How Healthy is Your Hiring Process Checklist

hiring process health check up

Improving how you recruit and hire candidates starts from within — and this checklist.

When was the last time you checked on the health of your hiring processes and how they impact the quality of your candidate experience? Use this checklist to check-up on your talent acquisition fitness.

7 elements of your recruiting operations and hiring process to track, review and improve

1. Are your job descriptions are optimized for the right audience?

How current are job descriptions at your organization? Do you have a description for every role in your company?

Job descriptions are the first step in attracting and screening applicants for your open positions. Current, well-crafted job descriptions should be clear and straightforward about what you expect from the person in this position — and what they can expect back from this step in their career.

Maintaining job descriptions (especially for roles, like tech and marketing, that quickly evolve) means you’ll attract the right candidates to the roles and be ready to start recruiting faster.

Tips to optimize job descriptions for search engines:

  • Create a unique page for each position. It’s not only good for SEO, but makes it easier for people to share a link directly to the page.
  • Put the job title in the URL, page title tag and headline on the page.
  • Check that you’re using the best title for the job. Search the title in Google. See what jobs come up. Compare with your requirements to make sure you’ll capture the right audience with that title. This is one way to check search intent.

2. Do you leverage and encourage employee referrals?

Posting jobs internally not only lets your internal team see if there’s a next step in the company they’d like to apply for, but gives your internal employees first dibs on referring a great candidate. Employee referrals are often a top source of high-quality new hires. Referrals can lower your cost-per-hire, increased your recruiting team’s efficiency and lead to greater retention rates because of fit.

Why? Because they understand the company, its needs, the team and culture. They also know the person they’re referring, what they’re capable of and what they’re looking for too. How do employee referrals rank in your company? Having a plan to alert employees to open positions and an automated process for making referrals will make your program smooth and efficient.

3. Do you test, measure and optimize how you distribute and promote job posts?

There are tons of channels your organization can use to promote jobs. Social media, job boards, search engines, peer review sites, referral programs, email lists. To make the most of distribution channels and promotional tools, it’s important to:

  • Measure performance from each of these channels (especially if you’re using paid promotion)
  • Understand what’s giving your jobs posts views or driving traffic to your website
  • Track what sources are resulting in started applications and completions
  • Know where your best candidates are coming from and then find out why

Take this information and test it. You can even refine each measurement by job type or title to get even smarter about where and how to promote different jobs. Putting your jobs in the right places can cut your time-to-fill and boost your recruiting efficiency.

4. When was the last time you reviewed your application process (and how you use your ATS)?

Recruiters and hiring managers need plenty of information to make the right hiring decisions. Bulky and cumbersome job applications, however, can turn great candidates away. Take a look at your application and hiring process. How long does it take to complete the application? What’s required to apply? Any redundancies? Is it mobile friendly?

Make sure you’re leveraging your ATS to support your hiring process and deliver a great candidate experience. Assign a step for every stage of your process and simplify the experience for candidates and hiring managers. Mapping out workflows that make sense for your internal hiring processes and your candidate engagement will make it a smooth, effective and favorable experience for everyone.

5. How standardize and responsive is your job offer process?

Extending a job offer is a big step for your company and the candidate. Does your company have a standard job offer letter? What employment laws do you need to keep in mind? Are your employment contracts reviewed and up to date? Consider reviewing your protocols for handling negotiations (or creating them if you don’t have them).

6. What recruitment metrics are your tracking?

Measuring your recruiting efforts and hiring process outcomes tells you how effective you are, what works, what doesn’t and what to improve. Data analytics in recruitment help you unearth this story and work with it. Metrics like cost-per-hire, time-to-fill and quality of hire have major implications on your bottom line. Track these recruitment metrics to continuously improve your hiring process.

7. What is your employee turnover rate? What are you doing to improve employee retention?

Employee retention is an important metric for your hiring fitness. What your company’s turnover rate? Retention is not only important for continuity and productivity. Pay attention to how you’ve recruited the right-fit candidates for your team and what’s keeping employees engaged. Turnover can trigger a vicious cycle of burnout and quitting. Getting ahead of turnover will help your employer brand, employee satisfaction and your bottom line.

Take it a step further: start your recruitment scorecard

Interested in measuring your recruiting operations and performance?

A company’s hiring processes and procedures play a significant role in its ability to attract and engage talent. Though typically unintentional, they are often set up in a way that prevents organizations from reaching their full recruiting potential. An internal recruitment scorecard becomes an indispensable tool.

Learn how to design your recruitment scorecard.

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) solutions from Advanced RPO can help you evaluate and improve your hiring processes to get the talent you need to succeed. Contact us today to learn more about our high-touch solutions.