How to Set Up a Recruitment Process from the Ground Up

Mind Design specialises in creating recruitment strategies and fostering the right mindset. We have navigated hundreds of cases in startups, scale-ups, and large corporations.

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Recently, we developed a specialised Notion template for our clients, incorporating all the nuances and based on our real-world experience of launching recruitment processes from scratch. This template is now publicly available for download.

① Start With Strategy

First and foremost, you must define your strategy. Strategy is the crucial element, without which copying existing practices may lead to negative outcomes. Here are some example strategies:

Young Startup: We are a very young startup and are unsure of the positions we need to fill to grow. We have just secured funding and are panicking about what to do next.
Scale-up: We have a good product-market fit and need to rapidly expand our company in several directions: marketing, sales, and support. All these positions are new to the company, and we are not yet sure whom we want to hire.
Stable Growth: We are a steadily growing company with clearly defined regions of presence, and we need to hire people for well-established processes. We understand our hiring criteria based on past experience.
Enterprise: We are an enterprise company with extensive compliance requirements and need to hire people with extremely precise criteria.

As we can see, hiring strategies will vary in flexibility and quality criteria based on these scenarios.

② Define your budget

After choosing a strategy, you must define your budget. This crucial element is often overlooked. However, you must clearly understand the cost of hiring a specific specialist and, if this figure inflates, draw the appropriate conclusions.

For instance, if you are hiring a mid-level developer in Spain and have already spent more than €5000 on the recruitment process, you should reconsider your hiring criteria and other factors. The average hiring cost is around €3500-4000. This includes recruiter time, hiring manager time, promotion costs, referral systems, and much more.

You might also consider engaging a recruitment agency, which can often save the budget for certain positions. Below is a calculator for average hiring costs:

It's important to keep the budget in mind, as it reflects the efficiency of the hiring process itself. Just as in marketing, where large budgets can be wasted with zero results, recruitment can also consume significant funds without yielding the right candidate.

③ Find your channels

Depending on the specifics of your position, you need to utilise the appropriate candidate sourcing channels. There are numerous job boards and job sites such as LinkedIn, Indeed, Wellfound (AngelList), Upwork, and many others. Additionally, there are various Slack channels for specific fields (e.g., Online Genius for marketing) and Discord communities.

It's crucial never to limit yourself to one source of candidates – diversification of channels is key to successful hiring. Many recruiters in large companies often rely on the false metric of the number of applicants at the Apply stage. You might see large numbers there, but don't be misled – until you've tried different channels and direct searches (headhunting), you won't have a true understanding of the candidate market.

④ Set data-driven metrics (not figure-driven)

As mentioned earlier, metrics need to be used and understood correctly. If many candidates respond, it doesn't necessarily mean your HR brand and hiring process are in good shape.

To avoid illusions, according to CIPD, we should use comprehensive metrics, which may include:

Time-to-hire
Cost of hiring (per role)
Offer acceptance rate
Candidate diversity (measurable by sources, resumes, and hiring manager opinions)
Conversion rate at different interview stages
Quality of CV and interview process
Job tenure (usually measured at more than 3 months, more than 6 months, more than 1 year)
Candidate satisfaction with the interview process (both hired and non-hired)

There may be other metrics depending on the context.

⑤ Do regular follow-ups (15-minute-rule)

Regular follow-ups and syncs with hiring managers are a crucial part of the hiring process, helping to avoid delays. This is particularly important for startups and scale-ups, where there is a high degree of uncertainty. Many find this part the most burdensome. However, in practice, even short weekly syncs significantly reduce hiring time and improve criteria alignment.

In our practice, 15 minutes per week with each client is sufficient to gather quick feedback on previous candidates and hear updates or requests.

⑥ Do some magic with tools

All of the above can be packaged into the right tools. Don't rush to pay for expensive ATS immediately. We have built a complete, complex hiring process within the free version of Asana over several years for one company. For many new clients, we set up our team play in Notion to start the search immediately.

For more extensive searches in a steadily growing company, a full-fledged ATS system is recommended to ensure compliance. We have worked with Ashby, Recruitee, Greenhouse, PeopleForce, Manatal, Vincere, and others. It's hard to highlight the advantages of one system over another, and many reviews cover this, but remember that this system is not only for recruiters but also for hiring managers – agree on the right tool with them to avoid losing half of its usefulness.

Thank you for reading this article. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out, and we will be happy to consult.

Denis Nushtaev

2024-07-21 17:28 hiring