By Sam Dinsi, Lead Recruiter.
In my 12 years in Recruitment, I’ve scaled 100’s businesses covering Cyber Security, Fintech, Hedge Funds, and Startups. What has surprised me is that after all this time, companies still focus on outreaches, hiring more recruiters, recycling between recruiters, or simply blaming the market.
Recruiting is tough! It’s about branding, messaging, outreach, conversions, process improvements, stakeholders, comparison studies, and closing candidates.
On candidate conversions, for example, singular searches, uncover the candidate’s aspirations and position the company as an investor to achieve those goals but hiring at scale and pace is different. You’d need to do this for everyone.
During Covid, I led a team of 3 recruiting for a Fintech Client based in Yorkshire. We delivered on 37 headcounts in Technology (31) and Product (6), within 6 months and in a candidate-driven market. We scaled at a pace by focusing on Process Improvement.
Process Improvements for Scale ups
For this article, I’ll focus on Process Improvement for Interviewing Candidates although you can apply this to any stage of the lifecycle.
Interview Confirmations
Generally, it could take up to 3 to 4 days to confirm based on the responsiveness of the line manager. Consider using channels like Slack or Teams, obtaining scheduling permission on certain days/times or even something as basic as Calendar access.
Dropouts
It’s normal for any company to experience candidate dropouts. Consider collecting the data around dropouts at each stage… the answer may be clear for some but data and stats get support from stakeholders.
Results
Apply consistent and transparent grading and reporting for interviews but also document this. Interviewers need to justify their decisions and recruiters need to analyse the trends for insights. There is a lot you can learn here.
End to end Interviewing time
If your process lasts any longer than 2 weeks, it’s inefficient. You either have too many interviewers, stages, or worse no control or influence. Channels like Slack or Teams can help but genuine improvements come only with stakeholder support.
Delays at Offer Stage
Some companies are better at dealing with this than others. If you’re constantly on the back foot and dealing with candidates who have concerns at the offer stage, then the fault is in the interview process. It’s not informative ‘enough’. Consider Information Packs, Presentations and Q&As.
Reminders for Process Improvement
It’s important to mention that no two companies have ever been the same for me. The challenges will differ for everyone but a little creativity will always present a solution.
Also, remember that recruiters can’t make all these changes by themselves, they need support. Recruitment isn’t just about putting bums on seats, it’s about Talent Attraction, Process Improvement and Retention. Focus on process improvement, and you can scale at a pace and hire the best in the market.
If you’re thinking about scaling your team, I’d love to speak to you — contact us now to find out more about our services.