Streamline your recruitment process with a recruiting workflow

A recruiting workflow, which is sometimes called a recruiting process flow or a recruiting flowchart, is a way of visually presenting the steps that recruiters can follow to hire an employee. Developing a good workflow streamlines the procedure by helping everyone involved with recruitment understand the company’s practices and their roles in the process. They can then work efficiently toward the common goal of securing the best talent. Understanding the typical steps involved with a recruiting workflow and how to create one can help your business improve its recruitment practices.

Steps of a recruiting workflow

A recruiting workflow details the steps from determining a staffing need to hiring the right candidate. The most common steps for any business are:

Identify the hiring need. This step involves defining the role and its responsibilities, the ideal hire’s skills and qualities, and their position in a department hierarchy.
Prepare a job description. A good description explains what the role is, including its location and benefits, and what sort of candidate will ideally fill it.
Develop a recruitment plan. A good plan considers several different outlets, such as job websites and internal searches, based on the type of candidates you hope to attract.
Execute the recruitment plan. After developing the recruitment plan, you can put it into practice and begin searching for candidates.
Review applicants. Compare applications to job requirements and create a shortlist of candidates whose experience and skills match your business needs.
Interview candidates. Interview applicants on the shortlist as many times as necessary to determine whose skills, experience, and personality most closely match your requirements.
Check references. Speak to people who know the best candidate to learn more about them and verify their claims.
Make a job offer. If the best candidate’s references check out, you can offer them the vacant role.

You may also have extra steps, depending on your business practices. Some of these steps may include:

Conducting phone screenings
Giving technical tests
Drafting reports on interviewed candidates
Notifying candidates of the status of their applications
Sending rejection emails
Sending thank-you letters to interviewees

You can also extend your workflow and include hiring steps, such as providing a contract and onboarding the new hire.

How to create a recruiting workflow

Creating a recruiting workflow involves visually representing the steps in the recruitment process so people understand this process and their role in it. You can draw a recruiting workflow on a whiteboard where everyone in the HR team can see it or use a program to create a workflow that you can either print out or store in the cloud. Many programs have templates that you can customize to reflect your recruiting process. You can create your recruiting workflow by taking the following steps:

Choose the orientation. Your workflow should move logically, such as from top to bottom or from left to right.
Divide the page into swimlanes. Add a new swimlane for each team or person involved in the recruitment process, as well as any automated processes.
Add boxes for each step. Each box should sit in the appropriate swimlane to show who’s responsible for it.
Connect boxes with arrows to show flow. You can write text inside arrows to clarify the process.
Add diamonds at decision points. These shapes show points where the flow may not be linear, such as when references don’t check out or a candidate declines a job offer.
Share your recruiting workflow. All stakeholders, including management and people involved in the recruitment process, should receive a copy of the latest recruiting workflow.

“Developing a good workflow streamlines the procedure by helping everyone involved with recruitment understand the company’s practices and their roles in the process. They can then work efficiently toward the common goal of securing the best talent.”

Tips for improving recruiting workflows

Reviewing your recruiting workflow and improving it can make the process more effective for your business. These tips can help you make a good workflow even better:

Communicate with your team

Ask the people using your recruiting workflow for their feedback. Encourage them to be honest and tell you what they think is working and what isn’t. You can use their feedback to create a workflow that’s more effective and user friendly. It’s beneficial to ask for feedback regularly, especially when you make adjustments or new people become involved in the process.

Color-code it

Color-coding can make your recruiting workflow clearer and easier to read. A popular color-coding option uses separate colors for each phase of the process. For example, you may have one color for the planning phase, another for collecting applications, and another for reviewing applicants. You can also color-code your workflow based on departments or alter colors throughout the process depending on their status. Use just a few colors, because too many may confuse users.

Automate steps

Automating steps makes the recruiting process faster and reduces the demands on the HR team. Look for any processes currently performed by employees that technology can help you achieve automatically. You can move those processes to an automated swimlane. For example, rather than asking an employee to assess all job applications, you might use an applicant tracking system to evaluate applications and create a shortlist.

Reduce steps where practical

The more steps you have, the longer the recruitment process is likely to take. Reducing the number of steps can help you fill a vacant position sooner. It can also increase the prospect of securing the ideal candidate, as the best people are unlikely to spend too long looking for work. The longer you spend deliberating, the more likely it is that strong candidates will receive offers from your competitors. Look for ways to tighten up the recruiting workflow. For example, rather than having several one-on-one interviews with different stakeholders, you might introduce panel interviews for your candidates.

Add expected timeframes

While a long recruitment process can impact productivity and reduce your chance of securing a high-quality candidate, you may also miss applications from the best people if you rush through it. Adding expected timeframes to your workflow can help your team understand how long each step in the recruiting process should take. Your team should use any suggested timeframes as a guide, as recruiting for niche and highly skilled positions can take longer than filling unskilled roles.

Move it to the cloud

Moving your recruiting workflow to the cloud can benefit your team in several ways. You can grant access or withdraw privileges based on your needs. Cloud-based security is robust, so you can feel confident that only designated employees can view the workflow or make changes. When someone updates the workflow, you can also be sure that everyone’s viewing the latest version.

Developing a recruiting workflow takes time, but it’s worth the effort to create a clear plan that sets your HR team up for success. Take note of your workflow’s results and improve it over time to help everyone involved with recruitment work efficiently to secure the best candidates for your business.