How to manage your recruitment process efficiently

Adopting a consistent recruitment process for your business ensures that every candidate is treated the same and assessed in a fair evaluation that can be repeated across the business to find the best candidate for the position.

Here are our tips to consider when creating an efficient hiring process:

Write a clear job description

A concise and clear job description is key for the candidate to get a full picture as to whether or not they can carry out the job.

This should include daily tasks, key duties and responsibilities, qualifications/experience, scope for progression, who the role reports to, required skillset/qualifications, salary, company culture and employee benefits. We suggest the ideal length of the description to be around 600 words in total.

Consider hiring internally in first instance

When starting the hiring process it is important to look at what talent is already at your business. If you are conducting regular reviews with your employees to discuss career goals then you will already have an idea of who may be suitable for the new position.

Hiring internally is a great way to retain top talent and as well as showcasing your business as a place with opportunities for ambitious employees to move up the career ladder.

Use a selection of candidate sources

If you don’t hire regularly then this may be challenging but the main takeaway is to advertise the vacancy in places where those particular candidates are looking. It is also worth considering an external recruitment agency to manage the process on behalf of your business.

Examples include:

• Job boards such as Indeed, CV Library, TotalJobs and Monster are great places to post your advert
• Using LinkedIn to post jobs and also to search for potential candidates
• Attending industry specific events and conferences to expand your contact base

Communication is key

Ensure that applicants are regularly updated about where they stand in the recruitment process. Candidates can easily be put off by slow replies as most likely they are applying for a number of jobs at any given time.

Good candidates are always in high demand and they will look elsewhere if the process is slow or unprofessional.

Shortlisting and interview stages

Shortlisting is essentially the process of narrowing down a pool of applicants. Consider how many candidates you want to interview before assessing and evaluating all of the applicants to identify those that meet the job criteria.

If you’re struggling to find candidates that meet the criteria then this is a sign that either the advert was not seen by the right people or the expectations could be too high for the position.

The overall goal of the interview is to determine if the applicant is capable of carrying out the job responsibilities so it is important to obtain detailed answers by using open-ended questions such as how, what, when, etc.

Make sure to delve deep into their CV and dissect all the useful information asking them to clarify on certain points when needed and ask role-specific questions to evaluate candidates’ knowledge and experience.

Inducting new employees

This is where many businesses become complacent as they think the hiring process is pretty much complete. However it is vital that your new employee begins on the front foot with an in-depth induction process to get them up to speed with their new job.

Allow new employees plenty of time to adapt and ensure correct training is provided from the outset so that company processes are consistent followed by all employees.

Speak to us