Build a Structured Hiring Process
Hiring the right people quickly is the perfect storm of challenges, between dealing with floods of applications, easy-to-use and submit application systems, and hiring process bottlenecks that can drag things out for months.
A well-structured hiring process gets your team out ahead of this storm, helping you prepare for rain or shine.
Defining Your Hiring Process: Building a Solid Foundation
A well-defined hiring process is the cornerstone of effective talent acquisition. It’s not just about filling a role; it’s about strategically building your team for long-term success.
In this chapter, we’ll guide you through essential steps and best practices for creating a robust hiring framework, ensuring you focus on what truly matters and eliminate unnecessary complexities that will only slow down your time-to-hire.
This includes:
- Dissecting the hiring journey, identifying critical stages, and exploring how to establish clear hiring timelines to maintain momentum and efficiency.
- Defining roles and responsibilities, from recruiters and hiring managers to additional stakeholders, ensuring clear expectations and seamless collaboration.
- Clarify what an Ideal Candidate Profile is and how to create one based on things like must-have and nice-to-have skills and competencies.
“We have developed a recruitment and selection process map that includes swim lanes of: here are the things that I’m doing [from an HR perspective], here are the things the hiring manager’s going to do, and this is what this process looks like so they always know what’s expected of them.
Then, in an intake meeting, I will ask [the hiring manager things like]:
- Who is [the new hire] going to be working with?
- What is expected in the first ninety days and the first year?
- What challenges is the person in this role going to face?
- How often do you meet with them?
Those are the things that I ask [every time], and it makes [hiring managers] think. By starting the hiring process like that, they’re thinking about candidates in that frame and in that lens, and being more thoughtful.”
American Marketing Association Director of People and Culture
Best Practices
Defining the Steps of Your Hiring Process
Review Your Current Hiring Process
To begin, conduct a thorough analysis of your current hiring process to identify and focus on the steps that directly contribute to successful hiring outcomes – and those that are hurting or slowing it down. Eliminate redundant or non-essential steps to maximize efficiency and minimize delays.
Implement Timelines
Establish specific timelines for each stage of the hiring process. This will ensure accountability, maintain recruiting momentum, and provide a clear framework for your hiring team, hiring managers, and candidates. Define measurable targets for key milestones at each step (not only the conclusion of the process), such as application review, interview scheduling, and offer delivery.
Roles and Responsibilities in Hiring
Map Required Stakeholder Involvement
Create a detailed outline of every recruiter, hiring manager, and additional stakeholder needed within the hiring process. Clearly define their roles and specify at which stage of the process their involvement is required to ensure a structured and pre-coordinated approach.
Establish Clear Role Expectations
Define and communicate expectations for each stakeholder’s role and responsibilities. This might include outlining specific tasks, deliverables, and communication needs. This type of proactive communication prevents misunderstandings as you begin to narrow the talent pool, minimizes delays that could cause candidate drop-off, and ensures a positive candidate experience.
Aligning on the Ideal Candidate Profile
Prioritize Key Skills and Competencies
Alongside key stakeholders and hiring managers, develop a comprehensive list of required skills and competencies, clearly differentiating between “must-have” and “nice-to-have” attributes. This structure provides a focused evaluation framework from the beginning, reducing the potential for unconscious bias or delays based on unclear needs when assessing candidates.
Create Detailed Ideal Candidate Profiles
Based on the above-noted discussions, construct detailed Ideal Candidate Profiles or “lookalike” candidate profiles, encompassing all necessary qualifications, experience, and cultural fit criteria. This ensures alignment among all stakeholders before the role is advertised or opened, and promotes a consistent and objective evaluation process.