7 Steps to Streamline Your Recruiting, Interviewing, and Decision-Making

Finding and attracting top talent is a major challenge for organizations today. It makes sense. Many business leaders would much rather focus on building their businesses than take time out to hire and risk falling behind. In fact, research shows that 84% of organizations struggle to find talent, yet only 21 percent of executives have the right processes and technology in place. 

The right processes and technology means:

• Getting the right candidates to respond to job postings.
• Setting up the best interview process to screen for top performers.
• Collaborating effectively internally to align key decision-makers.
• Collecting feedback to improve the system.
• Leveraging software to take all of the above to the next level.

At the same time, not handling these factors properly can result in missing out on qualified candidates and making the recruiting process take much longer than it should. To avoid this, we’ve put together a checklist of 7 tips to streamline recruitment, interviews, and decision-making to overcome the challenge of finding the right talent.

To start off on the right foot, you want to make sure that only the right type of candidates are applying to your open positions. To ensure this, it’s crucial to ensure that candidates have a clear understanding of the role they’re applying for. This is done by having a crystal clear job posting with accurate descriptions and requirements. To optimize your job postings, make sure to:

• Work with stakeholders such as management and future colleagues of the new candidate to conduct a thorough analysis of the role and responsibilities.
• Determine the necessary skills, qualifications, and experience.
• Craft a detailed job description that accurately represents the position, including compelling and informative job titles and descriptions.
• Use relevant keywords to improve searchability.
• Highlight any unique selling points and benefits like health, dental, and vision benefits or an employee stock option program to attract top talent.

The right job posting can ensure that only your ideal candidates are applying for your positions, which can save you and your team a lot of time. However, you also want to make sure that your employer brand as a whole – and not just your open position – is attractive.

Your employer brand is the sum total of your company’s vision, mission, and values. Potential candidates are always looking for employers with a clear and strong brand, so establishing a strong employer brand can significantly enhance your recruitment efforts. To make sure your employer brand is strong, be sure to:

• Ask yourself and your leadership team: “What are our core values and what kind of work do we do here?” Your employer brand should reflect this.
• Take the time to build a positive online presence that showcases your company culture. Photos and videos from happy hours, team outings, and other team-building activities work great for this!
• Create an engaging careers page on your website that highlights your values and mission where potential candidates can learn more about your organization instead of just scrolling through job postings. 
• Leverage social media platforms to promote your employer brand and engage with a wider pool of talent. Candidates are increasingly taking to their personal networks and social media to find work.

With a strong employer brand, your potential candidates will be confident in their choice to apply to your positions, but with an increased volume of confident applicants comes the need to organize them.

Once applications start coming in, it can be a challenge to keep them organized. The usual game plan is to have candidates email in their applications, and juggle the process from there. At best, a spreadsheet gets created to track applicants.

Software tools can greatly reduce the headache in tracking your incoming applicants. To take advantage of software, you can:

• Implement applicant tracking systems, resume screening tools, and/or candidate management platforms that can streamline and automate various stages of the hiring process. 
• Leverage AI-powered tools for automated resume parsing and candidate assessment to save time and improve efficiency.
• These platforms can help you track and manage candidate profiles, resumes, and interview feedback 

Platforms like these will enable collaboration among hiring team members through a centralized platform – no more losing interview notes or resumes in your inbox! 

Appanzee Recruiting is an example of a cloud-based candidate management platform that tracks and automates things like candidate application tracking, resume management, and interview tracking. It’s helped recruiters fill positions weeks faster and requires no technical skills to set up.

Once the right software and tools are in place, it not only enhances the experience for the hiring team, but it also makes the application process more appealing to your candidates.

Simplifying the application process is key to getting as many qualified applicants as possible. Ideally, your potential candidates see a posting they’re interested in, click apply right then and there, and are guided through a seamless application experience. Keep these points in mind to make that a reality and reduce the chances of potential candidates losing interest and bouncing:

• Let candidates apply right from the posting. Being taken to a general “Contact Us” page or having to write their own email is just another point of friction.
• Take it one step further and create a dedicated candidate portal on your website. 
• Remove unnecessary fields from the application form to avoid unnecessary friction. 
• Make sure the application process is mobile-friendly, as many candidates prefer to apply using their mobile devices. 

A user-friendly application process increases the likelihood of attracting more qualified candidates. With Appanzee Recruiting, you can add an intake form directly to your website, or link your applicants to a portal to apply so your application process is seamless.

Once your application process is streamlined, it’s time to hone in on your interviewing process.

Developing a structured interview process is essential for selecting the right candidates efficiently. Stay on top of all of your interviews by:

• Creating a standardized set of interview questions for each position to ensure consistency. Make sure your interviewers use them – different phrasings can mean different answers from candidates!
• Using a mixture of technical and behavioral questions – or separate out technical and behavioral interviews entirely. You want someone who knows the details and is a team player.
• Conducting initial screening via pre-recorded video interviews to compare candidates before proceeding to in-person or live video interviews.
• Not forgetting about in-person interviews. Video conferencing has become more common but nothing replaces seeing how your candidates behave in real life.
• Asking candidates about other positions they are applying to in order to gain insights into their interests and the changing job market dynamics.

Structuring your interview process efficiently sets you and your team up to evaluate your candidates and make decisions as quickly and as accurately as possible, but once you have your interview set up you need to make sure the findings are handled properly.

6. Centralize Interview Feedback and Decision-Making

Now that you’ve done all of the work to tighten up your application and interview processes, it’d be a shame to have it all go to waste by not recording the results of your interviews properly. To keep your interviews organized and accessible so your team can make the best decisions, consider the following:

• Create interview answer templates for your questions to document interview feedback in a standardized format. 
• Implement scoring systems or rating scales to objectively assess candidates based on if they hit all the required points. 
• Consider recording interviews (especially video interviews) so they can be referenced later.
• If you haven’t already adopted a candidate management platform, now’s the time to do so, so your team can compare and evaluate candidates on a centralized platform

Centralizing your positions, candidate applications, and interviews – especially using software – will help save time and avoid the hassle of scrambling to compare notes and the whole team’s buy-in, and avoid endless meetings deciding between candidates.

Appanzee Recruiting is an affordable, easy-to-deploy option for a candidate management platform to track and organize all of your candidate information including their interview results and feedback.

Now that you’ve got the whole cycle tuned from posting to decision-making, the only thing left to do is look for areas for improvement.

7. Continuous Improvement and Feedback

To make sure your new end-to-end hiring system stays relevant, it’s important to regularly review and refine your processes to keep up with the evolving needs of your team and the wider market. Stay on top of things by:

• Being open to ideas for change from your candidates and hiring team.
• Asking your successful candidates and new hires about their thoughts on the recruiting process and how it can be improved.
• Gathering feedback from hiring managers and recruiters to identify areas that need attention. 
• Implementing necessary changes based on this feedback to continually optimize your hiring process.

Most importantly, don’t be afraid of change. Once you’ve built a robust system, it can be tempting to treat it as sacred, but even the best systems need updating and these updates will help you stay competitive in an ever changing employment market.

Final Thoughts

Streamlining the recruitment, interview, and decision-making process is crucial for organizations to attract and secure top talent. By optimizing job postings, implementing a user-friendly application process, and standardizing the interview process and decision-making, organizations can enhance their hiring efficiency and secure the best candidates for their teams. 

Embrace these strategies outlined in our checklist to transform your recruitment efforts and gain a competitive edge in the talent market.

See How Appanzee Recruiting Helps You Streamline Your Hiring Process