How to make your recruitment process more efficient 

Efficient recruitment means saving time and money and hiring more of the right people for your startup. Unfortunately, startups don’t often have a recruitment process set in stone, ultimately leading to a higher rate of bad hires. According to the HRexchangenetwork, on average, companies lost just under 15K on every missed hire. However, it’s not only money involved, but also your team culture at stake. Undercover Recruiter found that wrong hires can result in a 32% drop in employee morale and lead to a 36% drop in productivity. So, if you’re looking for proof of why your recruitment process needs to be efficient, you have it.  

To help get your wheels turning, we’ve listed a few ways that you can simplify and streamline recruitment.👇

1. It’s 2022 – Time to automate! 

Automating tasks makes things SO much easier and streamlined.  An ATS (applicant tracking system) is software that manages the recruiting a hiring process, and automates tasks like job postings, organizing applicant data, screening resumes, sending out emails etc.  

Ask yourself these questions: 

• Are you receiving lots of irrelevant applications from unqualified candidates? 
• Are you tracking your hiring efforts in an overly confusing spreadsheet? 
• Are you spending too much time manually sending out emails to communicate with your candidates? 

If you answered yes to any and all of those questions, you may want to consider automating some tasks. 

With any job, you want your employees to focus on the most impactful tasks to make the best use of their time. So, with recruiters, it’s important they remove tasks that are time-consuming (when they don’t have to be!) and shift their focus to work that has an impact. Automating the simpler tasks is an easy way to streamline your recruitment process and supercharge your hiring. 

Check out a few other resources to help simplify your hiring.

2. Refresh your candidate experience 

If we’re being real, the days of 5, hour-long interviews and 3 month wait times to hear if you got the job or not are OVER (like, way over. Not fun.). We’ve all been there before, discouraged and frustrated after hearing about the bogged down, lengthy hiring process. From the very beginning of the application process (and even before), you need to create an experience that is simple, scalable, straight to the point and efficient so candidates feel good about working for you. 

The application and interview process can make or break your company’s recruitment strategy. On the one hand, a top-notch candidate experience will build your reputation as a company and increase your talent pool. But, on the other hand, if you create a poor experience, you’ll quickly see people turn away from applying and you’ll ultimately create a negative reputation for your brand.

So, what can you do to refresh your startups candidate experience? Start by taking a good hard look at the length of the application process and determining if you have the right steps in place, and more importantly if there are ways to trim it down. According to The Balance Careers, the average amount of time from interview to offer for new college grads is 24 days. The more you simplify and expedite your process, the more you’re likely to land your ideal candidate. The market is moving quickly, you need to keep up! 

Another suggestion would be to make sure you have a careers page that encompasses your employer brand so candidates can determine for themselves if they think they’d be a good fit before applying – like a self-pre-screen.

3. Build your talent pipeline 

Let’s talk talent pipelines. But be careful not to confuse a talent pipeline with a talent pool! Though having both is a great idea, they have slightly different meanings. According to Recruitee, while “talent pipeline” refers to candidates who are well-vetted and known, “talent pool” means a list of prospects who have not been screened yet and are still relatively unknown. Both will come in handy when a position opens because you’ll be extra prepared with candidates to recruit from.  

To build up your talent pipeline, source and interact with professionals in the positions you’ll potentially be hiring for, whether that be on social media, events, etc. The main goal is to find potential qualified candidates (tip: they don’t have to be in the market for a new job!) and keep the lines of communication open with them. It may be hard work now, but I promise you, when those tight deadlines start creeping up on you, you’ll be happy you have a pipeline of candidates ready to go! 

Pro tip: start a talent pool on the side; have a simple sign-up form included in your job postings and on your careers page. This will help you build a network of people who are interested in your company. You may not need their skillset quite yet, but you never know!  

By evaluating your recruitment strategy to keep it as simple as possible you can avoid extra time and money when looking for your next hire. As the saying goes, Rome wasn’t built in a day. However, taking the time now to create an efficient and effective hiring process can save you down the road. At Pivot + Edge, we can help you kickstart your recruitment strategy to help you hire. If you’re ready to chat, send us a message and we’ll get you on the right path.