How to streamline your recruitment processes to save time and reduce hiring costs
Extended recruitment processes can be a drag on your entire HR function.
Overly lengthy or complicated processes take a disproportionate amount of time to administer, meaning extra hours spent dealing with admin for no return. Keeping candidates waiting can also cause them to look elsewhere in the meantime, meaning you lose out on top performers. Particularly in a candidate-led market where qualifications and skills are in high demand. All this increases your time to fill and cost-per-hire, as well as creates a drain on your time that keeps you from more important issues, like your talent acquisition strategy and employer brand and onboarding.
In this post, we’ll explain a few tips to help you streamline your recruitment processes, so you can save time, reduce costs, and free up resources to generate even more value.
Get a thorough briefing
The initial briefing stage for a new vacancy is a crucial point. If a role is well-briefed, identify the essential needs vs the desirable ones, the chances of finding a suitable candidate will increase exponentially. On the other hand, if the brief you receive does not match the role, it could signal weeks of frustration and wasted effort ahead.
Involving line managers at the briefing stage is essential. They’re best placed to be able to explain exactly what the role entails, and the skills, qualities, and experience that a candidate must have to be successful. This in turn means you can advertise and outreach more effectively, and tailor your messaging and Employer Value Proposition (EVP) toward the right people. By doing this, you’ll be able to deliver maximum impact, rather than wasting time and money speaking to unsuitable candidates.
Speed up your recruitment cycles
With a long list of other tasks to complete, it can be tempting to set rigid deadlines for applications, CV review, shortlisting and interviews. It’s more efficient if you only need to run through each of these stages once, right? However, this can take up more time in the long run, particularly if it causes high-quality candidates to get tired of waiting and go elsewhere. Businesses with a slick and efficient process will be successful in securing the best talent. Additionally, if recruitment is an elongated process, it may make the candidate reconsider working there.
Extending the recruitment process unnecessarily could well lead to extra work. If you miss out on a perfect candidate by keeping them waiting, you set yourself up for weeks of shortlisting and interviews that could have been avoided had you followed up more rapidly. Instead, adding more flexibility to your approach – reviewing more frequently and fast-tracking high-quality applications - could help you place better candidates faster, and at a lower cost.
Communicate with candidates using their preferred media
Chances are that your best candidates aren’t waiting by the phone for your call. These passive candidates probably have another job and are not actively looking. Today’s competitive market means candidates are being approached by internal recruiters and external agencies on a daily basis and could be juggling interests from many different parties. This can make reaching them challenging, as it’s not always possible for applicants to take a phone call, no matter how interested they are in the role.
As a recruiter, your job is to make it as easy as possible for candidates to get in touch with you. This means using the platforms that are most accessible to them. A text or social media message could get you a response within the hour, while it could take a day or more to arrange a phone call or get a reply to an email. This could be the difference between bringing a star performer on board, or losing them to a competitor, forcing you to start over again.
Introduce agile working methods
Having already transformed software development, marketing, design and many other industries, Agile project management is taking the recruitment world by storm. Agile is designed to help you stay sane and keep control in high-pressure, constantly-changing working environments. By providing simple guiding principles like “people over processes”, and a whole host of simple project management techniques (you’ll need more post-it notes!), Agile can help you work faster and smarter whilst reducing your stress levels in to the bargain.
Simple tricks like a daily “stand-up” meeting to define the main priorities for the day and identify any bottlenecks can help keep your team’s momentum high. Project management tools like Trello can help you track candidates’ progress through the recruitment process, in a clear, visual way. This can ensure you’re always on-task, and help you anticipate and avoid issues that could lengthen the recruitment process and increase costs. Positive effect on time to hire
Know when to outsource
Internal recruitment offers huge advantages for brands. It’s a chance to communicate your employer brand, and provide a seamless experience for candidates from application through to onboarding, maintaining a positive impression throughout. However, sudden high-volume recruitment demands can put pressure on even the best-performing internal recruitment teams. This can impact on the results you’re able to deliver, leading to increased cost-per-hire at the worst possible time.
It’s good practice to have a trusted partner who can provide extra support when necessary. This can help keep everything running smoothly, even if demand increases at short notice. Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) gives you access to an experienced team that you can tap into when needed, and who’ll integrate seamlessly with your existing working methods. An RPO provider can also assist you with streamlining your internal processes so that your recruitment function works better even when they’re not around.
Build smarter recruitment processes with greenbean
At greenbean, we’re dedicated to helping internal recruiters streamline their processes so they can achieve more. Our experienced team can provide short-or long-term backup to manage a high-volume recruitment push or support with a particular project, or work as an extension of your business to provide an end-to-end solution.
