How to Avoid Bottlenecks in Your Recruitment Process

Categories: Advice for HR Professionals, Recruitment Advice, Trends and Learning

How to Avoid Bottlenecks in Your Recruitment Process
Business processes need to be a well-oiled machine, relying on the seamless execution between personnel and teams to drive the organization forward. Like other business processes, recruitment involves other departments of the company aside from your HR team and sometimes, your chosen
recruitment agency.

However, bottlenecks or constraints are also possible, and these may cause your processes to slow down, be less effective, or completely stop. Employees are your company’s most important resource, so hindrances to recruitment and hiring processes can also result in damage to your bottom line. The longer a position remains empty, the more opportunity, productivity, and revenue are lost.

There are different reasons behind recruitment bottlenecks, such as parties miscommunicating and failing to agree to a strategy, not knowing where to look for candidates or how to sell the company, not having the right process for applications, not having the right decision-makers during hiring, and not reviewing your recruitment process.

Every organization can experience constraints for various reasons. So, for you to correct your company’s bottleneck, you’d first need to get to its root cause. You can do this by answering these questions:

  • Who should spend the most time with resumes? Should it be the hiring manager or another recruitment personnel?
  • What should each person involved in the process be doing with the resume?
  • What is each person’s responsibility, and do they know their own roles?
  • Are they capable of fulfilling their duties and obligations?

Tips to Avoid Recruitment Bottlenecks

Now that you have found the cause of your hiring delays, it’s time to take the necessary steps into avoiding future holdups for a more efficient process.

1. Evaluate your current process

Being able to gauge the efficiency of your recruitment process and how well you source quality candidates are necessary for your company’s growth. Evaluate every step to find components that are low-worth or unnecessary and get rid of those.

Instead, look to invest your resources in more high-value steps like acquiring an automated HR software that can reduce the back-and-forth that often bogs down the hiring process.

2. Effective communication

At times, constraints in the process can be traced back to miscommunication between teams and sometimes, even the applicants. Solid contact is necessary, and that can start with a face-to-face meeting of hiring managers and recruiters. They first need to know and understand each other’s main concerns so that recruitment strategies can be managed to achieve mutual goals.

An initial meeting will also allow recruiters to acquaint the hiring personnel with the tools they need during talent acquisition and make the process transparent to find any steps that are being duplicated or overlooked.

3. Role reinforcement

Having a smooth process with ample communication between departments will allow everyone involved to know their roles and responsibilities. They should understand that the tasks they are assigned correlate to other people’s functions, and what happens if they fail to do it.

4. Speed up the process

There are different ways on how you can speed up your recruitment. First, diminish the “dead time” between the steps by being efficient. For instance, you can hold evening or weekend interviews, especially during busier seasons to give time to applicants and personnel who may have busy schedules during the day or weekday.

Second, you can implement two steps simultaneously to avoid the wait. For example, do reference checks before the last interviews instead of waiting for everything to be done. Lastly, prepare in advance, like making pipeline referrals for positions that may open soon. This would result in prescreened candidates whom you can already interview right away once the position is posted.

5. Maximize tools and technology

Whether you’re with a small or large company, doing work without proper HR technology can really cause delays in your recruitment. Automating the most menial tasks in recruitment will allow you to focus on other tasks like candidate engagement.

Antiquated methods would not be able to manage the volume of applicants you can get. Naturally, relying on old means of job posting like newspaper ads can cause further holdups, as well as frustration from both hiring managers and candidates.

A more targeted approach brings results faster, and an applicant tracking and screening system can reduce time on your initial hiring stage. Technology can help continue the recruitment process for recruiters even on the go. Hiring managers should be able to view candidates or approve applications from mobile devices or communicate with them via email. This can be done with an HR integrated system that can be synchronized with a mobile app.

You also have to keep in mind that these tools and platforms are very powerful because of its reach and engagement. You must know the strengths and weaknesses of each platform in order to maximize its features. Of course, it depends with the type of applicant you’re looking for. Nowadays, social networking sites are becoming popular for recruiters. This will work for job openings in relation to the platform such as advertising, digital marketing, and many more.

On the other hand, there are business and employment-oriented websites that has a full database of applicants you can use. These websites also have features that can easily filter the applicants you’re looking for. This can be based on job type, location, employment level, etc.

Lastly, you should also consider video screening for a fast, easy, and affordable way of interviewing applicants. This can also eliminate the risk of wasting resources on unqualified candidates. These methods can make the process simpler and more efficient for everyone involved—HR can get in touch with both managers and applicants anytime and promptly.

Get Rid of Your Hiring Roadblocks

As mentioned earlier, your employees are an essential part of your business. Without the right talents running in the background, it’s just not possible to meet your overall goals and mission. Realizing your company objectives starts by getting the right people for the job, and your recruitment agency should be efficient enough to do just that.