Too Busy to Recruit? This is How You Save Time5 min read

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How to find time for recruiting when you’re so busy running the business? That’s a dilemma most founders and CEOs have to face from time to time. And although technology has enabled us to automatise many process and tasks, recruiting still requires a great deal of human input.

Recruiting requires not only an in-depth understanding of the business and particularly the role, but also the ability to build and nurture relationships with candidates in every stage. And that takes time.

If you don’t seem to find time in your schedule for posting jobs on multiple platforms, screening CVs, shortlisting candidates, scheduling interviews, sending emails, conducting interviews, assessing candidates and onboarding the best ones (phew), you are not alone. Recruiting is a demanding process. But it has to be done. So roll-up your sleeves and use some methods to hire more efficiently.

Optimise Your Recruitment Workflow

Even the most experienced recruiters have room for improvement when it comes to the recruitment workflow. Recruitment can be repetitive, but the hiring process will not be the same for every candidate or job opening. In some cases, you will want to include additional steps, like assessments or specific skill tests. In other cases, you may need to skip steps entirely, such as when dealing with referral candidates. 

Before optimising your recruitment workflow, it is important to outline the process and understand what are the stages involved. Typically, the hiring process is structured around four main stages: Planning, Sourcing, Selection, Offer. Each of these stages consists of several tasks that can differ depending on specific needs and situations.

It can be time-consuming, but documenting your hiring workflow can bring many benefits in the long-run. It will give you a better understanding of the current process and provide insights into what could be changed to improve hiring efficiency.

One of the best ways to visualise the whole workflow is by creating a recruitment process flowchart. By creating a visual diagram of your recruitment process, you are able to identify potential inefficiencies and learn how to streamline your team’s effort.

Automate What Can Be Automated

Automation isn’t a solution for all the hiccups in the recruitment process. But it can certainly eliminate repetitive tasks and free up time that can be spent in areas that can benefit from the human element. These are some recruitment tasks where technology can be a big ally:

• Finding Talent

Sourcing candidates is probably the biggest challenge recruiters face nowadays. Especially for high-demand jobs in tech, for example, attracting the best people to apply for a job is an arduous task. That’s why recruiting tools that offer integration with job boards can be a powerful way to boost candidate attraction. Job advertisement platforms can also increase your chances to reach candidates that are not necessarily looking for a new career opportunity.

• CV Screening

CV screening is one of the most time-consuming parts of recruiting. Good news is that you don’t need to scrutinise and review every single CV you receive. That are several tools that can help you automate this process without letting any qualified applicant slip through the cracks. A simple change that can help you filter out unqualified candidates event before they apply is to add knockout questions. These questions quickly determine if a candidate fits the basic requirements for a job, such as work permits, skill certificates and language proficiency. There are also tools that parse CVs and match specific skills and qualifications to the job.

• Interview Scheduling

Manually scheduling interviews, going back and forth with candidates can be very inefficient. With so many tools available to easily coordinate meeting arrangements, you have no excuses to spend time dealing with different timezones and conflicting calendars.

• Candidate Shortlisting

As candidates progress in the recruitment pipeline, they provide more information that determines how suitable they are for the job. At some point, you’ll need to identify the best candidates and start inviting them for interviews. To save time and avoid biases, you can use a recruiting tool that generates a shortlist of the best candidates in the pipeline. This tool should take into account all the information gathered for each candidate, including scores, assessments, CV match, etc.

Bring Your Team In

No one succeeds alone. And that is also true for recruitment. Saving time is not the main goal of collaborative recruitment, but it is certainly a welcome side-effect.

Collaborative recruitment is a team-oriented hiring method that creates a less hierarchical system, promoting more synergetic decisions. By involving your team members in the hiring process you not only increase trust and transparency but also create an authentic candidate experience.

Your team members can be involved in a series of hiring tasks, from phone screenings to face-to-face interviews. This will eventually save you a lot of time and effort, but more than that, it will improve the quality of your hiring decisions.

Hire Remotely

Hiring remotely is not only a possibility, it is almost expected. Besides, it brings many advantages to businesses and employees. One of the main advantages is the time saved on interview arrangements and cancellations. A recruiter can go through many online interviews in the same day, what would be more difficult to achieve if it was in a physical context. There are several tools that make remote hiring possible, so if your company hasn’t yet adopted this practice, you have plenty of reasons to reconsider.

Recruitment is not an Option

In business as in life, we need to make commitments and allocate time to things that matter. And recruitment is one of these things. No company can succeed without the right people behind it. If you are building a business and are not spending a big chunk of time managing your team, you are doing something wrong.

Make the best use out of the tools available to make the time you spend recruiting more efficient. Because in the end, every minute spent building your team is the best investment you can make on your business.