This is one of the hardest things when starting a company, and anyone who has ever been involved in a hiring process might agree that it’s extremely difficult to recruit.
In the end, every company has its own recruitment process with several steps, depending on its culture, the type of profiles it is looking for, and its hiring philosophy. But no matter the company, a recruitment process is well-designed if each single step fulfills two functions simultaneously: FILTER & ENGAGE.
Any step of your recruitment process is useless if everyone passes it. The point of each step is to differentiate the great candidates and identify the ones you know for sure you won’t hire.
Ideally, each step should filter at least 50% of candidates. For jobs where you receive many applications, you can even create a first step that filters 90%+ of candidates (= maximum 10% of candidates pass to the next round). For us, it’s the automated entry-test.
Your gut feeling is also extremely important. Ask yourself:
That’s where it becomes tricky. Each step must motivate the candidate to join the company. The more they progress into the hiring process, the more they must be motivated to join the team. We try to achieve that by providing full transparency with the candidates about how we work, the people they will interact with, making them spend time at the office and meet many different people from the team as long as they pass the interview rounds.
If you decide not to continue with them, you must show transparency about why and give constructive feedback, even if it’s sometimes very hard and it can take time.
If you think of these two dimensions on each of your recruitment steps, you can provide candidates with a great experience even if it doesn’t end up with an offer.