What your recruitment process says about your company, and its talent supply.

Intro

A job seeker's experience & journey before onboarding will make or break the person’s performance on the job and their outlook toward the organisation.

A well optimised job seeker experience will also shape the talent pipeline to having the right talent pool attuned to the company’s recruitment announcements.?

With today’s Generative AI enabled Applicant Tracking Systems, and AI generated job seeker resumes, the Talent Acquisition scenario across industries, is at a stalemate. Recruiter - Candidate trust levels are at an all time low, and something has to change.

The Job Seeker

The overall sentiment of job seekers towards applying for a job is overwhelmingly negative, with job seekers participating in the process not because they want to, but because they must. Job seekers rarely hear back from employers, and if they do the communication is ambiguous 9 times out of 10.

This side of the journey is transactional, with key touch points between an employer and a job seeker.?

The Talent Acquisition professional

Every TA professional strives to find the best job seekers and close hiring mandates in record time, whilst adhering to organisation specific SLA’s or governance.?

The TA professional functions in an external facing capacity where they are dissociated from the actual business operations with little exposure to the RoI of how the right human capital moves teams and the business forward.

To the TA professional, the recruitment process depends on their organisation's internal operations. An example of the internal TA process is listed below;

1. Receive a Manpower Request from a stakeholder
2. Run the request through the right channels for approval on cost, infra requirement etc.
3. Advertise on external platforms, work with recruitment partners
4. Validate inbound job seeker responses
5. Screen relevant job seekers and channel them for next steps
6. Coordinate first level interviews with the Hiring team
7. Coordinate system evaluation (or) second level interviews with the Hiring team
8. Run Background Verification and Referral checks for shortlisted job seekers
9. Extend an offer to the selected job seeker?
10. Follow up with them during their notice (And pray they don’t receive a counter offer)
11. Coordinate with IT & HR Teams to seamlessly onboard the new joiner
12. Follow up with the new joiner, a month into their tenure

To the TA professional, the recruitment process is tactical with complex mechanisms and demands their attention on managing several stakeholders at once.

The cold truth

With the current climate of retrenchment, investor disinterest and pivot for profitability over scale, the trust between a job seeker and employer is at an all time low. The opportunity for employers lies with analysing their recruitment process and listening to job seeker feedback and plug gaps in their journey.

Conclusion

It’s time to switch things up, and employers can make an impact if they consider the following strategies;

Reduce the barriers to entry

Give job seekers all the information they need upfront to get them to make the most informed decision possible—wages, benefits, shift hours, what it’s really like to work at an organisation. People are eager to work for an employer that shows it values them and their efforts by being transparent.

Stay attuned to market trends & sentiments

Staying attuned means gaining a competitive advantage with job seekers. Employers need to be knowledgeable of the ever-changing market and stay ahead of the competition when it comes to benchmarking wages. If you advertise a wage on a job posting, it won’t resonate with job seekers unless it’s a competitive rate for the type of role and in the location they’re targeting.

Keeping job seekers appraised of their candidature goes a long way in building trust and ultimately enables the employer brand.

Speak plainly

Job descriptions are often complicated with a flurry of jargon that are specific to an employer and might not resonate with your target talent pool. Clear communication is effective in cutting through the clutter and will reach the right audience. Job seekers and employers are not on the same page, when it comes to the application process.

Manage Expectations

Be transparent about your process and keep job seekers informed. Conversational AI tools make it easier than ever to nurture job seekers through the hiring process. Being unresponsive isn’t the best move, and ghosting is just not an option.

Set clear expectations on timelines, mentoring job seekers on what to expect in interviews and their wage expectations. Job seekers have a certain level of anxiety attached to the job seeking process, and hence need reassurance at various levels.

A person cannot be summarised in a resume

Resumes aren’t accurate predictors of successful job seekers. A good resume can be tailored within seconds today, thanks to high availability of gen Ai tools. Invest time into behavioural benchmarking & profiling the ‘ideal job seeker’ instead of relying on keyword searches.

At this moment, we are cultivating the future of the hiring experience, and we cannot edge out the feelings of the people who matter most: job seekers. We need to commit to listening more and without judgement, because that’s where talent acquisition professionals and employers can make the greatest improvements.

Infographics & visual assets designed by Drishya H