5 Steps HR Leaders Can Take to Reimagine Recruitment Processes

Today’s talent market is consistently challenging for HR leaders—with 1.9 open positions for every unemployed person, great candidates are scarce and competition for them is fierce. Many HR leaders are reconsidering their recruitment processes, which may have worked well in previous years but simply don’t measure up right now. 

If you’re wondering how to improve your recruitment processes effectively and creatively to keep up with your competitors in a tight labor market, here are the five steps you should consider taking. 

1. Perfect Your Job Descriptions

Job descriptions are vital to your recruitment process, and they reveal a lot about your company to your potential new employees. 

Re-reading your descriptions carefully can expose several potential improvements to boost your application rate. For example, are your descriptions consistent across roles and departments, or is there significant variation in how they’re written? Do they explain clearly what the role is, what expectations for success are, and what your company’s values are? 

Including salary ranges in your job postings should be considered as well, as 17% of companies already list a salary range when they’re not required to by local laws, and a further 62% are considering or planning to do so soon. Adding salary information builds trust with candidates and shows your commitment to fairness and equality—attractive qualities in an employer. 

2. Create a Better Candidate Experience 

If your recruitment process is netting you plenty of interested candidates, but they aren’t accepting your offers at the rate you’d expect, your candidate experience might be to blame. Applicants know that the recruitment process is a chance for them to evaluate your company just as much as the other way around. They’re paying careful attention to how they’re treated in this phase as an indicator of their potential employee experience.

Start your improvement strategy by measuring your current Candidate Net Promoter Score (cNPS). Asking your candidates for feedback is the best way to identify where your candidate experience is currently lacking so you can make the right improvements in your recruitment processes. 

3. Streamline the Slow Points in Your Recruitment Process 

The average time to hire in 2022 was about 43 days and involved multiple interviews. But top candidates who have in-demand skills in today’s hot hiring market might accept another offer if your hiring process is too slow. 

A good way to improve your recruitment process is to examine your current process and identify any slow points, such as: 

• Scheduling phone screens or interviews 
• Running background checks
• Gathering references 
• Conducting interviews 

For example, your interview scheduling might take days (or even weeks), when you could use asynchronous video interviews in the early stages of interviewing to cut out the back-and-forth. 

You may want to cut the number of interviews candidates are expected to complete, or ask interviewers to team up, so candidates aren’t going through 10 separate interviews for an individual contributor position. 

4. Use Bias-Free Recruitment Tools

If your recruitment process contains bias, you’re likely missing out on plenty of candidates who would be a great addition to your organization. 

There are many ways to remove bias from your recruitment process, but one of the most effective ways is to ensure your recruitment tools are bias-free. By removing bias from your recruiting process, you can access deeper talent pools and reach a broader range of potentially great candidates instead of limiting your search to a narrow range of people. 

5. Build Deeper Talent Pools 

When looking to fill open positions, the default is often to look for external candidates first. And working to build up your external talent pools is a good first step—both from sources you might know about and ones you might not, like niche job boards and training programs. 

But you should also consider your internal talent pools when reimagining your recruitment processes. Looking at your current employees when a position opens, even if it’s a lateral move, can yield strong candidates. And you should also consider alternative hiring, where you can match candidates with jobs they didn’t apply for but could excel at. 

Want to learn more about expanding your hiring pools to improve your recruitment processes? Get the Cangrade guide to deepening your talent pool to learn even more about how to make the most of your talent.