FAQs

The hiring process begins when a company identifies the need to fill a position and ends when a candidate accepts a job offer. The typical steps of the recruitment and selection process vary depending on the role and company. But, most hiring teams build their hiring process around these four stages: 

Planning. Hiring managers usually need to get the job opening approved before posting the job ad. They should also discuss the recruiting budget for their position, prepare the job description and assemble their hiring team. 

Attracting candidates. This stage involves any action hiring teams take to fill their hiring pipeline with qualified candidates (e.g. candidate sourcing, job advertising and asking for referrals.) 

Selecting candidates. The most important part of a candidate screening phase is the interview. Screening calls, job application reviews and pre-employment tests help ensure that hiring teams interview the best candidates. 

Offering the job. If all goes well, this process involves drafting and sending a job offer email to your desired candidate, who accepts it. Sometimes though, candidates may choose to negotiate their offers or reject them outright. 

Read more at workable.com

Using emails and spreadsheets to manage all aspects of the hiring process is not efficient. If you hire in low volumes, then project management tools are a good option. For example, tools like Trello help you see the hiring workflow as a series of steps and assign tasks to your hiring team.

If you hire often and manage multiple hiring teams, consider investing in an Applicant Tracking System (ATS.) An ATS gives you a full view of every step of the process and each team member’s actions and feedback. An effective ATS helps hiring teams focus more on hiring and less on administrative tasks. The best applicant tracking system features also help teams customize their hiring process.

Read more at workable.com

A hiring process flowchart is a visualization of recruiting steps and how they connect. A flowchart is a good way to communicate your recruitment policy in a concrete and memorable way to both hiring teams and candidates. A flow chart looks like a Decision Tree diagram. For example, you could use a flowchart to present recruiting steps to hiring managers.

Hiring flowcharts can get more complex if you add more actions, decisions and phases, as well as different stakeholders (e.g. recruiters, candidates) and recruiting tactics (e.g. internal hiring).

Read more and take a look at example flowchart at workable.com

Different roles require different hiring stages. Candidates for senior positions face multiple interviews and tests before getting hired, while entry-level candidates usually face much simpler hiring processes.

Yet, customizing shouldn’t be overly flexible, since:

• Most hiring processes share some elements. Asking hiring managers to create their own processes from scratch may be counterproductive.
• Recruiters who are involved in multiple hiring pipelines may have trouble keeping track of all the different steps, if there’s no consistency between roles.
• Recruiters can find it challenging to consolidate metrics from lots of different hiring processes.

Try to find the balance. Give hiring teams a set of general steps and workflows to choose from for specific roles or types of roles (senior, junior, developers etc.) A recruitment policy or hiring flowcharts can be useful. If you’re using an ATS, you will already have a basic pipeline in place that your hiring teams can modify when needed.

Read more at workable.com

Candidates who interviewed with your hiring team and met you in person expect a personalized and considerate rejection message. Since people may feel uncomfortable being rejected over the phone, email is a good choice. Use a template to save time but make sure you craft a highly-personalized email. Here are some tips:

• Be brief and direct. Write one sentence at the beginning of your email to let candidates know you won’t be hiring them. Make sure your email won’t be misunderstood.
• Adopt a positive tone. Don’t use negative phrases like “you were so close” or “you’re not a good fit.” If possible, add a sentence or two about what you liked about the candidate in general.
• Offer to give feedback. Most candidates want to know how they did during an interview, so offer to give them more specific feedback. There are a few simple rules for offering constructive feedback that won’t jeopardize your employer brand or invite legal trouble.

Read more at workable.com