Struggling to recruit?

Think about your recruitment process as a funnel of different steps that lead to a new employee starting, building on a principle used in Sales and Marketing.

At a simple level it looks like this:

-       Job advert
-       Job description
-       Interview
-       Job offer
-       Resignation
-       Onboarding
-       Start date
-       Induction

In between each step is communication.

There are three priorities in your recruitment process – to attract suitable people, to decline people who aren’t suitable as early as possible, and to employ at least one person.

These are also stages where candidates may drop out for any reason.

The top of your process is about raising awareness and encouraging people to engage (I’m being very careful of avoiding innuendo, so feel free to be creative).

The closer to the end of your process the more individual your activity becomes. Negotiating with your preferred candidate at offer stage is very different to navigating 100 applicants to an advert.

Each activity is different, with its own priorities.

For example, when you confuse a job description with an advert you create a problem that prevents potential candidates from entering your recruitment funnel.

An advert is a creative document that attracts as many people who may be suitable as possible. A job description is a technical document that confirms what a role is, given to suitable people who have been attracted by your advert.

Both have their place as very different documents.

A second example is: if you think the job is done at the job offer stage, and neglect your end funnel activities, don’t be surprised if your new employee drops out for – another offer, a counter offer, a boomerang offer, or something else you might have seen coming.

What complicates this funnel-based approach is the things outside 8 described steps.

Branding, reputation, research, news, referrals etc, all have a part to play in the decision to become an applicant, a candidate or an employee.

And at the top of the funnel, if they decide not to engage, you may never know.

This funnel approach can be applied to other types of recruitment too – headhunting, temps, promotions, referrals and so on. Some of the steps are the same, some very different.

Breaking each approach down into steps is key to success. Always ask why issues come up, rather than lay blame elsewhere.

What ties this all together, is the experience the people you want to employ have.

Candidate experience.

It’s a consequence of a good recruitment process not just the decent thing to do.

And that’s why you should always ask of each step, what needs to be done to get the right people to the following step.

What do they need to experience?