Hiring Processes and using Recruiters

Recruitment Process for Hiring Managers

Picture this. You are a hiring manager who has a budget to expand your team by a few heads this year. Happy days you think! But then you think of the process and effort that goes in to it. Some questions and thoughts that come up are:

1.?????You begin to think you haven’t got the time and how will you do your day to day activities while trying to hire new candidates?

2.?????You know you will be working with this person day in day out so want someone you can gel with.

3.?????Will your day to day workload have to take a backseat one or two days a week so you can focus on the recruitment process?

4.?????Will the work begin to pile up over the weeks yet you remain no closer to finding the unicorn you want?

5.?????I’m not a recruiter so I know I will end up playing catch up with my own work and having to stay late which will only fatigue me!

Throughout this article, I will try to explain how using recruitment specialists in the industry can make your life a lot easier throughout the interview process and save you time and money.

Below you will see a typical interview timeline that can vary depending on certain factors such as:

·????????Background checks

·????????Number of applicants

·????????Level of the position

·????????Number of hiring managers involved

·????????Your current employment situation

Typical Interview Timeline

Here are the different phases involved in the interview process and what to expect during each one if you are doing it alone or using an experienced recruiter:

·????????Leading up to Week One: Creating a job spec and publishing it online

·????????Week One: Submitting/ Receiving an application

·????????Week Two: The screening process

·????????Week Three: Scheduling an interview

·????????Week Four, Five and Six: Attending the interview and Follow-up interviews

·????????Week Seven: Sending a job offer/ Regretting candidates

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Leading up to Week One (One to Two Week process)

Before the recruitment process for a new hire even begins, you must do the admin work. This includes writing and creating a job spec, posting on linkedin jobs and other job sites and maybe even posting an advertisement in newspapers and on radio but these methods would be uncommon these days. Writing a job spec and putting it out there can be time consuming and could take over a week in order to get the spec to your liking. Working with experienced recruiters however can reduce the time taken with this step by upwards of 95%! That may sound completely unachievable, but this is how.

If you as a hiring manager know what you want, you only need to put 30 minutes aside out of your day on the day you get a budget for a new hire, arrange a call with a recruiter and explain exactly what you want. Sounds simple? That’s because it is! Out of this call, an experienced recruiter would have all the information needed by asking the right questions to create a job spec (ideally if you had one already that would be beneficial) and post to job boards and sites. The benefit of this also is that an experienced recruiter already has a vast network of active job seekers built up from their time in the industry to get working right away!

Time saved: 1-2 weeks

Recruitment effort: One 30 minute phone call with the recruitment agency

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Week One: Submitting/ Receiving an application

Week Two: The Screening Process

The first week involves receiving lots of CV’s into your inbox with week two usually consisting of the screening process. It’s a long and tedious process for you when recruitment isn’t top of your list and you have deadlines to meet! During week two you might realise that no applicants match the job description so you need to start these processes again, thus delaying the process by a further 2 weeks.

This is why recruiters add huge value at this step. We speak with every candidate on the phone, via video call or face-to-face before ever sending them. We know what you want and don’t want to send people who don’t match the required criteria so screening is a big part of our routine before submittal. That is why these two weeks go hand in hand for recruiters. As a rule of thumb for myself, I would always aim to send at least 2-4 CV’s of top quality within the first week (depending on the seniority of the role).

Time saved: 2 weeks minimum

Recruitment effort: You just need to view CV’s received by recruiters. If 4 CV’s come in during week 1, you only need to spend a quick minute or two on each to see if the skills match what you are looking for as you are safe in the knowledge that the recruitment agency team have already screened candidates to a high standard.

Week Three: Scheduling an interview

Once you are happy with the candidates you wish to bring forward, you have to schedule interviews. Calling candidates can take time and if they don’t answer you, you must send emails and wait for responses and possibly even follow up. They might get back to you a day later and tell you that the time doesn’t suit them. At this step, a good recruiter will ask the hiring manager when they are available during the week and even the following week. They will relay this information to the candidate and after 1 call with them, an interview will have been scheduled.

With a bit of back and forth between a hiring manager and candidate, this step could take 3-5 days which is a long time when the market is moving so quickly! By using a recruiter, we will ensure an interview gets scheduled usually within 48 hours of the day you request it.

Time Saved: 2-3 days

Recruitment Effort: All you have to do is send an email/ have a call with the recruiter to give them your availability. The recruiter will work with the candidate to make sure they can make the times work.

Week Four, Five and Six: Attending the interview and Follow-up interviews

There is no real shortening of these steps as the interview panel must perform their due diligence on each candidate and rightly so. However, recruiters still play a huge part in scheduling further interviews, providing feedback to candidates whether it be positive or negative and keeping them keen during the interview process. If the candidate is in the mix with several companies and they trust a recruiter, we can relay this information to hiring managers to say move quick if you like this person or they will be gone before you schedule your next interview! It happens and without a recruiter, a hiring manager may have to start the entire process again due to candidate drop outs which sets projects back weeks!

Recruitment Effort: The hiring manager may only need to be on one of the interview panels but there are still moving parts in the process during these weeks. A good recruiter will keep candidates interested, get honest feedback, provide tips and put a candidate at ease during this process which could be the difference between two potential offers on the table at offer stage. Candidate engagement is key!

Week Seven: Sending a job offer/ Regretting Candidates

You’ve finally got to the end of the process and the negotiations kick in with the job offer. There are a lot of over and backs and the candidate is negotiating a lot. This is normal but it does take up time and could take a week by the time you run a new offer past HR/ the CFO and get approval.

Again, if you use a recruiter at this stage it will run a whole lot smoother. That is because the stand out recruiters will have discovered what exactly it is that the candidate would be happy to accept before ever sending the candidate for consideration in week one. It will also be a conversation that is had with them after each interview stage to ensure these issues don’t arise at offer stage. The relationship built between recruiter and candidate cannot be understated!

Also, regretting candidates is never an easy job but it is one we have to do on the daily so by using an agency, you never have to have these conversations, it will be the recruiter’s duty to give the bad news.

Time Saved – 1 week

Recruitment Effort: A hiring manager just has to send the offer to the recruiter if happy to progress the candidate and the recruiter will have all the conversations and come back with a verbal acceptance. Hiring Managers never have to regret a candidate either if they use an agency!

Summary

In short, a recruitment agency can cut your hiring process in half and save you weeks of unnecessary time and effort. This is due to recruiters being specialists in recruitment, knowing the industry and market they work in and through building relationships that are created out of trust, honesty and wanting to provide the best service for both client and candidate.

If you ever had doubts about the job a recruiter could do for you and are in the life science industry in Ireland, I am more than happy to have a chat to discuss and can be contacted through linkedin, phone or email on [email protected].