Want To Make Recruitment Fun And Interactive?

You can't just expect candidates to be transparent with you if you are not meeting them halfway. I have been in recruitment for a few years now, and I have seen some drastic changes in the entire Talent Acquisition side of the business. Today, recruitment is not just about the company interviewing a candidate" but rather "both the company and the candidate interviewing each other". It's tough for those who are still running the process with their old methodologies and "no feedback" attitude. It is fair to say that candidates in 2023 are not stepping into any interview with the mindset of just answering some pre-defined questions.

So, what do we do to have a positive impact?

After speaking with a lot of people who were in the interview process as candidates this year, one thing I got to know that is common is "Lack of Transparency". Talent Acquisition/ Recruiters often tend to send automated rejection emails or sometimes no rejection or feedback emails to the candidates. This always leaves the candidates hanging in the middle. Now, you might think it is not a big deal or that it is not feasible to send customized emails to thousands of candidates, and I completely agree with you. But what you can do is, share detailed and valuable feedback with the candidates who were in the interview process instead of just sending them automated rejection emails.

Things you can do to improve the lack of transparency in the process:

1. During the?prescreening, explain the interview process and timeline to fill the role. Talk more about the expectations of the role and on what grounds this person's skills will be measured or compared.
2. Make sure you are sharing valuable feedback with your candidate. This will not only give them enough reasons to move on to their next job hunt but also allow them to work on their gaps.
3. Share about travel accommodations, work-life balance, work type, and growth at the very beginning of the process. This will help you, as an organization, stand out from the start.

And, now that you have a proper idea of what candidates are looking for in terms of transparency, the next step is to sit down with the business or Hiring managers in general to figure out the following things:

1. Why is the role open?
2. How will this person be able to be impactful? What does success look like in this role?
3. What are some major KPIs that candidates' goals will be measured against?
4. What will be the organizational structure for this role? (It is always good to know how the role aligns in the organization and with whom the new hire will collaborate daily.)
5. How are current employees in the same role doing? and are they overachieving? If yes, then what does the revenue look like? Be it for sales or tech roles, the answer to this question always proves to be useful. When you have the recruiter share about the company's success, the overachievement of the current employees, and some of the KPIs, candidates tend to be more inclined towards moving ahead in the process.
6. And last but not least, what does training look like for this role? (This is an important aspect for any candidate. They don't want to join an organization that just pays a good salary but would like to be with an organization that provides better training and resources. It's like, "Help me to Help you."

Hiring for your own company or external clients is the most stressful job out there, and I get it. It's more like the entire business is relying on you and the talent you are bringing on board. The hesitation, the fear of meeting the goals, the right screening, and landing the right candidate can all be very stressful and frustrating at the same time. Because of a continuously changing company's needs, you might run into situations where follow-ups or communication might be confusing. In times like these, a "well-organized process" is what you need.

A process in Talent Acquisition is all about understanding the business needs, timelines, focused sourcing, the right channels for branding, and finally communications. It is easy for companies that have the right tools and platforms automated in their systems, but for companies that are still a bit behind on the updated technologies, a lot of process creation is just manual and time-consuming.

Traditional Interview Process:

1. Reading the job description
2. Sourcing
3. Prescreening/Recruiter Interview
4. Submitted to the hiring manager
5. Based on the decision, move ahead with either an interview or rejection.

I have been a part of different processes, but did I enjoy them all? NO. NOT. You are not just acting as a recruiter for your organization; rather, you are acting as a business partner. And like any other business partner, you need to think strategically and creatively. You always need to look at the bigger picture. You might ask, What is the need to implement several steps in the interview process? The answer is simple, it's effective, and it gives detailed points about the market. Market research is important, and when you interview 10 people a day, you need to collect some kind of data to share with the business about what kind of skills are available, what kind of compensation these people are looking for, and some of the changes we as an organization can make.

Valuable Interview Process:

1. Set up introductory calls with the hiring manager to understand the role, and then set up weekly or bi-weekly cadence calls with them to discuss the progress. This will help a recruiter build trust with the hiring manager throughout the interview process.
2. Based on the information you collected, work on the job descriptions, highlight the important points, and take out the points that are not needed. Create a better-looking and shorter job description for the roles.
3. Start sourcing and also keep looking at the candidates who are applying. Give yourself 24-48 hours to view all the candidates who applied and then reach out to them if they are any good. If they are not fit for the current role, my advice is to keep them in your pipeline and run a campaign with them to keep them warm for the future. While sourcing candidates, start building various projects on LinkedIn or any job boards you are using.
4. Create different InMails templates for different types of profiles. Try customizing the InMails based on the type of profile you are reaching out to.
5. Allowing candidates to pick the time to speak with you from multiple available time slots. By doing this, you are showing your flexibility.
6. Talk about culture, benefits, and growth within the organization and in that role at the very beginning of the pre-screen. After speaking with a lot of people in the market, I understood that a lot of people talk about the roles and the responsibilities and then talk about culture in the last round. Why do you think talking about something as important as culture at the end is a good idea? Be transparent, and come prepared with a salary range for the role and what the on-target earnings might look like.
7. Share your detailed notes on the candidates with the hiring manager or leadership team. I will cover some important interview questions and taking notes in my next article.
8. Send some fun assessments to the candidates while you are waiting to hear back from the hiring team on the next step. These assessments should not be the decision-making criteria but rather be used to help the candidates fill the gaps, if any.
9. Schedule the first round of interviews with the hiring manager and inform the candidate about the "type" of interview, what is expected out of this round, and whom they are speaking with.
10. Based on the feedback, schedule the second round or the panel interview. If the manager decides to reject the candidate, send a personalized and customized email with the reason for the rejection.
11. Last but not least, build an Interview Rubric to collect the feedback of every manager in the process and then make the decision from there. Avoid taking feedback from the panel or group interviews by email. One's feedback might influence others as well. Once you collect all the feedback in one place, discuss it with the decision-maker.

Important: It is important to note that panel interviews should be diversified in all ways. Panel interviews should have 1 leader, 1 Supporting team member, 1 employee with the same role as the interviewee, and 1 Talent Acquisition or HR person. It is important to have somebody from HR in the interviews to make sure that all the questions are right and not biased. It is also important to have no more than five people in these panel interviews. We don't want to intimidate the candidates, and we also want to give them enough space to ask questions.

Building feedback rubrics is an interesting and efficient way of gathering feedback. I have collected a lot of data pointers on how to create effective Rubrics and how to use the data to determine what's best. Not to take away the focus of this article, the best thing is that we discuss the details of Rubrics in my next blog.

Watch this video by?Laudine Vallarta ?on the importance of Interview Rubrics.

Recruitment is not an easy job, but we can make it interactive at the end of the day. What matters is not how many hires you are making but, more importantly, how many hires stick with the organization for a long time. A lot of the candidates leave the organizations in due time because they do not experience things that were promised to them in the interview process. 70% of the candidates are not looking for new roles just for better compensation. The culture, the drive, and the vision are what matter to them the most. I did a little survey with 10 candidates in my network, and 6 out of 10 mentioned that they could take a pay cut if there were growth opportunities within the organization. Try focusing more on that, and I can assure you that, you will enjoy recruitment as much as I enjoyed writing this.

For any questions or to schedule a call with me to discuss more, connect with me on LinkedIn.

Navjyot Kaur (Nav)

Your Friendly Recruiter