Recruiting and hiring are challenging, particularly if you’re an organisation with aggressive growth milestones that you need to hit. Not only are you competing with organisations in proximity, but the market has become truly global over the past 12-18 months, as remote and hybrid working has become the norm.
So, how do you stay ahead of the curve and put candidate experience at the forefront of your recruitment process? The key is streamlining how you interview but also ensuring that you are moving quickly with exceptional talent.
Talent Adore highlighted this in a recent blog: “Some reasons the interview process has become longer are because more employers now have a more comprehensive interview process, which includes various screen methods such as personality tests and group presentations.
All these hoops and hurdles for the candidates are used commonly by recruiters, but they also lengthen the recruitment process. Also, there has been an increase in higher-skilled positions that require more sophisticated and advanced skills. This leads to a more careful and precise selection process.”
Although you want to have a robust search and selection process, there may be unnecessary steps that you’re taking, or you may not be providing feedback quickly enough, leading the candidate to lose interest or take another more attractive offer.
The current market is completely candidate-driven, so we will equip you with three key things you can implement today to streamline your interview process.
Feedback is crucial to keeping the interview process fresh and the candidate engaged. If you don’t communicate with the candidate when they’re due to expecting feedback, it can be confusing and often disheartening with no clarity on whether they’ll be moving forward in the process or not.
To mitigate this, create a strict feedback window that must be adhered to by all stakeholders involved in recruitment.
We recommend sticking to 1-2 working days’ feedback time (excluding weekends) and ensuring you are accountable. Communicating this to your candidates at the beginning of the process also shows your commitment and organisation when interviewing them.
Just like remote and hybrid working, enabling remote interview processes will reduce the risk of you losing a candidate who is either in demand interviewing at other companies or losing a candidate who simply can’t take time off work to come into the office. These are valid reasons which shouldn’t be discredited, and you should have an alternative remote interviewing process that you can use in these circumstances. You can move a lot quicker, record the interviews, and use them to improve your remote process as time progresses.
Agencies are not the enemy, and in many instances can help you create a streamlined process for the best candidate experience and outcome for you as a business.
For this exact reason, agencies are commonly used for specialist roles, volume hiring mandates, and senior roles. However, they can be just as effective in helping you with process management, in-person or remotely.
We are consistently helping organisations with ways in which they can improve and refine their interview process. For advice, please get in touch with me at charlie@consultancygroup.com
