By Kristen Harris
Ever wonder what recruiters do all day?
(Hint…it involves people, lots and lots people!)
Chances are someone helps you hire for your team, whether it’s a third-party firm like us, an internal talent acquisition team, or an HR specialist responsible for internal hiring. Or maybe you’re responsible for the hiring on your own team, in which case you are your own recruiter.
We’re about to pull back the curtain and share key steps of the recruiting process. Most importantly, we’ll highlight what you can do to improve your hiring success rate when working with a recruiter. Because what you really care about is filling that gap on your team with a great new hire! Amiright?
Whatever seat you sit in, when you understand a process you can make it better and keep it moving forward. So let’s dive into the hiring process!
1. Build relationships and trust. All recruiters spend time getting to know and building trust with the people they serve. At Portfolio Creative we build relationships and learn about our clients; internal talent acquisition and human resources people do the same with their hiring managers. It’s hard to help if we don’t know you or understand what your team does.
Hiring Manager Tip: Take time to build a relationship with your recruiter before you ever need them. When you’re ready, they will be too.
2. Fill roles that have been requested. This might sound obvious, but recruiters work on the roles that are requested of them. We can’t read minds and don’t know everything that is going on with your team. This is why it’s so important to build that relationship! As soon as you have a need, or see one coming, we can start talking about what you’ll be looking for, timing, priority, and all the other details. The sooner we get started, the sooner you’ll have your role filled.
Hiring Manager Tip: Contact your recruiter as soon as you know, or suspect, you’ll need to fill a role. Tell us what you need, provide as thorough a description and details as possible, and be clear about your priority.
3. Set priorities. A recruiter may have many open roles, but they can only actively work on one or two of those roles at any given moment. We shift from role to role throughout the day to stay focused on the highest priorities. Priorities get set every day, then reset and reset again based on new information.
Hiring Manager Tip: Communicate timing details early and often! Help us prioritize your roles; tell us if there’s a certain order to how you want to fill roles for your team, if specific deadlines are looming, or anything else that would impact the timing of your role. And update us he minute something changes…because something always changes 😉
4. Connect with candidates. Recruiters connect with candidates all day every day, for current roles they’re working on and for roles they might need to fill in the future. We’re collectors; we want to know everyone in our space or industry because you never know when we might have that person’s dream job! When we’re working on an open job we consider, review, and screen a lot of candidates, narrowing to the select few we share with the hiring manager.
Hiring Manager Tip: When we send you those select few candidates, know that we screened out a lot of candidates to get to that small group for you to consider. Trust that we’ve done the hard work so that you don’t have to.
5. Get Hiring Manager feedback. This step is really all about you! Your recruiter needs quick feedback on the candidates submitted.
Hiring Manager Tip: Act quickly! The most important thing you can do is be responsive, be responsive, be responsive. Schedule interviews right away with everyone who is a potential fit; candidates are interviewing multiple places and getting hired quickly. If anyone is not a fit, give your recruiter the feedback of why so they can adjust their search and find your dream candidate.
6. Make an offer and plan for onboarding. This step relies on the hiring manager too. As soon as you’re ready to make an offer, your recruiter will help you through that process.
Hiring Manager Tip: Make a decision quickly. Streamline your interview process as much as possible; if multiple steps or people are required, do them concurrently instead of consecutively. Companies miss out on candidates all the time because they didn’t move fast enough. It’s heartbreaking to lose that person you thought was “the one”…don’t do that to yourself!
One final thought–remember there is a cost both to hiring and not hiring. Every day a role sits open on your team is another day that work doesn’t get done or your existing team gets stretched even thinner trying to cover. Having an open role costs your company in productivity, morale, work quality, hard dollars spent to hire coverage, and more.
On the other side, whether you use a third-party recruitment firm like Portfolio Creative, internal talent acquisition, a human resources team, or are doing it yourself, you’re paying for help to fill this role. You’re paying us, you’re paying your internal team member, or you’re paying yourself. The longer the process drags out, the more it costs you.
By understanding the hiring process and how to help keep it moving along, you can reduce the cost of hiring and the impact that open role has on your company. Need to fill an open seat? We’re here to help.
