A Guide To Building Effective Hiring Process Steps

24% of businesses found it hard to fill vacancies last year. In order to ensure that you are accessing, securing, and retaining the best talent possible, it is essential to review your hiring process steps.

Whether you are unsure if your current procedures are fit for purpose or you are starting from scratch, by building and constantly evaluating your recruitment process, you will be able to attract and onboard great new hires.

The qualities of a successful recruitment process

Following effective hiring process steps will increase your chances of onboarding great talent. Below are the key signs that your recruitment process is working for you:

• The needs of your business are being met
• You consistently receive positive candidate feedback regardless of whether candidates are successful or not
• Your employer brand recognition from candidates is positive
• Communication and clear deadlines are consistent throughout the hiring process
• You are filling niche and challenging roles
• Your candidate dropout rate is low

If you find yourself lacking in a few of these areas, then you should consider reviewing your hiring process steps to see where you may need to improve.

Reviewing your recruitment: Hiring process steps for success

Pre- Application stage

Whether you are replacing an employee who has left the company or hiring for a newly created role, before you get started, it is important to assess your current recruitment goals and procedures, keeping in mind these main elements:

• Work out your hiring needs – why are you looking to hire someone? What skills gap are you wanting to fill? What responsibilities are you looking for this new hire to cover? What are the necessary skills and are there any nice-to-have (but not essential!) skills. Consider experience and seniority levels. Do you need multiple employees?
• Consider your Employer Brand – are you aware of the reputation your company has as an employer? What do candidates say about your company? Do you adequately promote your company’s Employee Value Proposition? Have you checked your company reviews on Glassdoor and Indeed?
• Review your recruitment technology – do you have the right processes and technology in place to adequately track candidates, engagement, and key hiring figures? Do you use an applicant tracking system? Do you have a gender decoder tool at your disposal for your job descriptions?
• Plan which stakeholders should be involved – do you need a hiring committee? Consider whether you need the assistance of a knowledgeable recruitment agency? Who will do the admin tasks? Do you have someone in place to vet CVs and candidates? Who will be in the interviews? Who will be making the final hiring decision?
• Set out what the hiring process will look like – what are the key interview stages going to be? Will you be doing assessments? Will there be multiple stages? What are the deadlines? When should the new hire be onboarded by?
• Check processes for bias – do you pass all job descriptions through a gender decoder? Do you negate unconscious bias by using a standardised interview criteria?

Application stage

This stage in the recruitment process can be difficult and lengthy for employers who have an ill-fitting or non-existent hiring process steps in place. Where this is the case, employers are likely to experience high dropout rates.

You can make improvements to your processes in the application stage by:

• Checking that job descriptions and adverts have been optimised and put through a gender decoder
• Outsourcing admin tasks to internal HR/ Admin teams or a recruitment agency
• Ensuring deadlines are set and understood by all stakeholders involved in the hiring process
• Opening communication lines and letting candidates know when they will be updated at every stage
• Promoting an employee referral program as another channel to source candidates

Interview Stage

One of the main hiring process steps that often needs to be improved is at the interview stage.

You need to remember that during this phase, the key thing is to keep candidates engaged. Companies run the risk of losing out on great talent by having lengthy or overly complicated recruitment processes and not updating candidates enough on progress and providing core information.

Think of it this way, if you were looking for work and a company treated you in this way, would you want to work there? Or would you rather work somewhere that has kept you updated throughout the process? That has checked in with you at each stage and treats your time with respect?

Whether you need a third party, such as a recruitment agency to help keep your candidate engaged, or a manager can spare time to provide this level of support – prioritising your candidates will help to improve your hiring.

Job offer and onboarding

The negotiation and onboarding part of the hiring process is the stage that many businesses have problems with. You can’t guarantee your chosen candidate will accept your offer without looking to negotiate the salary, working hours/flexibility or benefits package, and go on to a successful onboarding.

Increase your chances of success during this stage by ensuring that you cover the following points:

• Don’t delay when choosing the successful hire. A quick turnaround will lessen the risks of your new hire being poached by a competitor
• Use your talent team or recruitment agency to handle negotiations swiftly and efficiently
• Always review references to avoid a potential bad hire
• Invite your new hire to team events to promote bonding throughout the onboarding process. This will limit them feeling anxious and worrying ahead of their first day with your company
• Ensure everything is prepared for the new hire’s first day, including log in details, equipment, manuals etc.

Constantly evaluate your hiring process steps

If you’ve followed these hiring process steps you might feel more confident in building an effective recruitment process. To know whether your actions are fruitful, you will need to fully assess the processes against a success criteria. You can try to do this by yourself, but you might find it easier to use a recruitment agency that has experience both building an effective hiring process and continuously analysing and improving the process.

If you are planning on hiring some great tech talent, get in touch with our team here. We can help support you in whatever capacity you need, whether that’s assistance with improving your procedures or fully managing the hiring process steps for you.