those positions go unfilled.

Opportunities for Midsize Businesses in 2021

Evaluating employees and new hires based on their skill sets instead of their work history can help level the playing field — and help companies realize the talent they already have. It also makes talent pools more diverse and often makes hiring more effective.

This is the future of hiring and development. To get ahead of it, companies need to start weaving learning into their company cultures. Organizations slow on the uptake will be left behind and forced to deal with unsatisfied and unmotivated employees and significantly less innovation overall. At a time when talent is the number-one commodity in business, companies can’t afford to remain stuck in old mindsets.

Here are three ways companies can upskill and reskill their existing workforce and take a skills-based approach to hiring new employees.

Support new career paths for your employees

Many large enterprises around the world have viewed the need to upskill their current talent as urgent for the last few years and have invested millions — and in some cases, billions — in “future proofing” their employees, arming them with the skills required to adapt to changing work. For example, JPMorgan Chase added $350 million to their $250 million plan to upskill their workforce. Amazon is investing more than $700 million to provide upskilling training to their employees. PwC is spending $3 billion to upskill all of its 275,000 employees over the next three to four years; the mantra of the program is “New World, New Skills.” The pandemic accelerated this need for companies of all sizes, as many needed to retool their employees quickly to fulfill changed business priorities.

If your company is unable to support a structured learning program, encourage managers to find out what other areas of the company their employees are interested in learning about and help them participate in cross-functional meetings and projects. Allow them to spend 10% of their work time on that cross-functional work.

You shouldn’t have to switch companies to get ahead — creating and supporting these learning programs not only shows your employees that you’re invested in their future, but they also open different pathways for growth internally and can evolve into new career paths. In Northrop Grumman’s Pathways program , for example, employees do three 12-month stints in different roles before choosing the path they’d ultimately like to follow.

Don’t wait for the next crisis to begin the process of reskilling employees for critical roles. Employees who see good opportunities to learn and grow are 2.9 times more likely to be engaged . Creating internal programs that identify and address skill gaps not only helps prepare for future disruptions but also helps your strongest and most dedicated employees feel secure.

Give employees learning time and rewards

According to a June 2020 survey conducted by Glint, a human resources software company owned by LinkedIn, an overwhelming number of employees — 97% — want to expand or at least continue the amount of time they spend learning. What’s more, opportunities to learn and grow have emerged as the strongest driver of work culture.

Executives and managers should make it clear that ongoing education is integral to personal career growth and can be done on company time. To help foster a learning culture, encourage employees to block out calendar time for learning each week or month — and do the same. If managers have dedicated learning time, employees will be more likely to follow suit.

It can be stressful to juggle learning with looming deadlines or client needs. Remind yourself and your team that the investment in learning will pay off for their careers and the organization, and give specific guidance in employee growth plans. For example, an employee can make it an end-of-quarter deliverable to spend four hours each month on learning courses, then discuss their learnings during their annual review.

Some businesses promote their learning programs with contests and incentives. Rewards, whether monetary or internal kudos, can boost employee participation considerably. Executive and manager participation is a must — it’s crucial for us to lead by example. Even putting the most recent course you watched below your email signature signals to employees that it’s a priority for you.

Shift to a skills-based approach when hiring

In the past year, LinkedIn has seen a 21% increase in job postings advertising skills and responsibilities instead of qualifications and requirements in the U.S., and the number of positions that don’t require a degree increased by nearly 40% in 2020 compared to 2019.

Taken together, we can see companies are starting to be more intentional about hiring for a candidate’s future potential, not their past history. But it’ll be a long road. Our traditional recruiting processes still place an emphasis on certain types of education, experience, or personal referrals that can lead to a homogenous workforce.

Start by rethinking your job descriptions. Focus on the results you’d like to see, rather than the type of qualifications that you think could deliver them. Highlighting the desired skills — the candidate’s ability to perform certain tasks — gets to the same results without creating an unnecessary barrier to entry, like a requirement for a four-year degree.

Of course, the job post is one of the earliest steps in your hiring process. Once you’ve removed unnecessary barriers to entry, you’ll still need a skills-based way to assess candidates and find your finalists. If you’re looking beyond education and experience, what should you evaluate?

Stay focused on skills — and the assessments that can measure them. From hard skill evaluations like coding tests, to innovative soft skill assessments, to “ job auditions ,” there are plenty of ways to gauge a candidate’s ability to perform without relying on their education or experience as proxies. Even asking unexpected interview questions can let you see how a candidate processes information and problem-solves in real time. It’s also never too early to discuss learning commitments during interviews with candidates — it may even make you more attractive as an employer.

The payoff? A wider, more diverse talent pool and perhaps stronger retention: Employees without a traditional four-year degree stay at companies 34% longer than those with such a degree, according to LinkedIn data. While this could be a sign that it’s more difficult for them to find their next job, it could also be a sign that they’re simply more engaged and feel like the company is betting on their success. As LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report showed , 94% of employees said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career.

By taking a skills-based approach to the hiring process, diplomas and titles can sit alongside assessments, certifications, endorsements, and other alternate methods for determining the capability and fit of a candidate. What’s more, by focusing on skills, employers can increase the size of their talent pools, allowing them to pinpoint quality applicants for hard-to-fill roles. Once you’ve hired them, keep your employees engaged and your company ready to adapt to changing demands by creating a culture of learning. It’s how we’ll start hiring and developing talent for the future, not the past.

• Ryan Roslansky is the CEO of LinkedIn, the world’s largest and most powerful network of professionals. Ryan joined the company in May 2009 and has since held leadership roles in every part of LinkedIn’s business. He led the evolution of LinkedIn’s products into a single, holistic, global ecosystem of 756 million members, 57 million companies, 120 thousand schools, and 38 thousand skills. Under his leadership, LinkedIn has also seen record levels of engagement on the platform and accelerated growth across the company.

Partner Center

Crafting an Effective Recruitment Strategy & Processes

Table of contents

What is a recruitment strategy, types of recruitment strategies, what is a recruitment process, how can a recruitment process benefit a business, why might a business need to reinvent it's recruitment strategy, how to develop an effective recruitment process, how to measure recruitment success.

In an increasingly competitive recruitment landscape, you need a dedicated strategy to help you identify the talent that’s right for the role, suited to your culture and likely to stick around. Get this right and you can achieve anything. Get it wrong and you’ll face workforce disharmony and rising costs.

High staff turnover and employee engagement are key focus points for HR teams with an emphasis on getting it right at the recruitment stage to avoid costly side effects of ill-matched hires within a business. By understanding how to effectively attract and retain talent, HR departments can reap the benefits of effective recruitment. 

At Thomas International, we have been using psychometric tools and solutions to help organisations like yours predict job performance, identify the best employees and optimise team performance for over 35 years.  

This guide will help you find out how to recruit by recognising the factors currently changing the recruitment landscape, show what a best practice approach to recruitment looks like, and look at the tools you can use to improve your prospects. Taking a look at efficient and effective recruitment strategies and processes involved with hiring, we’ll explore how to develop and measure your recruitment processes to increase positive outcomes. 

We’ll also explore what happens when you hire the wrong person—and provide expert advice to help you make sure that doesn’t happen. From costly errors in attracting the wrong candidates to identifying suitable culture fits, we’ll help you avoid some of the most common mistakes in recruitment.

A recruitment strategy is a clear, formal plan that sets out how your business will attract, hire, and onboard talent. Where you have skills gaps and talent requirements, your recruitment strategy should be part of the investigating and solving this issue.

Things such as headcount planning, employee value proposition, recruitment marketing strategies, selection criteria, tools or technologies you plan to use, succession plans, and your recruitment budget all form part of your recruitment strategy.

Every company wants to hire the best talent, but it's not always possible. Job applicants will favour organisations which seem attractive to them. This is all part of the recruitment strategy which is designed to engage and develop your potential candidate base and reach out to candidates that you otherwise would not consider approaching.

When developing your own recruitment strategy, consider how this will also reflect in your diversity outreach. Where are you getting applications from? How can you make your strategy more inclusive and more aligned with developing teams that are more different and can create innovative solutions? A recruitment strategy that looks at developing talent and attracting talent in different areas can help address these answers. 

There are many different recruitment strategies you can use to attract the best talent, this includes:

• Internal recruitment

Internal recruitment which can be a huge time saver as there isn’t a protracted period of interviews or onboarding. However, it can lead to a lack of diverse ideas and a lack of innovation. 

• External recruitment

External recruitment can bring in new ideas, fresh approaches and a renewed energy. However, it can take a long time and cost a lot of money to find the right candidate and a screening process as well as onboarding needs to begin. External recruitment is the most commonly used method for finding new staff.

• Developing the employer brand

Employer branding describes an employer's reputation as a place to work and their employee value proposition. 

You want to be able to attract the best talent and one of the ways of doing this is by showing potential employees what the values and the culture of the organisation are and how staff appear to feel about working there. 

Use the different channels of communication to help develop the employer brand and be strategic in how you can best represent your brands across all channels.

• Direct advertising

Direct advertising into papers, trade magazines, trade journals and even notice boards are still the most popular recruitment strategy.

The idea behind it is to attract interest from as many ideally relevant applicants as possible. Whilst it may get lots and lots of applications - depending on the role and where advertised, the point of this recruitment strategy is to target active job seekers. This will not be something for passive candidates who aren’t necessarily interested or looking for a new role but may be ideal.

• Social media

Social media has become one of the most important recruitment strategies for businesses and importantly, the tools which are associated with social media can be significant in raising awareness about job opportunities in an organisation.

Using the right platforms is key - as well as having the right content. But what also has a great importance is the awareness required by employers when using social media. It can be a hot bed for gossip and sharing negative experiences so the need for great candidate experiences is essential.

• Recruitment agencies

You can outsource your recruitment requirements to a third party, in this case, a recruitment agency. They can manage the whole recruitment process and whilst it may cost more to do it, they free up your time to focus on more of the day-to-day requirements of your business. If you are struggling with finding the right kind of recruit or need someone with very specific skills, agencies can handle these requests very specifically.

Job boards such as Monster, REED and Indeed are three of the most popular online recruitment packs and cover nearly every category of job posting and industry. Then there are specific industry led job boards like, testgorilla who target a niche like medical representatives.

They are a great tool for both the employer and the potential employee, and make searching for new roles and advertising the roles easy to market. 

They also allow employers to develop their brand. How they wish to be seen and to talk about their values and USPs.

• Employee referrals

This is a combination of external and internal recruitment and it is not uncommon for many organisations - especially larger ones - to have programs in place in order to attract new employees into the organisation.

It works by getting existing staff to refer people they know for vacancies. The idea is that this method is very cost effective and it also means that staff are more likely to refer the role to people they trust and would reflect better upon themselves as well.

• Internships and apprenticeships

An internship is a period of work experience offered by an organisation for a limited period of time, whilst an apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study.

One of the biggest advantages to have come out of the internship and apprenticeship programs of the last few years is that it has been a fertile ground for identifying and nurturing the future leaders of the organisation at a young age. They can be moulded to the organisation’s culture and can grow understanding the systems in place whilst also contributing to the success of the organisation at the same time.

The recruiting process involves finding a suitable candidate for an open role within a business. It involves the process of attracting, interviewing, selecting, hiring and onboarding new employees to fulfil a specific role. 

The recruitment process and recruitment strategy are two different things, as is recruitment planning. 

A recruitment strategy refers to the overall methodology for recruitment. The recruitment process defines all the steps from job description and candidate profile to applicant screening, face-to-face interviews, assessments, background checks, and all the other elements crucial to making the right hire.

A recruitment plan defines what needs to be done to meet an organisation’s recruitment needs - including strategies and processes.

The stages of a recruitment process can involve one person or a team of people within an organisation that is responsible for the end-to-end process of effectively sourcing new employees. There are several stages throughout the process and they may be carried out in-house or through an external agency or third party organisation that specialises in recruitment. 

The process involves identifying business needs for staffing, attracting and sourcing appropriate talent, interviewing, vetting candidates, hiring and onboarding. Depending on business requirements, the process may be relatively quick or may take several weeks or months.

The process can involve multiple departments working together to develop a clear job description before advertising the role and may include multiple rounds of interviews with various people within the company to find the most suitable candidate - using an HR team or recruitment specialists, especially within a specific field such as IT or creative industries. 

There is no single recruiting process as they will vary business to business depending on company structure and size, industry, and the role that is being filled. Junior roles often involve a less rigorous operation than that for senior and leadership positions, such as C-suite executives.

The recruitment process can create a uniform approach to filling positions within a business, creating equality. There are a number of key benefits of implementing a defined recruiting process within your business including:

• Improving productivity

This can occur by effectively hiring new staff who have high potential and are suitable candidates for the role as well as creating healthy competition within teams to stamp out complacency.

• Cost-saving

Using internal recruitment can save on hefty recruitment costs and encourage staff engagement.

• Larger talent pools

Finding the largest number of suitable candidates can lead to increased hiring driving growth and productivity within a business and may provide a quicker turnaround in filling vacancies.

• Quicker position filling

Having a process in place can also make your search for viable candidates more efficient, which in turn can make your organisation more appealing to potential candidates in the future. This reduces the time spent internally and minimises costs associated with recruitment.

• Clear outcomes

By not over-selling a job position or the company, you can reduce attrition and improve productivity for the company.

The benefits involved with a well-defined recruitment process incorporate monetary and time savings for businesses. This can be in the hire of the new employee, their output and impact on the team as well as the outlay from the business throughout the process. If everyone involved in the recruitment process steps is clear on the objectives, targets can be achieved faster and quick responses with candidates promotes a higher sense of professionalism. 

The modern recruitment market is hyper-competitive. Currently, just over a fifth (21%) of UK employees are on the hunt for a new job. But attracting them to your organisation and meeting their demands grows more complicated every day – as does persuading them to stick around.

Why? Because the goalposts are always moving. Emerging technologies, different selection processes and shifting expectations are all rewriting the rulebook for how we should recruit, motivate and treat our employees.  

To stand any chance of success, you first must understand the six trends currently affecting the recruitment landscape, and what they might mean for you and your recruitment strategy. 

1. Candidate control

The modern candidate is in a position of power. A global shortage of talent means they can dictate the kind of career they have more readily – and it tends to be more varied and transient than those of the generations before.

Rather than stay with a single organisation for many years, today’s workers spend time building a portfolio of experience, which means more career changes over a shorter period of time. 

In some ways, this makes them more attractive to potential employers. Candidates with experience across multiple markets who are willing to work cross-sector can be perceived as more adaptable and self-motivated. This can be an indicator of high performance potential. But it also means employers must place as much focus on employee retention as they do hiring.

2. Social media connectivity

Technological change has made both employers and potential hires more accessible to each other. Active networking and social media means information is more readily available – and it affects both the way you recruit, and the way you should promote your workplace. 

For recruitment agencies and departments, the pressure is on to use data to develop more targeted and insightful recruitment strategies. For your brand, using social media as a window into your culture can be a vital step in attracting like-minded people.

3. Candidate attraction

Attracting like-minded people isn’t just about the initial interactions though. To form a successful relationship with your candidates there must be a clear understanding of each party’s vision, values, identity and objectives.

The candidate experience, from beginning to end, must be an enticing one.  Especially when potential hires will be receiving multiple offers and comparing the culture and values of each company to their own.

4. The psychological contract

The psychological contract has been an emerging subject across HR for many years. 

It’s a term used to describe everything not covered by an official employment contract; the unwritten relationship between an employer and its employees. This can include things like informal arrangements, mutual beliefs, and unspoken expectations.   

The harmony of a workplace depends on both you and your employees honouring the ‘deal’ struck between both parties. It’s about managing expectations: employers need to make clear to new recruits what they can expect from the job and employees should be open about their capabilities and limits. 

Get this right, and you’ll find yourself having a far easier time retaining your employees.

5. Diversity & equality

Workforce demographics are currently undergoing a huge period of change. Greater life expectancy and changes to pensions are causing many to work for longer; more women are entering the workforce, giving rise to equal pay and childcare provision schemes; and it’s predicted that net migration will account for 40% of the growth of the working population by 2020.

For employers, keeping up with these changes and ensuring workplace harmony will require concentrated efforts – and will inevitably throw up new challenges.  

6. Millennials

One of the biggest demographic changes in the workplace has been the introduction of millennials.  

With the retirement age pushed back, the difference in attitudes between millennials and older generations can be extreme. But make no mistake, their aspirations, work attitudes and technological mind-set will eventually define the culture of the 21st century workplace. 

One of their defining characteristics is their affinity with the digital world. Having grown up with Wi-Fi, smartphones, tablets and social media, their expectations of a recruitment strategies will be more digitally minded than any previous generation.  

They also have expectations of rapid career progression, varied and interesting responsibilities and constant feedback.  

Their desire to keep moving through an organisation will mean talent development plans are essential in retaining the best talent.

There are several ways to develop an effective recruitment process. However, many of them follow similar methods that are tried and tested. There are natural variations based on sectors, business sizes and positions which are being filled, but applying the key steps to your process will provide greater efficiency for your HR recruitment process.

It’s also important to remember the recruitment process does not end with the candidate signing their contract, it ends once they have successfully been onboarded into the company. This is when you can apply recruitment metrics to understand the effectiveness of your recruitment strategy.

Applying best practice for an effective recruitment strategy

With the cost of ‘mis-hires’ for businesses totalling between 4 and 15 times the annual salary for the role, HR professionals are under increasing pressure to implement best-in-class recruitment practices to ensure they find the right candidates for their organisation.  

At Thomas, we’ve identified the following five stages for best-practice recruitment: 

1. Clearly define the vacant role

Getting this first stage of the process right is vital. Clearly defining the vacant role will lead to more suitable applicants, more objective decision-making and longer-term hires. 

Identify the needs of the business before you begin preparing a job description as this will guide you to write a well-defined and clear outline. It can be easier to write for an existing role than a new role. Well written job descriptions also provide effective communication about the expectations of a role and can give clear parameters to potential candidates.

2. Candidate attraction

Increasingly important in such a competitive market, showcasing your employer brand through different recruiters, online platforms and communication methods can be a vital step in attracting the right candidates.

3. Advertising the role

You may choose to advertise on your own platform or via job boards or a third party recruitment agency. Ensure wherever you are advertising online you use keywords to attract relevant applicants. 

The full application process must be innovative, user-friendly and, most importantly, mobile-optimised to ensure today’s candidates engage in the process. 

According to Glassdoor, 1 in 4 people won’t apply for a job if a company’s career site isn’t mobile optimised. So, you need to make sure your recruitment technology is up to date to ensure a seamless, or even functional, candidate journey.

Online platforms - how can technology help with recruitment

Understanding how technology can help with digital recruitment strategies is essential. An Applicant Tracking System (ATS) can streamline recruitment admin and ensure a quick and efficient digital recruitment process with better sourcing and candidate selection – all from one centralized hub. Unsurprisingly, 94% of recruiters and hiring professionals say their ATS or recruiting software has positively impacted their hiring process.  

Despite the positive impact an ATS can have, it is important to ensure that it’s not at the expense of the candidate experience. A report by CareerBuilder found that 60% of applicants quit an online application because it was too complex. If candidates are turned off by your application system, your investment is wasted. So, make sure your ATS works for both you and your candidates.

Communication methods

Communication throughout the recruitment process is beneficial for both candidates and hiring managers. Open and transparent communication is essential to ensure all parties are clear about where they are in the process. 

With a variety of technology available, communicating throughout the process is easier than ever. A simple email to let applicants know if they have progressed to the next stage or not is a basic courtesy and increases your brand reputation with candidates. Where possible you can use technology to assist with the automation of communication to make your process more efficient.

Communication between key staff involved in the recruitment process is also essential to ensure there are no misunderstandings about internal expectations.

Employer brand

With the exponential rise of social media over the past few years, monitoring, controlling and focusing on your employer brand is more important than ever. It can be the difference between attracting the top talent and watching that talent go to a competitor.  

Platforms like Glassdoor provide a powerful opportunity to promote your company to candidates who are evaluating potential employers and advertise to ideal candidates who may not be aware of your organisation.  

When combined with a focused and engaging social media strategy, this can give your brand the platform it needs to reach a vast online network of potential candidates.

End-to-end integration

The use of technology can (and should) spread much further than just recruitment. In order to truly revolutionise your strategy, technology must encompass the entire employee lifecycle. 

As well as Applicant Tracking Systems, you can benefit from Talent Management Systems, Learning Management Systems and Human Resource Management Systems, which ensure that once on board, your employees continue to enjoy a seamless experience as they build a successful career with your organisation. 

Naturally, if you use a different system for each of these, you’re likely to end up back at square one with all your data stored in different places. This will place a strain on your HR departments. So, end-to-end system integration or a centralized data repository is essential.

Predictive analytics

Once you have all your data in one place, you can take advantage of predictive analysis – using it to analyse trends, identify behaviours and aptitude, predict future performance, and create benchmarks for success. This will allow you to successfully succession plan, recruit the right people moving forwards and make more informed decisions overall. 

4. Assessment and selection

Be sure to observe competencies and qualities apparent in employees more than once in order to confirm that they are reliable characteristics. Psychometric assessments help with this and provide you with a more rounded, objective view.

If, like 70% of organisations surveyed by the CIPD, your vacancies are proving hard to fill, there are a couple of questions worth asking: 

• When was the last time you reviewed your recruitment processes? 
• What are you doing to ensure your best people stay with you? 

That second question is vital. Currently, 34% of organisations report difficulty in retaining staff past the 12-month mark.

But how can you make sure you’re able to hire the right person, first time, every time? An effective and well-planned recruitment strategy will use psychometric assessments to help understand the qualities, skills and personality traits that best fit a particular role. And, in turn, to identify those qualities within potential hires.

What is a psychometric test in recruitment?

This means you’ll find yourself interviewing only the most relevant candidates, which will save time and money and give you a greater chance of getting the right person in the right job. This will improve your organisation’s overall performance and reduce employee turnover.

Candidate assessments offer a science-based approach to evaluating potential hires against the expectations of the role. By taking these insights into consideration, you can make quicker and more confident hiring decisions for your business. But how do you know which assessments to use? Or maybe you’re wondering what is a psychometric test in recruitment? There are several psychometric tests you can apply when searching for candidates:

• Behavioural assessments can help you learn about your candidates’ communication styles, ability to interact with others, and any triggers of stress that can determine how they will behave as part of a team. 
• Personality assessments and recruitment go hand-in-hand. They help to clarify what new hires would contribute to your employee culture and, importantly, who may not be a good fit. This can be especially important when hiring for management-level positions. 
• Emotional intelligence assessments show how people are likely to perform in complex business environments – for instance when facing potentially difficult situations, tasked with high-impact decision-making or when handling different personalities.
• General intelligence assessments can predict the amount of time it will take people to get acclimated. This will help you avoid bringing in new employees that may end up leaving due to frustration, and can also help you protect the reputation of your business. 

It’s important to note that assessments do not judge right or wrong answers as far as the candidate is concerned. Rather, the results will show whether the applicant is right or wrong for your business, giving you far more control over who you decide to employ and reducing the risk factor.

5. Appointing the right person quickly

Once you’ve identified the right candidate, make an offer as soon as possible. MRI Network found that 47% of declined offers were due to candidates receiving alternative job offers.

Recruiting technology can allow you to make the hiring process fast, easy and enjoyable for you and your candidates. They can now apply for jobs by smartphone, take interactive assessments, self-schedule interviews or have a video interview online – all in a fraction of the time it would take to complete a traditional recruitment process.

You also need to ensure you are moving through the process as quickly as possible internally so ideal candidates aren’t snapped up by another employer first. Having clear expectations throughout each stage can ensure your recruitment process is as efficient as possible so no time is lost unnecessarily.

6. Induction into the role, team and culture

A detailed induction into the role, team and company culture will allow any new hires to settle into the business. These introductions can be tailored to the individual using the information gathered during the recruitment process.

When you’ve found the ideal candidate, it’s time to start onboarding them to join your business. Ensure you provide all the information they require to make an informed decision. This may involve negotiating before acceptance of the offer and should clearly lay out what is expected.

Induction to the business

Once your candidate has accepted the offer, showcase the company culture and reinforce the company vision. When they start, make sure they have everything they need to get started from access to the offices to passwords and equipment. Provide the warm welcome they deserve.

Ensure candidates receive the support they need for training and development. Mentor or pairing systems can be useful for upskilling and teaching new staff the ropes. This is a healthy way to support their progress and integrate them with other team members.

Checking-in

Over the first few months of employment, continue to check-in with your new recruits to ensure they are settling in and happy. Ice breakers with the team are a great way to help new starters settle in and get to know their peers. Encourage them to talk with managers or ask questions, making sure they feel comfortable within the business.

An effective recruitment strategy ensures there are a clearly defined set of objectives to be measured against for efficacy. Recruiting metrics are measurements used to track hiring success and optimise the process of hiring candidates for an organisation. When used correctly, these metrics help to evaluate the recruiting process and whether the company is hiring the right people. 

Why are recruitment metrics important?

Making the right recruiting decisions is important. Using metrics you can see the potential ROI by hiring someone who is more suited to a position than someone who may not be suited to the position. This is why using metrics for recruitment is so important.

What measurements should be used?

There is a range of different metrics you can measure and analyse to determine how effective your hiring process is. These are quantitative measures that will indicate ROI and can assist with future selection processes when employing new staff. The best recruitment metrics are: 

• Time to hire – how long does it take to fill a position? This includes developing a job description through to onboarding. 
• Quality of hire – how suited are they to the position that they are hired for – how many are passing probation? How many are promoted and within what amount of time? What value are they adding to the position, team and business? Is their output sufficient or better than expected?
• Cost per hire – How much is it costing to recruit and onboard new hires? Are you using an agency or is all of your recruitment in-house? How long until they are performing at the same or better level than their predecessor? 
• Retention rate – how long are your new hires staying within the business? How long are they staying in their role? Is there a high staff turnover rate? Are there commonalities among those who do leave quicker than expected?

What to do if something isn’t working as effectively as it should be?

If something within the recruitment process isn’t working, you need to review your metrics and identify where the issue is occurring. From there you will have a clear understanding of which areas within your recruitment strategy need refinement to create a more effective process.

Evaluate where you can improve your processes and change tack as soon as possible. There are a number of common issues that occur within recruitment, here they are along with some solutions:

• Too much noise in the market - ensure you have a strong brand and a clear job description to attract the right candidates. On the flip side, if you’re finding the talent pool too limited look outside the avenues you are currently using to expand your search.
• Stages are too long - if you find you’re missing out on suitable candidates because they’ve accepted another offer, your process might be taking too long. Review where you can decrease the time between each stage and how you can create more efficiency in your strategy.
• Too selective - are you looking for a unicorn rather than evaluating the candidates on their merits and finding the most suitable? Review where gaps in knowledge can be taught, whereas traits may be harder to overcome.

The recruitment landscape won’t look this way forever. It changes all the time. But if you take a proactive approach to make sure you can identify, attract and retain the right people for your organisation, then your business stands to gain a real advantage over the competition. 

From using various methods including psychometric testing to better evaluate candidate skills to adapting your recruitment strategy to evolve with the ever-changing employment landscape, there are numerous ways to enhance your businesses employment process. 

Understanding the value of an efficient recruitment process in saving organisations money and time can be instrumental in generating improved productivity - both from a hiring perspective and employee engagement. 

Recognising the effectiveness of an appropriate recruitment process helps businesses to set benchmarks and streamline their employee growth plan for greater organisational benefit. 

At Thomas International, we use scientifically proven processes to provide organisations like yours with vital insights into the behaviours, talents, personality and capacity for learning of your potential hires.  

To see how we can help you stay ahead of the recruitment game, take a look at our solutions at www.thomas.co .

Please select which Thomas product you would like to sign in to

How to improve your recruitment and selection process

Recruitment and selection can cost the average company around $500 a day.

Despite the cost, only 19% of hires are considered successful . So how do you refine the recruitment and selection process while ensuring that you get the best candidates?

Improving the recruitment and selection process remains a challenge. With the right recruitment planning and an awareness of the main challenges, your HR team can make changes, ensuring that you make the right hiring decision every time.

Table of contents

What is recruitment, what is selection, the difference between recruitment and selection, aligning recruitment and selection to build a better workforce, what should your recruitment and selection process look like, how to fine-tune your recruitment and selection process, what are the main objectives of the recruitment and selection process, principles of the recruitment and selection process, additional phases of the recruitment and selection process, what are the common problems in recruitment and selection, improve your recruitment and selection process with testgorilla.

Recruitment refers simply to the process of hiring new staff. That process involves the following elements:

Identifying potential employees

Attracting candidates so that they apply for vacancies

The interview stage

Selecting the most suitable candidate

Hiring and onboarding

Recruitment also involves a range of focused tasks that need to be carried out correctly. These are:

Understanding the need for a new employee

Analysing the requirements of the role

Creating the job advert

Using the right advertising channels to attract the right applicants

Managing the response to every job advert

Monitoring applications

Beginning the shortlisting process

Depending on your organisation’s needs, there may be additional steps, but optimizing how each of the above is executed is key to successful recruitment.

With recruitment, you attract talent; now it’s time to qualify them for the next stage. The initial goal here is to separate the unqualified and qualified applications.

This stage can include some or all of the following steps:

Applicant screening

Pre-employment tests (these can vary wildly, and may include job knowledge tests, personality tests, skills evaluation tests, or cognitive ability tests etc)

Conducting interviews

Checking any provided references

While the process of recruitment from start to finish can be incredibly time-consuming, the selection process is often the most laborious. 

Recruitment is the task of developing ways to attract the most suitable candidates. Selection is the methodology used to identify the best applicant for every vacancy. 

Recruitment is considered simpler because you’re focused on attracting the right talent, not scrutinizing it. Selection, on the other hand, involves digging much deeper and evaluating each candidate in terms of their:

Ability to do the job well

Attitude and personality

Cultural fit

Ambition and drive

These have to align with whatever else your organization deems ideal criteria for the position at hand.

If your recruitment efforts are on-point, selection will automatically go smoother because you’d receive more relevant applications. Evaluation will be faster, and you’ll only be sifting through a qualified pool and therefore increasing your chances of finding the ideal fit.

If the recruitment process is strong enough, companies may also end up with a better hire than they originally expected. That’s why it’s crucial to align recruitment and selection.

Aligning the needs of the organisation and the competencies of the workforce is essential. The solution is more thorough workforce planning.

To more competently fill a vacancy, HR needs to understand the goals of the business and then align recruitment to match those goals. That means it’s the responsibility of HR to:

Understand the strategic goals of the business

Identify the competencies the business needs to acquire to meet those goals

Perform a talent analysis of existing employees (in-house recruitment is faster and more cost-effective)

Understand the availability of core competencies in the current labour market

Fill the gaps between existing competencies and those needed (this could highlight the need for a talent-building program for employee development, or narrow down the essential requirements of a new hire)

Collaboration between every member of the HR team is vital, and the two-way flow of communication needs to be prioritised. It’s important to understand that there must be a substantial amount of time and money devoted to this process. 

No two companies have the same recruitment and selection strategy, but it generally centers on the steps outlined here:

1. Recruitment – Identifying the vacancy

There are many reasons why the need to make a hire might become essential. You may need to replace an employee who has moved to a different company, or replace someone who has been promoted or has moved to another department. It could simply be that the company has grown and requires new team members.

In some cases, business growth means accessing new skills that were previously unnecessary in the organisational structure. These can be much more difficult to identify if the HR team is not engaged in continuous communication with management teams.

2. Recruitment – Role analysis

With the vacancy identified, you need to develop a deep understanding of what the role requires and which skill set would best complement the team.

This step is called job analysis and evaluation and the findings are used to help create the job advertisement. The more research you put into this step, the stronger the job advert, and therefore, the smoother the subsequent candidate selection process . In some cases, you may find that the vacancy can be filled internally.

3. Recruitment – Creating a job description

The job description can vary depending on the brand’s voice and workplace culture . However, every job description should include the following:

The duties of the position

The salary range

The geographical location (or whether the position is ‘remote’)

How many hours a week the role requires

Remember that this isn’t the job advertisement; you’re just creating the outline.

4. Recruitment – Applicant specification

The next step is to identify what the ideal candidate looks like. This will be a list of the qualifications and specific skills that the HR team and relevant department heads consider is needed to do the job well. Getting the specifications right helps cut down the time it takes to review and shortlist applications . 

5. Recruitment – Advertising the vacancy

Now that the recruitment team knows what the role entails and what kind of person they’re looking for, the vacancy needs to be advertised. Whether you’re hiring internally or opting for external sources of recruitment, the goal here is to receive as many relevant applications as possible. That means choosing your advertising channels carefully.

If you’re only advertising for internal recruitment , then you will be using notice boards or an in-house intranet to display the ad. Referral programs are also a powerful strategy to consider when hiring internally, especially for organizations with a global spread. For external recruitment, you have more options than ever. One can even apply for a job via TikTok or Facebook now.

There are plenty of job advert platforms, and HR teams can use everything from LinkedIn to Indeed. You can also use your local press, recruitment agencies, or rely on employee referrals. The goal is to make sure that you get a large number of relevant applicants.

6. Selection – Collecting applications

Once you have started to receive applications, they need to be analyzed. All of the information that’s presented needs to be compared with other applicants and against the person’s specifications that have already been identified.

Remember to make sure that candidates can apply in the ways that are most convenient for them. Some will be applying using their PCs, others might be job searching via their phones. Whichever channels you use to advertise a role and collect applications, make certain that it offers flexibility in terms of device and process.

7. Selection – The shortlist

Applications now need to be evaluated and shortlisted for the interview process. This involves going through each application, matching it to the person specifications, and comparing shortlisted candidates for a final round of shortlisting. 

You can speed up this stage of the process (and the whole recruitment process) by using scientifically proven screening assessments that also add accuracy and a bias-free component to recruitment. These tests make it much easier to determine who should be invited to the next stage of the hiring process.

8. Selection – Interviews

The interview process is a complex one. There are millions of articles, books, and in-house manuals on job interviews . At its most basic, a job interview is where qualified candidates find out more about the company and the company learns more about the applicant. 

Job interviews take many forms , including:

Panel interviews

Group interviews (multiple candidates at the same time)

Remote interviews (via phone or video)

One-way video interviews

A job interview may also be paired with additional testing. Practical assessments are increasingly common, testing aptitude, intelligence, or physical ability. 

Skills assessment testing isn’t used by everyone during the interview stage, but it’s one of the best ways to make sure that you hire the best candidates. It allows you to see how well your applicants respond to pressure, which is useful for gauging their response to the expected workload. 

9. Selection – Reference checks

During the interview process, one area that is frequently being overlooked is the need for a candidate to provide references. The reason this is much rarer than it used to be is that it’s far too easy to game the system.

Too many applicants provide false information and false references. However, those references need to be checked thoroughly. Anyone providing falsified references can be removed from the shortlist.

These days, it’s very common to either overlook the reference check stage of the recruitment process or leave it until a late stage. However, if faced with applicants that are equally suited to a role, reference checks can help determine who to make an offer to. References can also be used to put aside applicants who aren’t a good cultural fit.

References still need to be checked. With so many job seekers applying for roles, there’s a tendency for resume exaggerations or even outright lies.

A general rule of thumb to remember is that the more responsibilities a role has, the earlier in the recruitment process their references should be checked. 

However, the majority of reference checks happen during the later stages of the hiring process. In some cases, reference checking will be a two-stage process: written requests at the early stages of the process, and more detailed and in-depth checks done via phone call during the later stages. More junior roles will tend to forgo the more in-depth check. 

The next issue for HR to tackle is who is providing the reference. Some organizations have a policy where they will only give certain facts about a previous employee (dates of employment, salary details, job responsibilities). Others will pass your requests to an HR member. It sometimes requires a lot of persistence to talk to someone who can give you the information that you need. Ideally, you want to communicate directly with a line manager.

Personal references are still a common sight on resumes, but these can largely be ignored. It’s not likely that you’re going to get any value from references provided by friends or family. If a candidate has no previous paid work experience, then their references may include teachers or managers at volunteering organizations. These will be more useful than references from non-professional sources.

The information that you ask for from references is also important to get right. In the first instance of a basic written reference, the questions you need answers to include:

Employment dates

Job role and the responsibilities

Total number of sick days taken, and the applicant’s attendance record

General overview of work ethic (honest, reliable, hard-worker)

Any instances of complaints or disciplinary actions

More in-depth reference checks will allow you to get down to the finer details. The goal of reference checking is to ensure that the applicant is going to fit the role as well as possible, and that means:

Asking about the candidate’s work strengths

Explaining the responsibilities of the role and whether the referee believes the candidate is capable of those responsibilities

Finding out how the candidate related to different management styles, and the workplace environments they are most productive in

Discussing why the candidate left a role

Asking whether the previous employer would consider reheating the candidate

A top tip when asking questions of referees is to make sure that you only ask open-ended questions. Avoid those that allow for a yes or no response.

Likewise, don’t ask questions that are designed to reflect poorly on the candidate. If the person being used as a reference is asked about the weaknesses of a candidate, they may feel uncomfortable. That means you won’t get reliable answers. 

Some final factors to think about when conducting or considering reference checks include:

Reference check every new hire, even for volunteering roles or unpaid internships

Remember that there are legal guidelines to follow when you request a reference or a background check

Prepare your reference questions in advance, and stay consistent when checking the references of every candidate

10. Selection – Make an offer

The final stage of the selection process is to make an offer to the right applicant for the position. This can be done over the phone, via email, or even by post. In some cases, the HR team will call the person into the work environment to offer them the position.

At times, your chosen candidate may not be happy with some of the basics (salary, work condition, etc). That will mean entering a negotiation stage or turning your attention to one of the previously shortlisted candidates.

There’s also the issue of candidate ghosting . A common complaint among job seekers is about the time it takes to apply for a role only to never hear from the business. HR teams are now seeing the opposite.

Offering someone a role and then never hearing from them again is increasingly common. It can be a major blow to the recruiters and can add costs to recruitment. It’s an incredibly disruptive event, and may even result in having to start the entire recruitment cycle from scratch. 

To reduce the risks of being ghosted by applicants, HR has a few options to consider.

Interview stacking : Some recruiters are making appointments for more interviews that they can feasibly fit into a day. They are aware that some applicants are not going to show up, and so they maximise the number of people who will. There are obvious risks to this strategy, but it can be useful for more junior roles that have a higher chance of absent interviewees.

Constant recruitment : One high-level option to consider is to always be recruiting. HR needs to be networking at all times, becoming more visible to candidates even if they aren’t on the lookout for a new role. 

Go faster : One of the most common reasons for a candidate ghosting is simply because the recruitment process itself is taking too long. How can you reduce time to hire ? Make the process shorter, introduce assessment tests to speed up screening, and lower the number of interviews.

Perfecting the recruitment and selection process means an organisation gains some serious advantages. That means finding ways to improve the following. 

1. Transparency

A more transparent recruitment process improves the experience for the recruiters and the candidates. One of the biggest complaints about recruitment is that the realities of the advertised position are not reflected in the advertisement for those positions. Issues with salary, benefits, or responsibilities will leave new hires frustrated and they will be less likely to be productive.

Ignoring the importance of transparency means that candidates will be left feeling negative. There will be more people ghosting or dropping out of the hiring process, and more offers that are declined. 

The trust element is often overlooked by recruiters, but it’s an important aspect to get right. More trust means more credibility for the business, and transparency boosts trust. More communication, more honesty, and more realism when discussing and advertising a position will go a long way to attracting the right candidates. That’s going to mean:

Creating realistic job adverts : Don’t try to oversell the positive aspect of the job or overlook the harder aspects. If you’re skipping over parts of the job then that’s going to mean nasty surprises for the candidate if they accept the position.

Have a realistic recruitment timeline : Let your candidates know how long they’re going to have to wait to hear a response from you. That means at every stage of the recruitment process. If they have submitted an application form or resume, make sure that they receive an email thanking them for it and letting them know how long it will be before they hear a response. 

Let them know if their application has not been successful. Make it very clear how long they can expect to wait for a decision after you have run interviews. Keep them updated and your candidates will appreciate it.

List a salary : One of the biggest complaints about finding work right now is how many job adverts fail to list a salary range. Now, this is an ongoing discussion among HR professionals, and most will have a very strong opinion on it. 

However, although there are benefits to not listing a salary (such as making sure competitors can’t outbid on top performers etc), the fact is that including salary details has many positive effects.

More applications ( particularly from millennials )

More transparency

Less time-waste

Provide feedback : Another of the big complaints about modern recruitment is the lack of communication after an interview. As part of a more transparent recruitment process, make sure that even unsuccessful candidates get feedback. This may encourage them to work on their skills, meaning they could be excellent hires in the future. Let candidates know where they need to improve and the business can earn long-term credibility.

With a more transparent process , the hiring manager and the HR team will have more confidence regarding the final decision. They will be connected at every stage of the process, making communication and collaboration as straightforward and seamless as possible.

2. Hiring based on merit

Bias can be either conscious or unconscious, and it hurts both recruitment and the overall goals of any business. By fine-tuning recruitment so that it relies on merit-based hires, the organisation only grows stronger.

The best way to accomplish this is through the use of a pre-employment assessment test. These will be anonymized, ensuring that conscious and unconscious hiring bias is avoided.  If HR ignores the potential for bias, you risk missing out on top talent. 

3. Delivering consistency

Recruitment is like any other business process. The recruitment process needs to be standardised and then followed to the letter. Ideally, the HR team should have a series of clear steps in place at every stage of the recruitment and selection process.

It starts with the job analysis. Recruiters need to identify the skills and knowledge that are required for the role, and then list those in job adverts. Ads must be free from any aspects that are not related to the candidate’s ability to do the job. 

To deliver a more consistent recruitment process, hiring managers and recruiters should also have a high level of training. They will need to know all of the basics such as employment law and basic interviewing skills. If interviewers ask questions about sexual identity, disabilities, age, etc, then the hiring process will be hindered.

Fair testing of candidates that only gauges the potential for job performance rather than background history means fairer and more consistent recruitment. 

Not only does this ensure that unconscious bias is avoided, but it also ensures that the business is not exposed to litigation and compensation risks. Having a clear and definable recruitment roadmap is vital.

4. Better job adverts

A job advertisement is often the first touchpoint for a potential hire. They will read through the criteria, the duties, and the salary and then decide whether the role is a good fit for them.

To create better job ads, focus on the following:

Job title : Don’t use internal job titles, jargon, or any acronyms. You might be used to them, but candidates may not be. Remember that many job seekers will be using search functions to find roles, and they’re less likely to search for ‘customer service ninja’ than ‘customer service jobs’. Stick to recognisable and common job title names.

List positives : Next, you want to sell the role to potential candidates. Highlight what’s great about the role and the company. Take time to consider what is going to attract the right applications. A good way to identify the positives of a position and the business is to simply ask current team members. 

Include a summary : In the final part of the job ad, use a summary of the role that will make it easier for a candidate to see themselves in that job. Use a call to action to finish off.

Recommended reading : How to write great job descriptions [job description template included]

The main objective of the recruitment and selection process is to ensure that the best person is chosen to fill the current vacancy. However, there are additional objectives that are often overlooked:

Ensure job postings appeal to a high number of people

Identifying applicants that will fit the company culture

Reduce the risk of a hire handing in their notice after only a brief time

Hire based on merit so that the brand’s social and diversity commitments are met

Improve brand reputation via the use of an unbiased, effective, and fair hiring process

Collect details of excellent candidates who may be interested in a position in the future

Continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the existing recruitment process, and making changes as needed

Each of the above has several moving parts, necessitating specialist HR roles.

A recruitment process flowchart is considered a mainstay, helping you improve your decisions. Making sure it is easily understood across HR is essential. By implementing this resource the decision-making process is accelerated. 

The pointers below will help you create a solid foundation for your recruitment and selection flowchart:

Keep it simple

Make the process easy to navigate

Identify the most important steps in the recruitment process

Highlight the key decision points

Identify the recruitment channels that will be utilised

The recruitment and selection phases will include the initial preparation, sourcing the candidates, making selections, running interviews, conducting reference checks, and finally the onboarding stage. 

To attract the top candidates for advertised positions, every phase needs to be fully optimized. As well as the basic recruitment roadmap, recruiters also need to consider these additional phases of hiring. 

1. Automation and sourcing talent

Too often, the applicant experience is frustrating, drawn-out, and opaque. This leads to long waiting times for a decision to be made, or an excessive number of hoops for the candidate to jump through. A frustrating experience is a huge turn off for candidates.

That’s why you need to create a recruitment and selection process that is as communicative and well-structured as possible. There are now many applicant tracking systems available that can make this easier to design and implement. Many are low-cost. Recruitment tools like TestGorilla is a good example.

Larger organizations aim to automate parts of the recruitment process . Automation makes it easier to sift through applications, filter out unqualified applicants, and manage automated communications when an application has been unsuccessful. Bulk emails can be automatically sent out when you have decided to not take applications any further.

Even when using automation, sourcing talent can be incredibly time-consuming, especially for the more specialized roles. That’s why so many HR teams have a dedicated full-time applicant finder on the team. Make sure that your candidate profile includes research results on where those applicants spend time looking for employment.

2. Candidate conversions

Any recruitment process will need to be monitored and reported on, depending on your conversion rates. Check where applicants are dropping off. It could be that the step causing the most people to drop out of the application process is not relevant to the role. 

Steps that have no applicant drop-out should also be monitored. It may be that those steps are not providing any real value and should be removed. This helps streamline the process and enables better candidates to convert faster. 

Finally, check the clickthrough rates of your job adverts. If 100 people click on and read your advert but only two apply, there may be an issue with that advert. 

The most common reasons for an applicant to drop out of the recruitment process include:

The job title is vague

The business has a negative reputation that your communications are not addressing

Missing information on posts (often related to salary expectations)

Your outreach is overly aggressive

The better you identify reasons for low conversions, the easier it will be to improve the advertising stage of the recruitment process.

3. Candidate selection and screening process

Every candidate that reaches the selection stage needs to know what the process entails. Keeping them in the dark will only make them wary of accepting any kind of job offer. Go through:

Every step of the process

The expectations of each step

The people that they will be meeting throughout the process

How long they can expect the process to take

Any key preparation they need to make

Recruiters need to understand that applying for any job can be a time-consuming commitment for the applicant too. You need to be respectful of their time, so setting expectations is key.

When it comes to selection, make sure that you have clearly defined must-haves on your candidate profile. Separate those from the nice-to-have traits, experiences, and skills. 

This can make the process of getting to your shortlist much faster and easier.

4. The onboarding stage

This is often considered the final stage of a successful recruitment and selection process. It’s not quite, since the HR team will still need to touch base with the successful applicant to ensure that everything is going smoothly. 

Recruiting and the operations teams need to work together throughout the onboarding process. Every organization has its approach to onboarding. At the very least, an onboarding process needs to include:

Some form of a mentorship program

Information delivery

Access to relevant resources and tools

If you skip over any of these essentials then your new hire may not feel included or valued. These are the hires that will be the most likely to leave the company as conditions are not as expected. 

With a clearly defined process and a commitment to ensuring the hiring of the ideal candidate, the recruitment and selection process should be straightforward. Unfortunately, some common problems can have a cascade effect on the entire process:

1. Attracting the right candidates

Often considered the most straightforward stage of the process, attracting the right people isn’t easy. For every advert you place, there are going to be applications from people that are simply not suited to the position. This will dramatically reduce your hiring options. Check out our guide to the best recruitment strategies for attracting top talent .

The key is knowing what the job you’re advertising entails, building an ideal applicant profile, and ensuring that the job advert conveys all of the right details and information. 

A well-written job advert will allow potential candidates to determine if the position is for them. It allows for self-selection and lets potential applicants evaluate and move away from applying if the role isn’t suitable. That means that you then have more time available to evaluate applications from the candidates that are suitable for the position.

2. Applicant engagement

The interview process is a two-way street. You may be interviewing candidates to see if they are a good fit for the position and the company, but those applicants are doing the same. If they encounter difficulties then they may decide that your company is not a good fit.

That means elevating your engagement. Along with attracting the best candidates to a position via an informative job advert, you also need to convince them why they should apply to your organization. That’s going to mean researching the ideal candidate persona. Understand what motivates them.

By doing so, you can more easily communicate with them and can personalise those communications. You can tailor job offers depending on your research findings. If you can do this, that candidate will feel much more valued, be less likely to look elsewhere, and will feel more integrated into the company culture.

3. Hiring speed

Both the HR team and the applicants themselves will want the process to be as fast as it possibly can, but without causing any issues in the process. The longer a position remains vacant, the more it costs your organisation.

A slow recruitment process will be frustrating for HR and applicants. The solution is monitoring and reporting. Identifying where your recruitment slows down is key to improving the entire process. 

The recruitment and selection process is critical to get right, no matter how large or small a business is. 

HR teams are under a lot of pressure. There are so many moving elements to the recruitment and selection process that there are plenty of opportunities to make errors. By using the tips listed here, it’s possible to improve and master the entire process. 

Break down each phase of the hiring process. Automate where needed, and research current recruitment trends from the perspective of recruiters and job seekers.

With TestGorilla, you’ll find the recruitment process to be simpler, faster, and much more effective.  Get started for free today  and start making better hiring decisions, faster and bias-free.

Related posts

Why did the world's largest HR association drop the E from DE&I?

Posting interview questions online: Should you do it?

How to write an AWS developer job description

Hire the best candidates with TestGorilla

Create pre-employment assessments in minutes to screen candidates, save time, and hire the best talent.

Latest posts

The best advice in pre-employment testing, in your inbox.

No spam. Unsubscribe at any time.

Hire the best. No bias. No stress.

Our screening tests identify the best candidates and make your hiring decisions faster, easier, and bias-free.

Free resources

This checklist covers key features you should look for when choosing a skills testing platform

This resource will help you develop an onboarding checklist for new hires.

How to assess your candidates' attention to detail.

Learn how to get human resources certified through HRCI or SHRM.

Learn how you can improve the level of talent at your company.

Learn how CapitalT reduced hiring bias with online skills assessments.

Learn how to make the resume process more efficient and more effective.

Improve your hiring strategy with these 7 critical recruitment metrics.

Learn how Sukhi decreased time spent reviewing resumes by 83%!

Hire more efficiently with these hacks that 99% of recruiters aren't using.

Make a business case for diversity and inclusion initiatives with this data.

Our Recommendations

• Best Small Business Loans for 2024
• Businessloans.com Review
• Biz2Credit Review
• SBG Funding Review
• Rapid Finance Review
• 26 Great Business Ideas for Entrepreneurs
• Startup Costs: How Much Cash Will You Need?
• How to Get a Bank Loan for Your Small Business
• Articles of Incorporation: What New Business Owners Should Know
• How to Choose the Best Legal Structure for Your Business

Small Business Resources

• Business Ideas
• Business Plans
• Startup Basics
• Startup Funding
• Franchising
• Success Stories
• Entrepreneurs
• The Best Credit Card Processors of 2024
• Clover Credit Card Processing Review
• Merchant One Review
• Stax Review
• How to Conduct a Market Analysis for Your Business
• Local Marketing Strategies for Success
• Tips for Hiring a Marketing Company
• Benefits of CRM Systems
• 10 Employee Recruitment Strategies for Success
• Sales & Marketing
• Social Media
• Best Business Phone Systems of 2024
• The Best PEOs of 2024
• RingCentral Review
• Nextiva Review
• Ooma Review
• Guide to Developing a Training Program for New Employees
• How Does 401(k) Matching Work for Employers?
• Why You Need to Create a Fantastic Workplace Culture
• 16 Cool Job Perks That Keep Employees Happy
• 7 Project Management Styles
• Women in Business
• Personal Growth
• Best Accounting Software and Invoice Generators of 2024
• Best Payroll Services for 2024
• Best POS Systems for 2024
• Best CRM Software of 2024
• Best Call Centers and Answering Services for Busineses for 2024
• Salesforce vs. HubSpot: Which CRM Is Right for Your Business?
• Rippling vs Gusto: An In-Depth Comparison
• RingCentral vs. Ooma Comparison
• Choosing a Business Phone System: A Buyer’s Guide
• Equipment Leasing: A Guide for Business Owners
• HR Solutions
• Financial Solutions
• Marketing Solutions
• Security Solutions
• Retail Solutions
• SMB Solutions

Business News Daily provides resources, advice and product reviews to drive business growth. Our mission is to equip business owners with the knowledge and confidence to make informed decisions. As part of that, we recommend products and services for their success.

We collaborate with business-to-business vendors, connecting them with potential buyers. In some cases, we earn commissions when sales are made through our referrals. These financial relationships support our content but do not dictate our recommendations. Our editorial team independently evaluates products based on thousands of hours of research. We are committed to providing trustworthy advice for businesses. Learn more about our full process and see who our partners are here .

How to Improve Your Hiring and Recruitment Process

Learn how to create and improve your hiring process to increase employee quality and retention.

Table of Contents

To make your business the best it can be, you need to assemble a great team. That starts with a well-rounded recruitment and hiring process, which helps you identify the best candidates for your open positions and set up new hires for success. This guide examines the importance of a recruitment and hiring process and offers guidance on how to improve it. 

What is a hiring process?

A hiring process is a step-by-step method to find, recruit and hire new employees. A good hiring process will help you attract and retain high-quality employees who match your brand. The specific elements of a hiring process are unique to each company and role, but there are general steps that every business can follow to attract and hire qualified candidates.

What steps are in the hiring process?

Although it varies based on the company, industry and role, most hiring processes include these 10 basic steps.

1. Write a job description that accurately reflects your hiring needs.

A job description is one of the first interactions a job applicant has with your organization. Make sure you are writing good job descriptions that accurately reflect your brand and the open roles.

For example, be clear about the specific responsibilities and requirements, and use some brand-specific language that gives the job applicant a feel for your company culture. Explain what you need from them and what you can provide them in return.

A well-written job description will help weed out candidates who aren’t the right fit, so it should leave you with a more focused group of resumes to evaluate.

2. Advertise and recruit for the open position.

Once you have your job description, the next step is to advertise it and recruit for the open position. Post it in multiple locations, such as your careers page, job boards, job fairs and social media. Encourage your staff to reach out to their networks for the position as well.

Zuraida Curtis, employment law editor at Brightmine, advises businesses to follow these tips for creating a successful recruitment strategy:

• Analyze. Take a close look at your business’s needs and goals.
• Identify. Know your long-term plans for expansion or reduction in staff, critical roles in the business, and any gaps that need to be filled. Be on the lookout for seasonal fluctuations in staffing requirements.
• Determine. Figure out the best recruitment method for your business. Job searches via social media are increasing, for example, so you could use this method to target candidates with specific skill sets.
• Secure. Provide a competitive salary and opportunities for personal growth within your business.
• Establish. Choose and implement a method for measuring results and testing whether your strategy is working. Establish a training budget to develop and enhance your employees’ skills and knowledge.

3. Analyze candidates’ resumes, cover letters and applications.

As applications start flowing in, you’ll need to come up with a process for reviewing them. You can designate one or more people to review applications and narrow down your viable candidates. You can also use some form of recruitment software, like an applicant tracking system (ATS).

An ATS analyzes candidates and searches for any flaws in the hiring process. It filters candidates according to hiring needs and makes it easier for recruiters and hiring managers to view an applicant’s performance. The software can’t make wise decisions about whom to hire, but it simplifies relevant keywords in a resume, aligning candidates with your business’s wants and needs.

With automatic rankings, you can compare resumes against the job description. The software then forwards the resumes with the highest matches to the next stage. It’s also a powerful solution for coordinating the candidate pipeline and ensuring that quality candidates are not lost in the shuffle.

4. Do a phone interview for the initial screening.

After you narrow down your pool of job applicants, conduct a phone screen interview with each of the top candidates. A phone interview is a brief, preliminary screening that takes about 15 to 30 minutes. Keep phone screens as uniform as possible. Ask a few basic “get to know you” questions, as well as inquiries about their skills, experience, and interest in the company and position. This interview should give you a sense of who the person is and what soft skills they possess. [Avoid these illegal job interview questions .]

5. Conduct final-round interviews.

Your phone interviews should narrow down your pool of candidates. Conduct in-person interviews (or video conference interviews, if you’re recruiting remotely) with the remaining candidates. These interviews are more thorough to help you select your top candidates. Include multiple stakeholders in these interviews to get a broader picture of how well each candidate would fit within the organization and role.

6. Have the job applicant perform applicable assessments.

Depending on the role you are hiring for, you may want job applicants to perform applicable assessments. For example, if you are hiring for a copy editing position, you may have the candidate perform an editing exercise. Someone hiring for a sales position may have the candidate give a sample sales pitch based on a specific product the company sells.

Assessments aren’t always necessary, but they test whether the candidate can perform the responsibilities of the role. The assessment can be performed before, during or after the formal interview.

7. Run a background check, and contact references.

Contacting references and running preemployment background checks are important parts of the hiring process. They are often the final steps. There are many great background check companies that can help you run legally compliant background checks.

The purpose of a background check is to ensure the candidate is legally fit for the position. However, you should avoid discriminating against candidates based on their results. For example, refusing to hire a candidate with multiple traffic violations would be valid for a truck-driving position, but it’s not relevant to a marketing position.

8. Make a hiring decision.

Use the knowledge you’ve gained about your job candidates throughout the hiring process to make a final decision about whom to hire. Consult all parties who spoke with each candidate to make a more informed decision. Consider their qualifications and cultural fit, but don’t make decisions based on biases or discrimination.

“Try to avoid hiring on gut instinct,” Curtis told Business News Daily. “Have a structured hiring process with an effective interview process. Verify qualifications through the interview process, and complete background checks such as references.”

9. Extend a job offer.

Extend a job offer to your top pick. Highly qualified candidates are typically not on the market long, so extend the job offer quickly once you’ve decided. Include information regarding salary and benefits, and be prepared for some negotiation during this time.

10. Hire and onboard the new employee.

Your employee onboarding process can make a big difference in how successful your new hire is within your organization. First, send the necessary paperwork to the candidate for them to sign. If you use recruiting software, it will likely have e-signature capabilities, allowing new employees to accept an offer and complete onboarding paperwork remotely.

Comprehensive programs take it one step further, automating the entire onboarding process and providing your new hire with all of the training and materials they need. This will not only set up the employee for success but also improve employee retention.

How to improve your hiring process

If you already have a hiring process in place, there is a good chance it can be enhanced to better serve your business needs. Here are 13 tips to improve your hiring process.

1. Build a strong employer brand.

More than 75 percent of professionals are passive candidates who aren’t currently looking for a job but are open to new opportunities. Building a strong employer brand not only reduces employee turnover by 28 percent but also attracts these passive candidates to your company over others.

A Glassdoor survey found that 69 percent of respondents are likely to apply for a job if the employer actively manages its brand by responding to reviews, updating the company’s profile, and sharing updates on the company’s culture and work environment.

When you focus on building a well-known employer brand , you won’t have to do as much active recruiting; you’ll be a highly sought-after organization that attracts lots of applicants.

2. Answer candidates’ frequently asked questions.

Another excellent recruitment strategy is to create a page or section on your website that addresses questions that candidates often ask. Many candidates may be reluctant to apply for jobs because they still need answers to certain questions before they apply. You can either take specific questions that new candidates have asked you or ask your present employees what questions they had before they were hired. This will help you create a page that covers the concerns candidates may have, thereby informing candidates and saving time.

3. Move as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Workleap reported that the best candidates are off the market in 10 days. Act quickly, especially when you know you’re interested in a specific applicant. Even if you haven’t made a decision yet, follow up with the candidate often, discussing further details of the position to ensure you’re on their radar. Respond to any questions or concerns right away to keep them updated throughout the process.

4. Write better job descriptions.

Many companies write job descriptions with lists of responsibilities and requirements, but these job postings aren’t always helpful. Making job descriptions accurate and succinct is essential for attracting the right types of candidates for your open positions. Failure to do so can make it even harder to sort through the applications you’ll get back, and you may not even get a suitable candidate for the job. Focus on what your company can do for potential employees, and you’ll attract candidates who better fit your needs.

5. Embrace digital trends and social media.

Most people want to work for companies that keep up with the latest tech trends. Part of embracing the digital age means using public social media profiles for candidate research. Like most employers, you’ll probably conduct a standard preemployment background check on applicants, but social media screenings of a candidate’s public social media profiles can offer more details about the individual as a person and an employee, for better or worse.

It’s legally risky to allow a candidate’s social media activity to factor into your hiring decisions, because it can result in unconscious bias or discrimination. However, it can give you a better picture of a job applicant you’re interested in hiring.

Social media recruitment is also a great strategy for reaching the right audience and attracting talent, said Kayla Vatalaro, former head of talent and social impact at Asana.

“We believe in the power of the employee voice to tell the Asana story, and our employees have a significant influence on social media,” Vatalaro said. “Every week across our social channels, our employer brand team shares an Asana Women Wednesday post, featuring the great work of one of the women from our global team.”

Vatalaro said this form of employee advocacy has increased traffic to the company’s careers page and become a crucial part of its recruitment and talent management strategy. 

7. Encourage employee referrals.

One of the best ways to hire quality candidates is through referrals from current employees or people in your network. Referrals are a good way to screen potential candidates before interviewing them. If your trusted employee recommends a previous colleague or a friend whose work experience they know well, it gives you a level of security knowing that this new applicant can do good work. In contrast, when you hire a stranger, there is less certainty about a candidate’s work ethic and potential fit for the team.

Although you shouldn’t give referrals preferential treatment, a recommendation from someone already on staff or in your network is an added benefit for that applicant. Ensure that the candidate’s qualifications make them an ideal fit for the job, and use the referral as insurance that you’re making the right hiring decision.

One way to solicit referrals from current employees is to implement a referral bonus program. If an employee refers an applicant and that applicant eventually gets hired, the employee who referred the new hire can receive monetary compensation. Even if the bonus is only a few hundred dollars, it makes employees more willing to recommend people they know are quality candidates. 

8. Optimize for mobile.

A mobile-friendly hiring process is one of the best ways to draw in candidates. According to SmartRecruiters , close to 90 percent of job seekers use a mobile device when looking for a new job opportunity. That number has risen significantly over the past few years.

To that end, your app or website should allow candidates to accept offers, hold live video interviews, complete referral tasks and self-schedule interviews. For retention purposes, you can also build in functions for new employees, such as an interactive employee handbook , benefits registration and access to paid-time-off (PTO) balances.

9. Fit the personality to the job.

Although the right skill set may seem like the most important factor in whether a candidate is a good fit, the truth is that skills can be acquired, but personalities cannot.

During the selection process, consider how a candidate’s personality traits align with the daily job tasks. For instance, a trait such as empathy is much more important for a nurse or a social worker than it is for a tax attorney or a computer programmer.

“ What kind of person you hire depends on [the] culture of [the] organization and the kind of job,” said Maynard Brusman, a San Francisco-based psychologist and founding principal of consulting firm Working Resources. “A great person with all kinds of skills may be a good fit for one and a poor fit for another, simply based on their personality type.”

10. Improve your interviews.

A study by Leadership IQ found that failures exhibited by new employees may result from flawed interview processes. In the study, 82 percent of the 5,000 managers surveyed reported that the interviewers were too focused on other issues, were too pressed for time, or lacked the confidence in their interviewing abilities to pay attention to red flags.

According to Mark Murphy, founder and CEO of Leadership IQ, this is because the job interview process focuses on making sure new hires are technically competent, whereas other factors that are just as important to employees’ success — like coachability, emotional intelligence, temperament and motivation — are often overlooked.

Interviewing the candidate

One way to improve the interview process is to double up on interviewers. Multiple interviewers in the room at once can have several benefits:

• It shortens the interview process.
• It lightens a hiring manager’s load.
• It hands employers a better opportunity to give candidates honest feedback.

Doug Camplejohn, CEO and founder of Airspeed, advised hiring managers to have an open discussion about the interview in front of the candidate as if they weren’t in the room. It may seem strange, but he said candidates appreciate the candor.

“It’s a much more honest process than saying your thank-yous and then rejecting someone over email or through a recruiter,” Camplejohn said. “Even candidates who we’ve passed on have commented on how refreshing the process is and asked to stay in touch.”

Letting the candidate interview you

Allow prospective employees to interview you as well. Letting candidates ask questions gives you a chance to see what’s important to them, Brusman said. It also lets them determine whether they want to keep pursuing a job at your company.

“Be open and honest about what it’s going to be like to work for your company,” Brusman said. “You want to give a realistic preview of the work environment.”

11. Offer quality employee benefits and perks.

A comprehensive selection of employee benefits and perks can be a good way to attract a diverse and talented applicant pool. In addition to providing competitive salaries and a good company culture , companies that offer work-life balance and comprehensive health insurance packages appeal to a broad range of candidates. There are plenty of traditional work benefits that attract top talent, and there’s no shortage of unusual and creative perk options . Flexible work offerings, like the ability to telecommute, have become very popular with employees since the beginning of the pandemic. 

When you’re explaining your benefits to prospective employees, you can also highlight other features, such as your company’s efforts to create a culture of diversity and inclusion and opportunities for employee advancement.

12. Use recruiting software.

Recruiting software is designed to automate the tedious parts of recruiting and allow you to do much more than you would be able to handle manually. It can easily blast out multiple customized job postings, send bulk rejection or welcome emails, and automatically transition candidates to the next phase of the recruitment process based on preset configurations. When recruiting software tracks your candidates every step of the way, you reach the best candidates and streamline the hiring process. If you’re looking for a more robust option, take a look at the best HR software providers , which have options for streamlining recruitment.

Automation and tracking capabilities increase your hiring efficiency, allowing recruiters to focus on what matters: engaging with great candidates. This reduces recruiting time and increases employee engagement and satisfaction. Some recruiting software can handle multiple aspects of the onboarding process for you. Recruiting software that provides analytics gives you insight into how your hiring process is performing and where you can improve.

Platforms such as BambooHR allow you to track and hire job applicants, onboard and offboard employees, access HR management tools, track employee time and PTO, and view advanced reporting on candidates and employees. Read our BambooHR review to learn more.

13. Monitor your reviews.

Potential employees often seek inside information about companies they want to work for, including salary estimates, interview tips, and reviews from current and former employees from sites such as Glassdoor. Studies show that 86 percent of Glassdoor users read company reviews and ratings before deciding to apply for a job. Top candidates may not even apply in the first place if they don’t like what they see — 50 percent of job seekers said they would not take a job with a company that had a bad reputation, even for a pay increase.

Actions that draw in candidates include being active on review websites and posting accurate information. If you have a lot of negative reviews from former employees, it may be time to work on your company culture before you try to fill any open positions. This can improve your employee retention and lead to more positive reviews that will attract quality employees.

Recruitment and hiring require a strategy

It can be easy to pay attention to recruitment and hiring only when you need help, but these activities deserve a comprehensive and ongoing strategy. By considering the elements above and following best practices, you can maximize the chances that your business finds the candidates it needs when the time comes. After all, your business is only as successful as your team, so filling your open positions with top talent should be a key priority.

Tejas Vemparala and Sammi Caramela contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article.

Building Better Businesses

Insights on business strategy and culture, right to your inbox. Part of the business.com network.

20 min read

13 Recruitment Strategies That Will Transform the Way You Hire

1. Build your employer brand

Why should candidates consider working for your business? How can you broadcast your culture and values, and what are the factors that can help you stand out from the crowd?

Companies can build their employer brands by ensuring they have a great careers webpage, plenty of written or video employee testimonials, and showing potential candidates what a day-in-the-life might look like in your team.

Be sure to keep track of your online reputation. What are your current and former employees saying about what it’s like to work at your company online? If there are negative reviews on sites such as Glassdoor, acknowledge these, follow them up, and ask your employees to write some positive reviews to provide balance.  

Key stat: 68% of Millennials and 54% of Gen-Xers indicated they visit social media specifically to evaluate the employer’s brand . 

Do: Link your employer brand to your overall company brand. If your company persona is funky and fun, your employer branding should match.

Don’t: Make claims that aren’t true. New hires will quickly spot a discrepancy between the employer brand and reality when they start work and may be tempted to leave if there’s a significant mismatch.

[Read more: How Employer Branding Improves Recruiting ]

2. Write compelling job descriptions

For every great job ad published, there are a thousand boring ones. Make yours stand out by keeping it short and specific. Consider SEO to improve discoverability, and mix up the format by including embedded or linked videos along with the text.

Your job ad should begin with the most compelling aspect of the role. Perhaps it’s a brand-new position. Maybe it comes with great career opportunities, or maybe it’s the perks that stand out. Lead with this, rather than burying it five paragraphs down.

Use the opportunity to promote your organization’s culture and values, and watch out for non-inclusive or gendered language that could discourage people from applying.

Key stat : Short job posts under 300 words lead to 8.4% more applications than longer posts .

Do: Put some time and effort into writing job ads. They may feel like a chore, but they’re your best way to encouraging interested candidates to hit the “apply” button.

Don’t: Hide the salary range. 61% of candidates say the salary is the most important piece of information in a job description .

[Read more: Write Powerful Job Postings to Attract the Best Candidates ]

3. Get targeted with job ad placement

One of the best recruitment tactics is being smart about job ad placements by researching where your candidates spend their time online. While generic job boards can be effective, many industries have niche job boards that lead to improved results. Are your ideal candidates searching for jobs on Engineering.com or ArtsHub ? Many traditional industries still place job ads in printed publications, while others focus on social media job ad placement.

Keep in mind that the aim isn’t only to boost applicant numbers, but to boost the number of relevant applicants with the right skill sets.

Job sites are by no means the only or best way to recruit employees. Other candidate sources include your career site, social media channels, recruiters, and employee referral programs.

Key stat: Top channels for jobseekers are online job boards (60%), professional networks (56%), and word of mouth (50%) .

Do : Track your source-to-hire to understand where to best invest your job ad placement budget.

Don’t : Take a scattergun approach to job ad placement and hope for the best.

[Read more: Remote Hiring Guide: How To Attract, Hire and Retain Remote Employees ]

4. Improve your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) is the package of incentives that are used to attract candidates. Salary is a key part of any EVP, but it shouldn’t be relied upon as the only incentive.

Consider improving employee recruitment techniques by including the following in your EVP:

• Flexibility, both in terms of remote working and flexible hours
• In-office perks, including comfortable and fun office spaces with facilities such as office gyms, great coffee, or ping-pong tables
• Remote-working perks such as membership for their local coworking space
• Additional days of personal leave
• Volunteering days
• A strong company culture and values that resonate
• Cutting-edge technology

Key stat: Organizations that effectively deliver on their EVP can decrease annual employee turnover by just under 70% and increase new hire commitment by nearly 30% .

Do : Broadcast the highlights from your EVP in your job descriptions.

Don’t : Fail to differentiate your EVP from your competitors.

[Read more: 13 Inspiring Employee Value Proposition Examples To Attract Great Talent ]

5. Make the most of social media

It’s easy to spot the companies that understand the power of social media recruitment. They have strong presences across popular channels, their Youtube accounts are brimming with career-related videos, and their employees are regularly advocating for their brand online.

Make social media one of your most effective recruitment strategies by:

• Creating candidate personas to determine who your audience is
• Determining the right social media channels for your needs
• Tracking metrics that count, for example measuring click-throughs rather than views/likes
• Developing great content such as videos, graphics, and articles
• Posting regularly and engaging with your followers by responding to posts and comments
• Boosting your candidate search capabilities with tools such as LinkedIn
• Boosting the reach of your job ads with promoted (paid) posts

Key stat: 84% of organizations incorporate social media in their hiring processes .

Do: Look for ways to provide value to social media followers, such as sharing relevant content.

Don’t: Take a set-and-forget approach to social media. Post regularly and keep engaging with comments.

[Read more: How To Recruit and Hire With the Best Social Media Recruitment Strategies ]

6. Fine-tune your online presence

If you only hire talent in your local geography, it’s likely candidates already know of you by reputation. But the rise of virtual hiring and remote working now means that companies are seeking talent in distant places, including other countries.

The key challenge when hiring virtually is that your online presence is the only thing remote candidates see. This means that a sub-standard website or non-existent social media presence can sabotage your otherwise effective hiring strategies.

Nothing beats Google as a tool for reviewing your online presence. Identify areas where you need to invest in targeted improvements, such as:

• The overall company website (work with Marketing on this)
• Your website careers page
• Social media channels
• Video and article content
• Employee advocacy
• Review sites such as Glassdoor

It’s also important to be aware of any negative press about your organization, even though this may be beyond your control.  

Key stat: 64% of candidates say they research a company online and 37% say they will move on to another job opening if they can’t find information on the company .

Do: Revamp your website every three to four years to avoid it becoming outdated.

Don’t: Assume that checking a candidate’s digital footprint is a one-way process. In all likelihood, they are doing the same to you.

[Read more: How To Build a Strong Employer Brand Online ]

7. Focus on the candidate experience

A poor candidate experience will lead to an HR recruitment strategy falling down, and talent dropping out of your recruitment funnel due to frustration or impatience, and never coming back. Worse, it can lead to your company getting a reputation for poor hiring practices and undermine the company recruitment strategy.

A poor experience might be caused by:

• Insufficient candidate communication
• A complex and lengthy application process
• Too many rounds of interviews
• Lengthy or delayed hiring decision-making
• Unprofessional conduct such as canceling an interview at the last minute
• A “robotic” experience where the candidate feels the process is too automated

The candidate experience should align with your company brand. For example, if your company creates cutting-edge apps, a candidate would be disappointed to find themselves embroiled in a paper-based process.

Gather candidate feedback about the recruitment experience to understand what’s working and how to improve your recruitment strategy. The ultimate marker of success is when even unsuccessful candidates report positively on your hiring process.

Key stat: 60% of candidates have quit an application process because it took too long .

Do: Apply for the role yourself to identify bottlenecks and clunky processes.  

Don’t: Forget that candidates are often customers, too.

[Read more: 6 Expert Steps to a Great Candidate Experience ]

8. Implement skills testing

A well-written résumé and confident performance in the job interview are a good start, but unfortunately, they are not reliable predictors of future job performance.

The only true way to predict hiring success is to see how a candidate does the job, before they get the job.

Skills testing is a high-impact screening tool that rapidly separates the wheat from the chaff in your recruitment funnel. A targeted assessment will test candidates on the skills that matter to you (both technical and soft skills) , and automatically rank your candidates by score.

Hiring managers can then drill deeper into assessment insights to identify areas of strength and weakness to address in the job interview.

Skills testing is an effective recruitment strategy and practice that improves fair hiring practices, minimizes bias, reduces turnover, and improves hiring outcomes.

Key stat: Since embedding Vervoe’s skills assessment platform in their recruitment process, tech company, MYOB, is making 50-60% more offers to candidates.

Do: Make your skills test user-friendly, engaging, and not too lengthy. Focus on the candidate experience.

Don’t: Make hiring decisions based solely on résumés or job interview performance.

[Read more: Everything You Need to Know About Skill Testing ]

9. Boost Diversity and Inclusion

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is no longer just a moral imperative: it makes business sense. Diverse teams outperform non-diverse ones by 35%, while 57% of employees think their businesses should be more diverse .

While diversity involves bringing more employees from different backgrounds into the business, inclusion means making sure their voices – and particularly their ideas – are heard. D&I boosts innovation, helps attract top talent, and improves financial performance.  

Boost diversity hiring by:

• Getting commitment to D&I from leadership
• Hiring more diverse leaders
• Ensuring your job descriptions are inclusive
• Diversifying your job ad placements
• Minimizing bias in your end-to-end recruitment process
• Implementing merit-based skills testing

Key stat: Companies with above-average diversity achieve 19% higher innovation revenues .

Do: Analyze your recruitment process to identify areas with potential for biased decision-making .

Don’t: Simply change your policy and assume diversity will happen on autopilot. Diversity hiring takes commitment.

[Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Diversity Hiring ]

10. Leverage recruitment technology

While it’s possible to manage low-volume hiring manually, doing so creates a great deal of admin work and quickly becomes untenable when you attempt to recruit at scale. Technology can be used to improve your hiring and recruiting strategies, find efficiencies, automate processes, promote fairer hiring , and improve the candidate experience.

There’s a bewildering array of recruitment tech available on the market, but as a starting point you may want to consider:

• An Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
• Recruitment marketing software
• Résumé screening software
• Skills assessment software
• Interview scheduling tools
• Recruitment AI and machine learning
• Video interviewing platforms
• Automated candidate communication
• Online onboarding software

Don’t be talked into buying recruitment tech by the first salesperson you meet. Consider whether the technology is suitable for your strategic hiring practices, how it will integrate with existing systems, how much it will cost, and how it will improve hiring outcomes.

The key when implementing recruitment software is to balance the candidate experience with efficiency through automation. Even automated communication can be warmly written and personalized.

Key stat: HR managers lose an average of 14 hours a week manually completing tasks that could be automated .

Do: Start small by building a tech stack of best-in-class, integrated recruitment technology.

Don’t: Compromise on having a great candidate experience when automating your recruitment process.  

[Read more: AI and Automation in Recruitment ]

11. Track success with recruitment metrics

What can’t be measured, can’t be improved. Recruitment metrics are used to measure, track, and improve key outcomes at various stages of the recruitment funnel to ensure you’re following the best recruitment strategies. Common metrics to track include:

• Quality of hire
• Time to hire
• Cost per hire
• Applicants per hire
• Source of hire
• Hiring diversity
• Candidate experience

There are dozens of other recruitment metrics to track, but rather than trying to manage them all, use the metrics that reflect your organization’s current priorities. For example, if the business is focused on controlling costs, it pays to track time to hire and cost per hire.

How do you measure success? It depends on the metric. Time to hire , for example, is calculated by counting the days between the application and the day the successful candidate accepts a job offer. Hiring diversity is tracked with the help of demographics surveys.

Key stat: The three most popular recruitment metrics to track are source of hire (57%), time to hire (50%), and applicants per hire (42%).

Do: Use recruitment metrics to drive continuous improvement.

Don’t: Forget to align the metrics you are tracking to overall business objectives.

[Read more: 6 Crucial Metrics To Measure Your Recruitment Funnel Effectiveness ]

12. Make onboarding a breeze

Great onboarding can boost retention and enable your new hires to reach full productivity faster. Onboarding is an opportunity to ensure new hires stay excited and engaged, make sure they are set up for success, and tick the necessary compliance boxes.

Onboarding software can be used to:

• Reduce or eliminate paper processes  
• Boost engagement between job acceptance and day one
• Get more admin tasks out of the way before day one
• Make sure nothing gets forgotten (such as arranging a desk or system access for the new hire)
• Integrate data such as compliance and training program data with other systems
• Focus on ensuring a great candidate experience that isn’t a let down after the excitement of winning the role

Key stat: Great onboarding can improve employee retention by 82% , yet 88% of organizations don’t onboard well .

Do: Make onboarding as fun and engaging for the new hire as possible. Include information such as what to expect on their first day, what they should wear, where they can find a great café, and so on.

Don’t: Make onboarding predominately about filling in forms and ticking boxes.

[Read more: Remote Onboarding Guide ]

13. Encourage employee advocacy

Your current employees are an untapped resource for attracting more great quality candidates and improving your hiring brand. Importantly, potential candidates are much more likely to trust information from real employees than they would from a brand.

Ask your team to help by:

• Leaving positive reviews on rating sites such as Glassdoor
• Writing positive posts about your company on social media
• Sharing job ads with their networks
• Participating in recruitment marketing, such as video interviews

Employee referral programs are cheaper and faster than traditional recruitment techniques. They also have high applicant-to-hire conversion rates and can lead to improved retention. However, referral programs can lead to lower diversity, can stifle innovation, and can tempt managers to hire without going through the usual due diligence.  

Key stat: Messages shared by employees went 561% further than the same message shared on a brand-owned channel .

Do: Use real employees in your recruitment marketing whenever possible.

Don’t: Try to force employee advocacy. Empower and incentivize your employees to share positive messages online, but don’t mandate it.

[Read more: Are Employee Referrals Still the Holy Grail of Recruiting? ]

Don’t wing it in recruitment. Getting strategic by using some or all of these recruitment techniques will help you hire better and drive continuous improvement along your entire recruitment funnel.

Recent articles

Leadership Skills Assessments: The Secret to Identifying Great Leaders 

Full Cycle Recruiting: What It is and How Effective It is

10 Qualities of a Good Mentor (and How to Screen for Them)

How To Use the STAR Method Interview Questions to Find the Perfect Candidate

The Secrets of Amazon’s High-Volume Hiring Process: A Case Study

A Complete Guide to Situational Interview Questions for Finding Ideal Candidates

Setting the Foundation: Preboarding Employees for Success

The Rise of Fake Employment References and How to Address Them

Talent Mapping: What It is and How to Use It to Your Advantage

Spotting the Red Flags: Symptoms and Cures of Dysfunctional Teams

Similar articles you may be interested in​.

Hiring good leaders improves the dynamics among team members and significantly increases work efficiency. Unfortunately, identifying candidates with outstanding leadership

The labor market has evolved significantly within the past decade. Aside from the introduction of advanced technology to simplify the

For numerous companies today, the struggle with employee retention is no foreign enemy. On the bright side, there’s a trick

• Assessment Library
• Request Demo
• Assessment Validity
• Compare Vervoe
• Employer Support
• Candidate Support
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy

This website uses cookies 🍪

Privacy overview.

Case Study: Improving Recruitment Processes – Part 2 of 2

Published: June 2, 2014 by Niraj Goyal

In this case study, a team strives to improve the recruiting process in a large, fast-moving consumer goods company. Part 1 focused on reducing the recruiting cycle time . Part 2 focuses on decreasing the effort required to fill a job opening .

The case described here uses total quality management (TQM) to address the problem of rising attrition in a large, fast-moving consumer goods company in India. Specifically, the HR team sought to reduce the time and effort involved in finding good candidates for open positions. ( Note: The details of the process have been condensed and modified for the sake of confidentiality and easy of storytelling .)

As in Part 1 of this article, which addressed the cycle time to fill open positions, Part 2 approaches the issue of reducing the effort required for each recruitment through the seven steps of problem solving:

• Define the problem
• Research the causes
• Generate countermeasure ideas
• Test and modify the ideas
• Implement ideas
• Standardize procedures
• Compile quality improvement story

Step 1: Define the Problem

The 22-step recruitment process as developed in Part 1 of this case study is shown in Table 1.

To improve any problem, it must be measurable ( problem = desired state – current state ).

Table 1 reveals two easily measurable inputs: 1) the number of resumes reviewed and 2) the number of interviews held. The overall output is the number of successfully filled open positions.

Two metrics to measure the improvement were agreed upon by the project team:

• Resumes scanned per candidate selected (R/C) and
• Interviews conducted per candidate selected (I/C).

Data from past recruitments was collected and is summarized in Table 2.

R/C = 100 / 16 = 6.25 I/C = (95+47+21) / 16 = 10.2

The goal of the team was to reduce these measurements by 30 percent.

Step 2: Research the Causes

For this step, the team used the 5 Whys to reveal the root cause or causes of the problem.

Why #1 : Why were there so many interviews for each candidate selected? As Table 2 shows, only 5 percent of the resumes were rejected in the first selection step. In each of the subsequent two interviews, the rejection rate increased to 50 percent. It was clear that if the resume review process could be improved such that the number of candidates rejected could be increased earlier in the candidate selection process, the process would be more efficient.

Why #2 : Why was the resume screening so ineffective? A test was done to expose the causes. There were three staff members who did the screening. A sampling from past selections was prepared, consisting of 10 resumes from which three candidates had been selected.

The three staff members were given the 10 selected resumes and asked to select which they would shortlist for interviews. The results are shown in Table 3 below.

* The staff member selected the resume of a candidate who had received a job offer.

Reviewer 1 had a much more efficient process of shortlisting than his colleagues as his ratio of shortlisted candidates was 3/7 (42 percent) compared to 1/4 (25 percent) and 1/6 (15 percent) of Reviewers 2 and 3.

Why #3 : Why do the employees have varying degrees of efficiency at scanning the resumes? The criteria each staff member used to review resumes was clearly different as shown by the varied results. To learn more, the staff members were asked to list the criteria by which they selected or rejected the candidates. Predictably, the number and type of criteria used by each staff member differed. These results were tabulated as shown in Table 4 below.

Step 3: Generate Countermeasure Ideas

A means for standardizing the basis for candidate selection was required. The first shortlisting of relevant criteria listed in Table 4 was reviewed with the following categories:

• Criteria listed by all three (e.g., 1 and 4)
• Criteria listed by at least two staffers (e.g., 2 and 6)
• Criteria used by Reviewer 1 since his selection was most accurate

Each criteria was discussed before coming to a final consensus on whether it would be included in the evaluation moving forward. The results of these discussions are shown in Table 5.

The list of shortlisted criteria was reviewed by department heads requesting recruitment efforts; additional criteria suggested by them were incorporated into the new criteria.

The list of criteria (10 items in the end) to be applied in selecting resumes was determined. To further refine the process, a weighted average table was used to develop the numerical weight for each criteria relative to the others with a total possible score of 100 for each resume reviewed against the selection criteria. The resume selection model was now ready for testing.

Step 4: Test and Modify the Ideas

The list of criteria was tested with three batches of past selections and proved effective.

Step 5: Implement Ideas

The process was implemented for all future recruitment.

Step 6: Standardize Procedures

The specific improvements are shown in Tables 6 and 7.

The changes to the process resulted in a 40-percent reduction in the average number of interviews conducted per candidate selected and a 34-percent reduction in the average number of resumes reviewed per candidate selected. The process was standardized and adopted for regular use.

Step 7: Compile Quality Improvement Story

The quality improvement story was compiled and presented to senior management.

About the Author

Niraj Goyal

6 Innovative Recruitment Strategies For High Volume Hiring

• By Amit Gawande
• July 6, 2020

Home » Blog » 6 Innovative Recruitment Strategies For High Volume Hiring

There are two scenarios when a recruiter has to face an uphill challenge of high volume hiring. In the first scenario, a company decides to hire a large number of people for its growing business. Second, when you have a large number of people applying for the job. Sometimes, the recruiter has to face a mix of both.

• High Volume Hiring

When a company wants to expand its operations or is in a growing phase, it needs to hire people for various positions, possibly in a shorter duration. For example, Amazon recently announced that it is going to hire 30,000 people in the next few months. This kind of hiring also referred to as bulk-hiring.

Similarly, there are times when a job position attracts a larger number of candidates than expected. For example, after the recession when the job market opens, there are many candidates waiting to apply for jobs. After the time of recession in 2000 and 2008, the number of resumes received for a job was so high that the term resume black hole was coined.  It means, most of the resumes would go unnoticed.

We can expect similar trends post-pandemic in 2020.

Recently, in June 2020, one of the job postings on LinkedIn for an established brand saw more than 200 applications in the first 12 hours itself.

According to Jobvite, a regular job posting attracts an average of 50 candidates. In case of high volume hiring this number averages to 250.

If you are in the post-recession time then this number could easily surpass 250.

When you are hiring for vanilla skills (people with these skills are easily available) then you would expect a higher number of job applications. So, imagine if you are hiring for vanilla skills post-recession time! The average number of candidates applying for the job could go skyrocketing.

Also, you may not be hiring only full-time employees. You could be looking for temporary staff. For example, in the retail or hospitality industry, you need to hire more people during the holiday season.

Challenges We Face With High Volume Hiring

High volume recruitment is packed with challenges. You need to fill up many positions in the quickest time. You may also have to deal with a huge pile of candidate applications for most job positions.

Recruitment team size may not be big enough or it may not scale up even for bulk-hiring.

While you are dealing with high volume hiring you do not want to compromise on the quality of hire.

Let’s look into a few of these key challenges.

1. Time Limitations

You could be either bulk hiring or dealing with a high volume of job applications, in either case, you are racing against time to fill open job positions.

Your first challenge is to attract the right candidates to apply for jobs.

If you manage to get a good number of job applications then your next challenge is to quickly screen through resumes to reach top candidates. Many companies also phone screen candidates before they actually engage them in the interview process.

The aim is to engage the top candidates faster before they go off the market.

The recruitment process continues with phone screening, interview scheduling, job offer management, and onboarding.

One candidate may apply for more than one position. 

Similarly, when you are dealing with a high number of job applications, you need to quickly screen candidates to identify the top candidates.

2. Collaboration Between Hiring Managers And Recruiters

Recruitment is a highly collaborative process. Collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters is the most crucial factor in the recruitment and selection process.

A hiring manager could be recruiting for multiple positions.

Often miscommunication between the hiring managers and recruiters leads to sourcing irrelevant candidates.

Also, for recruiters, collaborating between candidates and interview panel or hiring managers for interviews is a daunting task. Finding a time that suits to all the stakeholders is a cumbersome task.

Candidate tracking is another big challenge in high volume recruitment.

When you are hiring in bulk, collaborating with all the stakeholders get tough and this could lead to a stressful environment.

3. Team of Recruiters May Not Be Big Enough

Your existing team of recruiters maybe just big enough to support your regular recruitment. But, when a company decides to go for bulk-hiring, the team may fell short of hands.

Hiring more permanent recruiters could take time and could also hamper the speed of hiring. 

A small team for high volume recruitment would mean a delay in every stage of hiring. Delay in communication. This could also lead to poor candidate experience and may push away many potential top candidates.

According to the Robert Half report, 57% of the candidates lose interest if you take too long to hire .

Ideally, in case of high volume hiring,  hiring managers should take active roles not just in resume screening process but in other stages of recruitment.

4. High Cost of Hiring

Companies generally bank on employee referrals, job boards, and recruitment agencies for their hiring.

Posting on top job boards could be expensive.

Recruitment agencies charge anywhere between 10% to 30%. When hiring for a large number of positions this cost could skyrocket.

Keeping the cost of hiring lower could be challenging during high volume recruitment.

High Volume Hiring Strategy

Companies must devise a high volume hiring strategy in order to overcome several challenges imposed during high volume recruiting. The aim is to hire top candidates, faster while keeping the hiring cost minimal.

1. Opt For Inbound Candidate Sourcing

When you are dealing with high volume hiring, the best strategy to receive job applications is the inbound strategy. It means candidates are applying for the jobs on their own rather than recruiters reaching out and convincing them to do so.

Inbound candidate sourcing saves a huge amount of time because you do not have to call up every candidate to do prospecting. You know they are interested in the job.

So, how do you implement inbound candidate sourcing? 

It is simple, you need to be present where the candidates are looking for jobs. 

For example, candidates are searching for jobs on google. “Marketing jobs near me”. This Google for job search query should also return results from your career page.

When you want to hire for a large number of positions then you will want to use both organic and paid channels to attract top talent.

Let’s look at some additional candidate sourcing channels.

Paid And Free Job Boards

Job boards are the obvious choice when you want to publish your jobs. Job boards get a lot of candidates’ traffic. Your job would get maximum exposure.

Also, you must publish jobs to the relevant job boards. For example, if you are hiring candidates for tech roles then you could prefer leading job boards like Dice.

However, posting jobs on leading job boards could get expensive. 

You must leverage free job posting options. There are free job posting sites that will allow you to post jobs for free. This will get you a good number of candidates. It will also help you in keeping hiring costs low.

Social Media Hiring

Social media is where everyone is; especially generation Z. You must be present on these new-age platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

There are also specialized platforms like GitHub, StackOverflow, Dribble, Behance that help you to reach people with niche skills.

Basically, use social media recruiting practices to attract and hire passive candidates . 

Candidate Re-Discovery

Eventually, every company piles up the candidate database. These are the candidates that had shown interest in your company in the past.

They might not have made the final cut for various reasons but they were interested in your brand.

Leverage your old candidate database to rediscover talent.

You just need to use some methods like personalized email campaigns for relevant candidates. 

Candidate discovery could be a great success if you could use AI to identify relevant candidates for each position.

Another way you can reach these candidates is by using conversational chatbots. You could do prospecting by initiating text-based conversations with these candidates.

Programmatic Job Ads

Programmatic job ads are the new mantra in the job advertising world. It uses AI to show job posting ads to the right people at the right time.

It is like building the persona of the ideal candidate and then showing job ads to candidates who fit the description.

Compared to traditional job advertising this could be more effective both in terms of cost and quality of the job applications.

2. Make Sure Of Great Candidate Experience

When you succeed in attracting candidates to apply for the job, you want to make sure they actually apply for the job.

You need to make sure you offer a great candidate experience. Candidates must get all the details about the job. Write a great job description that is compelling. They should get impressed by your employer’s brand. Your company career page is your best opportunity for employer branding.

Candidates must be communicated all the time.

Make sure your job application is mobile-friendly. As per recruitment statistics 2019 , 35% of candidates prefer applying to jobs using their mobile phones.

Keep your job application process short. Use minimal steps to receive job applications. You could use resume parsing to automatically extract important information from the resume so that a candidate does not need to fill all the details.

You must avoid building a resume black hole. When you have a large number of candidates applying to jobs, communicating with them gets tough. With a high volume of job applications, eventually, candidates never get to hear from companies after they apply for the job. This doesn’t go well with candidates and it could hurt your employer brand.

3. Set Up Candidate Pre-screening Questions

Eliminate phone screening as much as possible. Recruiters, often, after receiving a resume call up a candidate to ask a few important questions.

Why not make these phone screening questions part of a job application?

Candidates can answer all important prescreening questions at the time of applying for the job. For example, their salary expectations references they may want to share, etc.

Setting up a knockout question is another good idea. For example, if you are looking for people who need to work in a graveyard shift, then you can ask that as a knockout question rather than just mentioning it in the job description.

For junior positions, companies may opt for tech assessments. Candidates need to take tech or similar kinds of tests. Candidates who clear the test get the chance to proceed in the hiring recruitment and selection process.

4. Use Resume Screening Software To Screen Resumes

Resume screening is the biggest challenge of high volume hiring. Close to 86% of the resumes you receive are irrelevant. Imagine the number of hours spent just to discard those.

Resume screening takes time. If you spent your most productive hours in screening irrelevant resumes then you are bound to fall behind schedule. 

Use AI for resume screening. Using AI you could screen resumes contextually. It means you would right away know what all candidates match to job requirements and hiring culture or your organization.

Resume screening software that uses AI can identify top candidates quickly. It makes sure you get to engage the right candidates for the right jobs.

AI resume screening could cut your time from days to minutes. 

5. Schedule Video Interviews Automatically

Another time-consuming process is interview scheduling. A recruiter needs to go back and forth with candidates and the interview panel to fix the time slot.

Use interview scheduling automation that could fix the time slot for both, candidate and interviewer automatically based on mutual convenience. 

In recent times, the popularity of video interviews has gone up. The recent covid19 pandemic has forced companies to opt for this option.

Video interviews help you save logistic costs. Eventually, it could help you save hiring costs.

6. Optimize Your Hiring Cost By Using Recruiting Metrics

When you think about high volume hiring, you would definitely think about hiring costs. You will have to make efforts in reducing the overall cost.

The best way to reduce the cost and efforts is by eliminating noise and redundancies from your hiring process.

Use recruiting metrics to track the performance of your recruitment process.

For example, as we discussed, you must track the performance of your candidate sourcing channels. If you are using paid job boards then track which job boards are leading to a better quality of candidates; and for what kind of roles. One job board may not suffice for all kinds of job roles. This will help you spend wisely on relevant job boards.

Leverage free job posting to minimize the cost.

Data-driven hiring will also help you find inefficiencies in your hiring process. For example, some candidates are being engaged for different positions at the same time, duplicate resumes being processed from various sourcing channels, etc.

Leverage Modern Recruitment Technology For Efficient High Volume Hiring

Your best bet to overcome the challenges of high volume hiring is the use of recruitment technology.

Your goal should be about minimizing repetitive tasks and spending more time engaging candidates. Using AI recruiting software you can achieve that. AI will help you intelligently automate these mundane tasks.

Be it recruitment marketing for sourcing candidates or resume screening you would need recruitment technology to effectively execute high volume hiring strategy.

Amit Gawande

Recent posts.

Why Cover Letters Are Important in the Recruitment Process

How Hiring Affects Company Revenue

How Semantic Search is Being Used in AI Recruitment

Crafting the Perfect Job Offer: Format, Tips, and Legal Essentials for Success

How it works.

• Affiliate Program
• Resume Parser
• Best Recruitment Software For Recruitment Agencies
• Recruitment CRM
• customer case study mainstage
• Case Study – Remote Office
• case study Huskee
• Customer Case Study Linq Consulting Solutions
• Customer Case Study – Red Dot Recruitment
• Data Processing Agreement
• free job listing websites
• Recruitment Management System
• Recruitment software for startups
• cloud-based recruitment software
• Best Recruiting Software
• Features Page -AD
• ATS for SaaS
• ATS for startups
• ATS_For_Recruiters
• Candidate Applicant Tracking System
• Free Applicant Tracking System
• Free Job Post Site
• Free Ad For Job Posting
• Best Free Job Posting Sites For Employers
• Best Employer Job Sites
• ATS_Landing_AI_ATS_Transform_hiring
• Best Applicant Tracking System For Small Business
• Recruitment Statistics 2022 – Recruiting Trends and Insights
• Recruiterbox Alternative
• Google Hire Alternative
• Job Posting
• Company Career Page | Employer Branding
• Recruitment Analytics To Improve And To Measure Hiring Process
• Search Resume Database Using Full Text Search
• Using Social Media For Recruiting
• AI For Recruiting – A complete guide
• Applicant Tracking System Guide
• Resume Screening: The Definitive Guide For Recruiters

Curious To Know

Don't miss future updates​.

Get notified when we publish new feature, Blog, Article, Guide or products.

CVViZ is a modern recruiting software that uses artificial intelligence to help you hire faster.

• +91-986-073-6361
• [email protected]
• AI Recruiting Software
• Resume Screening
• Applicant Tracking System
• Candidate Sourcing
• Integrate AI into ATS
• Recruitment Automation Software
• Applicant Tracking System For Small Business
• Free Job Posting
• AI For Recruiting
• Effective Resume Screening
• Recruitment Statistics 2022
• Free Job Posting Sites
• Indeed Job Posting Guide
• Chrome Extensions For Recruiters
• Candidate Screening Automation Guide
• Difference Between ATS and Recruitment CRM
• Advanced Resume Parsing Guide
• Privacy Policy

Copyright CVViZ Softwares Pvt Ltd © 2024

Schedule a Demo

How Masimo Used Minitab to Automate and Improve Their Packaging Process

Masimo is a global medical technology company that develops and produces a wide array of industry-leading monitoring technologies, including innovative measurements, sensors, and patient monitors. Powered by the Masimo Hospital Automation™ platform, Masimo connectivity, automation, and telehealth and telemonitoring solutions are improving and automating care delivery both in the hospital and beyond. In addition, Masimo is home to an expanding array of consumer health and wellness solutions like the Masimo W1™ health tracking watch and Stork™ baby monitor, as well as sound devices from legendary audio brands like Bowers & Wilkins® and Denon®.

The Challenge

With the expansion into consumer health and wellness products, the team at Masimo strived to improve the aesthetics and sturdiness of the packaging of their products. Specifically, the design team wanted to include a plastic shrink wrap around the box to provide a sleek look and feel to the product while also protecting the box during shipping.

Shrink wrapping is a common packaging technique in the consumer electronics industry, but Masimo had never performed this process, and had no internal talent or experience in developing a shrink wrap process. Manual processes proved costly and error-prone, so the process engineering team sought out to implement a fully automated shrink wrap process to increase output and ensure consistency.

The requirements for shrink wrap packaging are:

• Shrink the plastic wrap without any cosmetic defects such as tears, wrinkles, and voids.
• Minimize the size of “dog ears,” which are excessive triangular pieces of plastic that degrade the cosmetic quality of the product and make it more difficult to open, to a maximum length of 0.060.”
• Minimize the amount of material used to achieve (1) and (2).

The heat shrinking equipment that Masimo purchased consists of two units that operate sequentially: the first unit wraps the heat shrinking material around the product package, while the second unit shrinks the wrapping. The first unit comprises three numeric factors that control the amount of material used:

• The bag length.
• The film advance rate.
• The depth of the table which defines the wrap length. 

The second unit heats and shrinks the plastic and consists of two numeric factors:

• Sealing time.
• Sealing temperature.

How Minitab Helped

Minitab Statistical Software helped characterize and optimize the heat shrink process.

The first step was to use Design of Experiments (DOE) to build a process model relating the heat shrink equipment parameters to the heat shrink output. The factors studied were the five described above, and the response was the dog ear length. There were limited materials available for this study, so the process engineering team consulted the Minitab Support web pages and decided on a “Definitive Screening Design.” The Minitab Support section provided detailed, easy-to-understand information on how to choose a DOE design while also detailing the rigorous mathematics involved in the statistical calculations.

Figure 1 summarizes the statistical output provided by Minitab. Much to the team’s surprise, no factors were significant at 95% confidence (p > 0.05) and the R-sq(pred) was negative, meaning there was no predictive power of the model.

This indicated that there was possibly too much noise in the data caused by the measurement system. The team suspected that measurement system variation, due to differences in how multiple inspectors performed the dog ear length measurement, was causing issues. 

They consulted Minitab Support pages to identify Gage R&R as the appropriate tool to use to conduct a Measurement System Analysis. Gage R&R quantifies how the measurement system variation is attributed to the repeatability and reproducibility of the inspectors as well as the variation due to the parts themselves. Minitab was used to create a Crossed Gage R&R study with two inspectors, 10 parts, and two measurement replicates. The results summarized in Figure 2 show excessive repeatability error, especially for part numbers 1, 2, 6 and 8.

Thanks to these insights , the process engineering team investigated the measurement method and developed a fixture and set of instructions, then repeated the Gage R&R with the improved measurement method. Figure 3 demonstrates a significant improvement in the repeatability error. Although part numbers 6 and 8 still exhibited some repeatability issues, the team concluded that the overall improvement was sufficient to proceed.

Prior to executing a second DOE, the team performed additional feasibility studies and reviewed these results with the heat-sealing equipment vendor.  The vendor recommended a fixed sealing temperature and sealing time, and to vary the total energy applied to the plastic by varying the oven conveyer speed.  The second DOE was a full factorial studying the following factors:

• Film advance rate
• Table depth

Figure 4 summarizes the results. The model showed significant improvement over the initial DOE due to the improved measurement system. The main effects of the bag length, film advance rate, and table depth were all significant at 95% confidence (p < 0.05), as well as various interactions including the oven speed. Without the power of Minitab’s DOE analysis, these important interactions may have been overlooked resulting in a sub-optimal process model.

Now that the team was confident in their process model Minitab’s Response Optimizer was used to identify the optimal factor settings to target a dog ear length of 0.060” as shown in Figure 5 .

Additional runs were performed at the optimized settings to confirm short-term repeatability of the heat shrink process. Once confirmed, the team drafted operational qualification (OQ) and performance qualification (PQ) protocols and formally validated the process, successfully implementing the automated heat shrink equipment and realizing significant cost savings and improved product quality.

The use of Minitab was instrumental in implementing the automated heat shrink process. The Minitab Support web pages were extremely helpful in identifying the DOE design and interpreting the results. This interpretation prompted the team to investigate the measurement method using Minitab’s Crossed Gage R&R tool. The detailed statistical output and graphics correctly pointed the team to identify a method to reduce repeatability error, and a second gage R&R confirmed the improvements.  Lastly, Minitab’s factorial design and Response Optimization tools helped identify the optimal parameter settings.

Implementing and optimizing fully automated heat shrinking equipment with the assistance of Minitab helped eliminate inconsistencies in packaging caused by operator variability. Moreover, it led to increased output volume and has the potential for cost savings by streamlining the production process and reducing manual labor.

Access Minitab Case Study

Provide some additional information to view the case study.

• Founded in 1989
• Headquartered in Irvine, California
• Specializes in health technology and consumer electronics

Automate and optimize their shrink wrap packaging process to enhance aesthetics and consistency, specifically through the removal of “dog ears” from their boxes.

Products Used

Minitab ® Statistical Software

• Improved measurement system accuracy using Gage R&R analysis
• Automated shrink wrap process successfully
• Achieved target dog ear length, enhancing packaging quality
• Trust Center

© 2024 Minitab, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

• Terms of Use
• Privacy Notice
• Cookie Settings

You are now leaving minitab.com.

Click Continue to proceed to:

To read this content please select one of the options below:

Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, the application of lean six sigma to improve mining transportation overall vehicle effectiveness (mtove): a case study in mining company.

International Journal of Lean Six Sigma

ISSN : 2040-4166

Article publication date: 16 August 2024

The purpose of this paper is to present a case study the application of lean six sigma combined with mining transportation overall vehicle effectiveness (MTOVE) to improve mining transportation performance. MTOVE is a newly developed model to measure the overall effectiveness of mining transportation.

Design/methodology/approach

The method used is case study combines the MTOVE and LSS methodologies. Data were collected from the hauling operation during a three-month period. Various lean six-sigma tools, such as the Pareto chart, ANOVA, two sample t -tests, one sample t -test, cause-and-effect analysis and time study, have been used.

The case study resulted in improvement of vehicle overall effectiveness; a 35% increase in MTOVE value, a 17% improvement in productivity and a 9% increment in truck utilization. Statistical tests confirmed the significance of reducing the mean and variation in the hauling process cycle time, which led to productivity improvement.

Research limitations/implications

This study provides practitioners with additional quantitative evidence of the potential benefits of LSS methods in the coal mining industry.

Practical implications

This paper practically and unquestionably has contributed to the LSS body of knowledge focused on the mining sector, which is recently still far behind the manufacturing sector. The study has demonstrated that some challenges in the mining environment can be solved through the effective implementation of LSS tools. Hence, this paper could be used as a reference for both researchers and practitioners.

Social implications

The study contributes in the field of LSS spread in mining industries using a case study. This study shows practical evidence of improving overall vehicle effectiveness using LSS. Practitioners can refer to this study to understand the benefits of LSS in mining sector. Since the mining industry should also adopt the LSS principle into the mining business process due to its ability to improve business performance (Valente et al., 2020; Tupamahu et al., 2019; Zanon et al., 2021).

Originality/value

There has been little scientific study of the LSS implementation in the mining industry. This research provides detailed evidence of LSS implementation in the mining sector. The main contribution is the implementation framework, which shows the combination of newly developed indicators (MTOVE and LSS) to enhance hauling operation effectiveness. This paper demonstrates how LSS tools and methods can be applied in the mining transportation industry.

• Lean six sigma
• Effectiveness
• Transportation

Acknowledgements

Data availability statement: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author reasonable request.

Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Hia, S.W. , Singgih, M.L. and Gurning, R.O.S. (2024), "The application of lean six sigma to improve mining transportation overall vehicle effectiveness (MTOVE): a case study in mining company", International Journal of Lean Six Sigma , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLSS-07-2023-0121

Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2024, Emerald Publishing Limited

Related articles

All feedback is valuable.

Please share your general feedback

Report an issue or find answers to frequently asked questions

Contact Customer Support