4 Fatal Recruitment Flaws Costing You Candidates

4 Fatal Recruitment Flaws Costing You Candidates This post is sponsored by TeamHire for JIRA, the  collaborative recruitment tool making it easier to source and secure  new employees. If youre struggling to  secure fresh talent to your business, its time to find out whats wrong.  Youre the common denominator every time a candidate drops out, not them. If you dont take time to fix a faulty recruitment process, youll forever be understaffed, lamenting about the ones that got away. Its  not them, its you Great talent  will make or break your business. Behind every successful  company is a cohort of cutting-edge candidates  coming up with concepts and delivering results. Good people are hard to find and the best ones will have  dozens of headhunters swarming around them at any given time. In order to secure top talent, youve got to act quickly. A recruitment process which is frustrating and drawn-out will lose you good candidates, regardless of how amazing the role is.  If your business is  making these 4 recruiting mistakes,  be prepared to lose candidates: 1.  A lack of communication Disconnect between hiring managers, HR and SMEs causes  major delays throughout the  recruitment  process.  When  decision makers are on different pages,  candidates are given mixed messages and time is wasted going over old ground to match up expectations.  Information about a candidates profile and application should be updated regularly, and kept in one central location  that  is  accessible by everyone involved in the hiring process. 2. A frustrating interview process Interviewing can be a stressful  process for candidates, and one which requires  a lot of time and effort.    When  interviews are poorly organised,  conducted by  inexperienced staff members and repetitive, candidates become disengaged. Bringing a candidate back in for round after round, only to be asked the same questions is incredibly time-wasting and unnecessarily lengthens the hiring cycle time.  When multiple interviewers are involved, its important they communicate with one another to  discuss the objectives and outcomes of each interview. Scheduling interviews  is time-consuming,  so using a panel approach or consecutive shorter meetings in one day will  minimises delay to the hiring process, and the chances of a candidate to getting bored and accepting another offer. 3.  No meaningful / timely feedback Making candidates wait a long time for vague feedback  is extremely frustrating for them.  Most hires take between 1-2 months to finalise, from application to offer. For a candidate, thats a long time to be kept  in limbo, and dragging out this process will kill momentum.  Providing personalised feedback as soon as possible will help keep top-performing  candidates interested in the opportunity. It will also encourage interviewers to consolidate their reviews quicker, which will dramatically reduce  cycle time  (to ideally between  1 and 3 weeks). 4. Failure to  measure,  report and improve Regardless of how good your recruitment process is, sooner or later you will need  to improve  things. Without trackable metrics, it is nearly impossible to adjust the process accordingly and spot problem areas. If youre not working towards a leaner and more agile recruitment operation,  your inhibiting the chance of streamlining recruitment. Without KPIs  in place, your companys recruitment process will continue to be drawn out and flawed.  Monitoring candidate cycle times, the quality of your talent pipeline and effectiveness of various lead sources will help you redesign  a more effective process. The answer starts with  a great ATS Candidate profiles  and all related recruitment activity should be kept in one central location,  accessible by everyone who plays a part in the process, not just HR.  Applicant tracking systems are supposed to make  talent attraction more  manageable, and facilitate  the sharing of information. Is yours only used by HR?  The great ones will  automate time-consuming tasks for you and offer established feedback communication channels. A great ATS will also encourage collaboration between  interviewers and decision makers. About the author: Wojciech Seliga is the CEO Founder of Spartez, which powers  TeamHire for JIRA.