How to reduce time to close a job 10x using digital tools
The record level of staff shortages - especially in certain sectors of the Russian labor market - reached its peak in the summer of 2023, consequently provoking an increase in the time and cost of hiring employees. The crisis situation stimulates the search for updating of recruiters' tools. Let's try to understand how to optimize and accelerate the process of recruitment and employment in a company.
The classic recruitment scheme, when a candidate manually fills out a resume and waits for a recruiter in a meeting room, is now increasingly being replaced by various IT solutions. No one is surprised by online questionnaires and video interviews - all this is convenient and saves time for both parties, but such “digitalization” still retains all the “disadvantages” of the traditional approach.
The disadvantages of classic recruiting include:
Lengthy candidate matching process. The recruiter acts as a preliminary filter for finding relevant candidates on the labor market. The process of matching a job seeker often involves managers and experts for whom hiring is not a priority. As a consequence, candidate matching is delayed.
Lack of transparency in the hiring process. Without an automated system, it can be difficult for a recruiter to tell what stage of consideration a particular applicant is at. What if a colleague or manager needs to do this in the recruiter's absence?
There is no complete history of interaction with candidates. To be more precise, it is there, but it is scattered across different channels - e-mail, messengers, etc., so it is very difficult to get a complete picture.
Difficulties with searching for candidates in an unstructured database. If you collect resumes in the form of files on a computer, then after a few months it is very difficult to find a person who seems to have the right skills.
Problems and solutions
In the summer of 2023, the labor market was in a unique situation: according to the resource HeadHunter, the level of staff shortage reached the maximum values in the history of observations.
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The reasons for this crisis are some positive changes in the economy and the recovery of consumer demand. All this is directly reflected in the labor market: companies are intensifying their activities, looking for vacant niches and need new employees. This is especially noticeable in trade, manufacturing, construction and transportation, where the demand for staff significantly exceeds the supply. For example, the sales and customer service sector accounts for 22.6% (almost a quarter!) of active vacancies on HH.ru and only 17% of active resumes (~ 1/6).
In the current situation, the average period of hiring a specialist is lengthened by one and a half times and more, and this increases the cost of hiring. Thus, not only the realization of strategic goals, but also the operational indicators of the business begin to depend heavily on how quickly HR-service can close the current vacancies.
“Pipe” instead of “funnel”.
The unique situation requires new solutions. In the classic version, candidates go through the stages of the “funnel” with screening at each level: phone interview, testing, interview, etc. In the new conditions of time deficit, an alternative variant called “Pipeline”, in which there are much fewer stages and shorter terms of these stages, will be more effective:
Contact - preliminary conversation with selected candidates.
Test - performance of a test task.
Interview - interview with a supervisor.
Admission - conclusion of the employment contract. It remains to figure out how to implement this process.
What to do right now?
Based on their experience in the HR sphere, TeamFactor experts offer several recommendations on how to make the work of HR services more efficient.
Now it is necessary to improve interaction with candidates - use all available communication channels: messengers, telephone and video communication, e-mail. Thus, transferring communication to messengers significantly increases conversion rates compared to the phone: many people are afraid of spam calls and are reluctant to pick up the phone when they see a call from an unknown number.
It's important to speed up the candidate selection process and don't take too long to agree on an offer. In the early days of rotation of resumes on a job board, a strong specialist can receive several offers per day, and previously it was possible to organize a long selection in several stages, today, while you are still discussing the candidate, he is already signing a contract with a faster employer.
Where you can - move the hiring stages online. There are many options here, including asynchronous video interviews (on-demand) and other options discussed in this article.
If possible - sign your employment contract online. Today, this can easily be done with an electronic signature. When your candidate has signed the employment contract he/she will usually stop considering offers from other employers. Therefore, signing the employment contract electronically increases the conversion rate among the final candidates who have entered the workforce. These recommendations will bring results on their own, but they will be much more effective if you implement them in your recruiting automation process.
From theory to practice
What should a system look like that allows you to reduce the time for candidate selection and make the procedure itself more efficient? First of all, the following features should be implemented in it:
CRM for working with candidates - promotion of the candidate through the “funnel”, tracking of the status and terms of approval, a history feed on the candidate.
One-stop communication - interactive interaction with the candidate, support for different communication channels (messengers, SMS, phone, etc.).
Coordination with hiring manager - a “desktop” for coordination of the candidate's hiring process by the participants of the recruitment process, integration with corporate calendars for scheduling interviews.
Chatbots - using them both for recruitment and adaptation of personnel.
Integration with jobboards - publication of vacancies on profile sites with job ads (HH, SuperJob, Avito, etc.).
Online candidate assessment - conducting video interviews, entrance testing, etc.
Such a system, such as TeamRecruit, allows you to flexibly organize the process of selecting the right candidates up to the signing of the contract.
Recruitment steps
Let's see how using an automated system can optimize the recruitment process.
1. Harmonization of the job application.
Based on the job profile and competency model, a vacancy is created in the system and criteria for evaluating candidates are defined. Further, according to the developed route, the vacancy is coordinated with internal services. Each participant of the approval procedure receives a notification with information on the vacancy and can make comments on it:
As a result, after approval, the basic characteristics of the vacancy are recorded in the system: it is not only the salary, but also, for example, the requirements for language skills or the availability of a driver's license.
2. Mass publication of vacancies, uploading of responses, search for candidates. Through the system you can place ads on specialized sites, corporate portal and social networks. After publication, all responses and resumes will also be uploaded to the system, where they can be conveniently sorted by different criteria. The recruiter's desktop is a kanban board that shows the candidates that are being worked with.
There is a calendar, which allows you to coordinate meetings with other participants in the process, and other tabs with specific names. For example, the My Jobs tab allows you to view all final candidates.
Having received a response from an applicant, you can offer him/her a suitable messenger or other channel for communication, specifying which option will be more convenient for him/her. Processing the received messages, you can make response templates for accepted, deferred and rejected candidates.
3. Testing, meetings and video interviews.
With the help of the system “TeamRecruit” you can conveniently schedule meetings and send reminders to candidates and internal customer. Here you can integrate with Google and Outlook calendars to simplify your work.
Asynchronous video interviewing is a productive way of assessment, saving time for HR specialists. When using an integrated video service, a candidate receives a web link that he or she can follow at a convenient time to complete an interview or interactively answer test questions in a dialog format. The peculiarity is that the recruiter himself is not directly involved in the process, as the questions in the form of text or video are recorded in advance.
Later, viewing the recording, the recruiter can send it to interested parties or immediately start a discussion.
4. Approval of the successful candidate with the internal customer.
Once approved, suitable candidates are sent to the hiring manager. The candidate's profile contains maximum information necessary for decision making: resume: questionnaires, results of tests and surveys, video interview record, correspondence with the candidate via messengers and mail, and even record of conversations (when using ip-telephony).
The card has:
Last name, first name middle name and photo of the candidate.
General information about him/her.
Contact information.
Interaction feed - records of communication through various communication channels.
Result of the review.
Responsible employee supervising the candidate.
All information is presented visually: the manager only has to study it and approve or reject the candidate. Also here it is possible to have a discussion about the candidate, if necessary involving decision makers.
Such discussion within the system allows to reduce the time for filling a vacancy very seriously: in TopFactor's experience, there is a case when a candidate for an IT developer was approved in three hours instead of the planned one and a half weeks.
Then, a card is automatically filled out for the approved candidate in the staff record system and the onboarding procedure begins. It is important to note that due to its speed, online employment increases the conversion rate when going to work: a person rightly considers that he or she is already employed and stops considering other options.
Innovation in the hiring process
The above diagram is a simplified version of what a recruiting CRM system can do. In conclusion, let's briefly touch on other methods of optimizing HR hiring processes offered by TeamFactor.
Utilizing Artificial Intelligence
This is an additional option in the system that helps to increase the number of candidates at the initial stages of consideration and speed up the decision making on candidates without increasing costs.
Data from behavioral interviews and job seekers' competency assessments were used to train the neural network. As a result, the user gets an accurate prediction of the candidate's personality traits.
A robot for processing responses
The use of such a service will free the recruiter from monotonous actions that will be taken by the robot. For example, it can be a button in a vacancy announcement. By clicking on it, the candidate receives an invitation to a video interview, and then to take a survey in a chatbot.
In this scheme, the recruiter operates with ready-made results, frees himself from routine work and gains much more time to make the right decisions.
Chatbots
With the help of chatbots it is possible to automate many routine HR processes:
Recruitment.
Assessment and entrance testing.
Employment.
To give an example, let's take a closer look at how a hiring chatbot works. Once connected, the candidate must write his phone number to be authorized, and then - agree to the processing of personal data and send the necessary documents.
Having received the package of documents, the HR specialist makes changes in the “Employee's Personal Cabinet” or in “1C:ZUP”. Now it remains only to send the candidate for signing the employment contract and other regulatory documents to enroll him in the staff. When signing, “Goskluch” or other types of electronic signatures are used.
Employee's Personal Cabinet
Through the use of the “Personal Cabinet ” it is possible to simplify the procedure of employment. Through the Personal Cabinet you can sign an employment contract, and in the future - requests to different services of your company.
In this case, the algorithm of employment will be as follows:
After approval, the candidate is invited to the Personal Cabinet and agrees to use the personnel electronic document flow.
The candidate sends scanned copies of the required documents.
ES is connected (e.g. free signature “Goskluch”).
The employment contract and other regulations are signed.
Thus, the TeamFactor’s system “TeamRecruit”, developed by a domestic vendor and taking into account current trends in recruiting, will be an excellent assistant in automating the interaction of HR with candidates and turning them into full-fledged employees in online mode.
