In this ever-changing job market, one thing remains true; we are all humans. As such, we should be treating each other with kindness. Something that Amy Oviedo told me in one of my first days working at Recruiting Experiences was that a job change is one of the top-rated most stressful things that people go through. So, the question becomes, ‘How do we best support someone during this huge life event?’
I have some ideas for recruiters. By no means is this list exhaustive or perfect, but it is a good place to start.
- Make templates for rejections, scheduling interview emails, calendar invitations, and everything else that you possibly can. This will make your life easier when you open a new role and get a ton of applications.
- Apply for a role at your company to see the candidates’ experience and if it takes more than a minute or two, change it! You will get more applications if it is easier to apply for the role.
- Make sure you respond to every applicant. This doesn’t mean you have to personally call everyone, but at least send out rejection emails.
- After interviews, even if the candidate doesn’t make it to the next round, call or email the candidate. Don’t let people wait for bad news or no news.
- If you can, make the interview process take as little time as possible. Ideally, 3-5 interviews that are with HR, the hiring manager, and some team members. Pro-tip you can make the team members interviews and make them one-panel interview to make the process quicker.
- Remove all unnecessary tests, coding exercises, and simulations. You could mix things like this in with team interviews by having them work together on a made-up problem to see how the candidate works in a team environment!
- Make job listings short, sweet, and to the point. Don’t have long and drawn-out descriptions for your listings. A great place to start is trying to get the requirements down to the top 5-6 bullet points. Candidates won’t spend a ton of time reading all the requirements.
- Meet the candidate where they are at, meaning if the candidate never answers your emails but always picks up a phone call, then call them. Personally, I will always answer an email, but I miss phone calls all the time. This is a super easy one that most employers miss the mark all the time.
After that you might be saying, “Well that’s great information but where do I even start?” My answer, start making templates. Once you have a couple of good templates for regrets, emails for scheduling candidates, and calendar invitations you can easily knock through all of those applications. That is the easiest step. Make time to meet with your hiring managers to discuss the job listing and interview process (2 birds, 1 meeting). Typically, you can set up your ATS to have workflows and templates to help you move even quicker while still recruiting kind. And if you need some help with finding an ATS or setting it up, Recruiting Experiences can help you!
