What a Digitised Hiring Process Looks Like (Part 1)
Introduction
In today's fast-paced business landscape, where technology drives transformation across industries, recruitment and recruitment technology (rectec) is evolving faster than ever. The global pandemic served as a catalyst, pushing thousands of agencies and organisations to rethink their hiring strategies. What was once considered a "nice-to-have" has now become an indispensable part of any successful talent acquisition strategy- a digitised hiring process.
As we look toward early 2025, it's crucial for companies to pause and evaluate their current processes before succumbing to external pressures from rectec vendors who claim we're falling behind or facing obsolescence by AI advancements.
The reality is that every manual step—whether it's job intake/briefings, sourcing candidates, screening applications, conducting interviews, referencing, or onboarding new hires—consumes not only precious time but also substantial financial resources.
But what does this process entail, and how can you go digital without losing the human touch?
In this article, we'll delve into what constitutes a fully digital recruitment process from start to finish. We'll explore practical ways to integrate technology while maintaining empathy and personal connection with candidates.
Let’s explore!
Key Steps to Digitise the Hiring Process
Step 1 – Decide on High Touch Versus Low Touch: In the journey toward a digitised hiring process, it’s crucial to determine which elements of your service or processes should remain high touch (human-to-human) and which can be streamlined through automation or semi-automation. Consider this not as an 'all-or-nothing' approach but rather a balanced integration where human interaction complements digital efficiency.
For agencies or RPO firms, identifying your handoff points—such as delivering a signed offer letter or contributing to onboarding—can help delineate responsibilities and optimise customer collaboration.
Step 2 – Map out your processes: Before digitising, ensure well-defined processes are in place. This foundational step is critical because automating ineffective methods only amplifies inefficiencies. Embrace the mantra: “Process > Technology > People” to prioritise workflow design before layering technology solutions.
Step 3 - Define Performance-Based Hiring Standards: Digitisation should begin with a robust hiring framework. For example, instead of relying on generic job descriptions, organisations can adopt Lou Adler’s performance-based hiring, which defines job success based on measurable outcomes rather than just skills and experience.
Replace traditional job descriptions with performance profiles, which outline key performance objectives (KPOs) that candidates need to achieve within their first year.
The Hiring Funnel
In the context of recruitment, the hiring funnel can be broken down into three key stages:
- Top of Funnel (TOFU)
- Middle of Funnel (MOFU)
- Bottom of Funnel (BOFU)
Each stage serves a distinct purpose in attracting, engaging, and securing talent. Let’s explore how the digitisation aligns with these stages:
Top of Funnel (TOFU): Attracting Candidates
1. Collaborative Kick Off Briefings: Establish a documented process that ensures seamless collaboration between recruiters & hiring managers. This foundational step sets clear expectations, aligns goals, and maps out a strategy to attract top talent effectively.
2. Efficient Sourcing Tools/Strategies: Utilise advanced sourcing tools and strategies to position your organisation prominently in front of potential candidates. Leverage digital platforms and AI-powered outreach tools to expand your reach efficiently. Since sourcing can consume 40-50% of a recruiter's time, automating aspects like candidate discovery maximises productivity.
3. Outreach & Branding Initiatives: Enhance your brand by crafting engaging content such as videos or personalised messages from recruiters/hiring managers. Employ data-driven insights to customise messaging according to specific roles or demographics, boosting engagement rates and attracting high-quality candidates from the outset.
Middle of Funnel (MOFU): Engaging & Assessing Candidates
1. Shortlisting and Interview Scheduling: Once candidates are interested, they move to MOFU where engagement becomes key. Automated shortlisting tools help filter out unsuitable candidates efficiently, while maintaining communication through seamless interview scheduling solutions, which reduces friction in this phase.
2. Interview Note Taking & Scorecards: Digital note-taking and digital scorecard tools standardise feedback collection across interviewers - facilitating accurate assessments that inform subsequent decisions without bias creeping in unnecessarily during candidate evaluations.
3. Self-Selection & Digital Assessments: Incorporate modern self-serve platforms and assessment tools within MOFU; these methods delve deeper into candidates’ skills and motivations beyond CVs, sharpening decision-making accuracy when advancing individuals in your pipeline.
Bottom of Funnel (BOFU): Securing Hires
1. Digital Referencing: Reference checks are completed swiftly yet comprehensively, minimising delays associated with traditional manual processes.
2. Offer Signing & Onboarding: Expedite final steps by automating offer letter signing and onboarding processes—ensuring new hires are integrated without unnecessary delays typical in manual approaches.
Putting It All Together
1. Audit Your Current Tech Stack: Before tossing out your ATS, CRM, or other tools like yesterday's leftovers, take a deep dive into their features. Chat with your customer success manager about upcoming features on their product roadmap - this might save you from unnecessary purchases.
2. Test Your Own Process: It's time to "eat your own dog food." Apply for a job at your own company and see what happens. Are your email templates up-to-date? Do those URL links actually work? This exercise can reveal process gaps better than any audit report.
3. Optimise your ATS: Is your ATS fully configured and optimised? JobAdder, for example, have been rolling out new features and improvements at a rapid rate, it's hard to keep up and adopt all these new features/add-ons, but worth checking out their product release page.
4. Evaluate Add-Ons Wisely: When considering shiny new tools, a good place to start is your ATS provider's marketplace or apps/add-ons, especially if they’ve already integrated as some of the heavy lifting will have been done for you.
5. Budget Smartly & Avoid Lengthy Contracts: Set a realistic budget that doesn't feel like daylight robbery - $800-$1000 per recruiter (excluding bloated job boards). Review any contract lock ins or expiry of any (expensive) tools you are using – I’m pretty sure we all know one overpriced tool that doesn’t fully integrate with your ATS. Go month-to-month initially; tech evolves faster than fashion trends these days.
A few notes on some personal faves:
- Shortlyst - Talent mapping, sourcing, sequential outreach and the fact it's fully integrated with JobAdder and outstanding value for money.
- Referoo - I love digital referencing tools, particularly Referoo where you can still do manual if needed to verify a comment or ask for more detail around a particular question. I think a high % (80-90%) of referees complete references outside of office hours, so it beats staying back in the office and missing out on dinner with the family!
Not used or still exploring:
- Interview scheduling tools. I haven’t used interview scheduling tools, however, if I were handling serious volume, i.e. 100/200+ roles at any one time, I might. While managing RPO assignments with volume 30-50+ roles, I tend to pre-book interview slots with hiring managers and avoid interview back and forth.
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Benefits Summary of Going Digital
- Efficiency: Recruiters focus on strategy, not admin.
- Speed: Faster processes mean less time-to-hire.
- Cost Savings: Automation reduces operational costs.
- Improved Candidate Experience: A smoother journey attracts better talent.
- Improved Experience X3 - Candidate, Hiring Manager & Recruiter = win win win!
The Result
Companies using digital hiring processes report impressive results: - Recruiter efficiency improved by X3-5
- Improved candidate screening [shortlisting], saving 100’s of recruiter hours
- Reduced Time to Fill (hiring days) from 30 to 15 days. And get paid quicker!
Ready to digitise? Start optimising your hiring process today!
Part 2 (coming soon)– See how Perpetual Hire helps you scale your recruiters delivery further through standardisation, self-service & automation.
