The hiring process involves numerous steps to find, attract, evaluate, and hire strong candidates for a company’s open positions. Following a consistent formula can help your organization increase efficiency, improve hiring accuracy, and build a capable workforce. Here are 16 hiring process steps to follow to onboard great people to your team.
16 Must-Follow Hiring Process Steps
1. Assess hiring needs
Hiring stems from a business need that is unmet or will arise soon. Begin by identifying those needs.
Maybe you want to grow your business, which requires a bigger workforce, or you need to solve a problem, but no one on your existing team has the right skills. Maybe staffers in a certain department are overloaded, and you need additional hands on deck to tackle the workload. These needs will highlight which skills and capabilities to look for.
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2. Define the position
Outline the duties you’re looking for your new hire to perform. List the skills that are required, distinguishing between the ones that are essential to do the job versus those that are preferred. When you envision the perfect candidate, what personality traits come to mind? These will help you define the position and create a job description to attract applicants.
Remember, defining the role specifically is essential rather than being broad. If you’re too general, you risk attracting many applicants who aren’t qualified to help you achieve your intended goals. You also risk having candidates drop out further down the hiring funnel as they discover that the job isn’t what they expected or is not a fit for their skills. So, spend time getting this step right.
3. Obtain approval
Get approval from the required party, usually HR or a department head, to hire for the position. This typically involves a requisition, which is a formal request outlining the need for a new employee. During this step, you’ll also get an approved salary budget for the new hire.
4. Post the job opening
Now, it’s time to spread the word about your opening by publicly posting the position. To avoid losing precious time, you’ll want to do this as soon as possible after you receive requisition approval.
The first place most companies post job openings is on the careers page of their website. This way, you have a URL to point interested applicants to during the next hiring process step, which is promoting the opening. You can also post it on LinkedIn as well as job boards like ZipRecruiter and Indeed.
5. Promote the opening
This step helps your opening gain visibility, especially among the audiences likely to include the type of candidates you’re looking to attract. Promotional tactics include posting to the company’s social media profiles, having employees share the opening, running paid ads, and posting within online communities.
Tailor your promotional strategy to the position. Suppose you’re looking to hire an entry-level customer service representative. In that case, you’ll find the right candidates in different places than if you were seeking a seasoned executive to join the C-suite.
6. Ask for referrals
Soliciting referrals from current employees should be a non-negotiable hiring step for every single job opening you have. Referrals deliver the best return of any hiring method when it comes to new hire success and longevity.
Make it easy for employees to view the job requirements and recommend friends and acquaintances they think would be a good fit. Enable online referrals and incentivize them with enticing rewards like referral bonuses and other perks.
Related: How to Make Your Employee Referral Program a Powerful Recruitment Tool
7. Identify potential candidates
Depending on your industry, the position, and the current labor market, you may also want or need to conduct outbound recruiting to attract applicants. This is the process of actively seeking out qualified candidates and inviting them to apply for your job. It’s often done with the help of a third-party recruiter.
A recruiter has an extensive network they can tap into to find suitable candidates for your opening. They can also source candidates on platforms like LinkedIn and reach out via InMail to gauge their interest in a new opportunity. This method is effective for reaching passive candidates (candidates who aren’t actively job searching), a category that often includes top performers.
8. Screen candidates
Once applicants have begun to come in, it’s time to review them. Review resumes and cover letters and conduct pre-screenings to see whether applicants meet your minimum qualifications.
In a phone screening, you (or a recruiter or member of your internal hiring team) will ask basic questions to establish whether an applicant possesses the baseline skills and experience required to do the job. If they do not, eliminate their application from the pile.
9. Create a shortlist
Based on your screenings, decide which applicants warrant an interview. It’s a good idea to set targets for how many candidates you want to interview for each job opening. This might be a hard number (e.g., interview a minimum of five candidates) or a percentage (e.g., interview 20% of applicants).
Setting targets for your shortlist ensures you consider a range of qualified applicants. It can prevent tunnel vision that stems from placing too much emphasis on a single appealing quality in any one candidate that could blind you to a better, more qualified choice.
Related: How to Shortlist Candidates for Interviews (With Criteria Examples)
10. Conduct interviews
This is the most time-consuming and labor-intensive step in the hiring process. Rightfully so, because it will be the most time you get to spend with an applicant before making them an offer to join your team, so you’ll want to make sure it’s time well spent.
Decide which format is best for your position. In addition to the traditional one-on-one interview format, consider group interviews, panel interviews, virtual interviews, and pre-recorded interviews, all of which may be better suited to certain roles and situations.
Develop a list of interview questions ahead of time based on the job description. If your job posting calls for five essential skills, ask questions to identify whether a candidate possesses those skills. If you’re looking for someone with a certain personality trait, use behavioral and situational questions to identify how those traits might manifest in your workplace.
As you conduct interviews, complete candidate scoring sheets either in the moment or immediately following each conversation. These help you objectively assess candidates based on the criteria you’ve outlined and give you a way to compare candidates against one another once all interviews are finished.
11. Complete pre-hire assessments
In addition to interviews, you may wish to incorporate objective pre-hire assessments into your hiring process. These structured tests can assess hard and soft skills, personality, and cultural fit. They’re useful for eliminating individual bias that can creep in during interviews and identifying technical skills that can be challenging for non-proficient interviewers to identify.
12. Select a top candidate
Now, it’s time to decide which candidate stands out among the rest as the best fit for the job. You may want to conduct additional interviews or have candidates meet with other stakeholders to weigh in on the decision.
13. Speak with references
Ask for and contact the references of your top choice. We recommend doing this before making an offer rather than as a formality after the fact, as many companies do. Though they take time to contact and speak with, references can provide valuable insight into a candidate’s work style and flag any items of concern that may not have come across during the interview. Reference checks also allow you to validate key details of a candidate’s application, like their employment dates and position titles.
14. Complete background checks and drug testing
Background checks and drug testing aren’t necessary for all positions, but they can be a valuable safeguard against hiring the wrong person. Consider using a background check and drug screening provider that integrates with your applicant tracking system so that a third party can automatically initiate these items as soon as you’ve decided on a winning candidate.
15. Make an offer
Now it’s time to solidify your choice with a formal offer. Many companies opt to make the initial offer verbally, either in person or on the phone, then follow up with a written offer via email. This allows you to personally communicate your enthusiasm for the candidate and answer any questions they may have, which can increase the likelihood of your offer being accepted.
Be prepared to negotiate. If the candidate comes back with a counteroffer, a salary between three and seven percent is a reasonable range, so factor this into your initial proposition.
16. Onboard new hire
The final step in the hiring process technically happens after a hire is made, but it’s one that should not be overlooked as it can make or break your new employee’s success: onboarding. New hire onboarding consists of two parts: orientation, during which an employee receives important information about the company and their employment, and training, during which the employee is given job-specific instructions and guidance to help them get up and running in their new role.
Other Important Steps in the Hiring Process
You should take a couple more steps throughout the hiring process to streamline tasks and ensure a smooth candidate experience.
Communicating with candidates
At every stage of the hiring process, communicate with candidates to let them know what’s happening with the position. For example, you might send a confirmation email to let candidates know their application has been received and then, periodically after that, keep them informed about your progress in reviewing applicants.
Maintaining a positive, personal, and consistent line of contact with candidates helps keep them interested in the job and avoids the frustration of being left in the dark.
Using an ATS
An applicant tracking system, or ATS, helps you stay on top of all the steps we outlined above and keeps the hiring process moving. It can even tackle some of the steps for you, like scheduling interviews when you’ve narrowed down a shortlist or distributing pre-hire assessments to your finalists.
By following a methodical hiring process, you’ll be able to attract and hire great candidates efficiently while ensuring no important steps are missed.
Related: What Is Recruitment Automation and How Can You Use It to Hire Smarter?
