Bridging the Gap Between Recruiters and Hiring Managers is an Ugly Business

It’s no secret that corralling the hiring team is one of the biggest pain points in recruiting. The hiring process involves collaboration between people in many different roles and functional areas of the business. And it’s not always pretty.

Recruiters say they spend far too much time chasing hiring managers, scheduling interviews, and doing “busy” work that cuts into the time they could spend finding that perfect candidate. They note that miscommunication with hiring teams is rampant. Hiring team members are often late for interviews and in sending interview feedback. On average, it takes over 17 hours for a hiring team member to provide interview feedback. Wow! Not only does this drag out the recruiting process, but there’s nothing more off-putting to a candidate than when a company is unorganized and uncoordinated during the interview process.

So, how can you increase collaboration and participation with your hiring team? There’s been so much discussion about mobile job seekers, but mobile technology has the potential to totally transform how companies hire by accelerating the recruiting process, allowing hiring teams to communicate seamlessly, and collaborate on the go.

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First, Get on the Same Page About the Ideal Candidate

On the surface, recruiters and hiring teams have the same goal—to fill the role with that perfect candidate. But who is that ideal candidate? To start off your recruiting process on the right foot, it’s absolutely essential to check in with your hiring manager and get on the same page about the requirements and expectations for the role.

Here’s a checklist of requirements to validate with your hiring manager:

• Professional Skills: What is the ideal candidate’s background? What are the must-have skills for this role? What will a successful candidate look like? What do you expect them to achieve?
• Culture Fit: What is the hiring manager’s management style? What is the department or team’s culture and personality? What key personality traits and characteristics should the candidate have to fit into the team?
• Investigate the Intangibles: Hiring managers often have ideas about an ideal candidate based on “soft” qualities that aren’t addressed in the job requirements. Get beyond qualifications that look good on paper and make sure you understand the type of person your hiring manager wants to see in the role.
• Example Candidates: Send some examples of model and flawed candidates to the hiring manager to make sure you’re both in alignment about an ideal hire.

Your 5 Step Mobile Recruiting Makeover

1. Make qualifying candidates a dream (not a nightmare).

If your organization is like most, the candidate qualification process can be a logistical nightmare.

Overlapping communication, endless emails, and hard to track down hiring managers can add days or weeks to the process. Sound familiar? You’re not alone.

Mobile technology can change this dynamic by taking the candidate qualification process out of email. A mobile app allows you to collaborate and communicate with your hiring teams on the go. You share possible candidates via the app, and your hiring manager can access and review resumes anytime, anywhere from their phone, tablet, or device of their choosing. With the click of a button they can approve or reject a candidate. And you get instant feedback. No chasing needed.

2. Collaborate, don’t clash, with your hiring teams.

An unfortunate side effect of the recruiting process is that it can put recruiters and hiring teams at odds. While they share a goal—to find and hire that perfect candidate quickly and efficiently—communication frustrations are rampant.

Recruiters often complain that hiring teams don’t know what they want and don’t provide timely feedback. While hiring teams criticize recruiters for not moving fast enough or communicating frequently enough during the hiring process. What’s more, these issues grow exponentially if you have a large team weighing in on a hire. How do you bring everyone together without driving yourself crazy?

Here’s another place where technology can smooth the way and solve these communication glitches. Try these ideas:

• Before you bring a candidate in for an interview, review interview questions with your hiring team.
• Have a check-in to align the team and make sure they all know the key areas of need. Make this easy by contacting your hiring group through your ATS.
• Give everyone access to a mobile hiring app that becomes your central communications hub.

3. Speed the interview process.

Scheduling candidate interviews often turns into a recruiter’s worst nightmare. Coordinating schedules across multiple interviewers is a major challenge and even a minor change in interview time can send you scurrying to revamp a schedule. While it’s painful to manage internally, it can also leave a bad taste in your candidate’s mouth if you have to reschedule several times. Or worse yet, you could lose that perfect candidate to the competition because they were more efficient at getting through the interview process.

Here’s another place where technology is your friend. Your mobile hiring app is the one-stop shop for your hiring teams to get everything they need to maintain interview momentum. Interviewers now have one location to review a candidate’s background. And you have a central way to communicate with your entire hiring team. Not only does this make for a speedier interview process, it also makes for a better experience for your candidate and it’s a faster route to get to that perfect hire.

4. Ensure a seamless interview day.

The interview process has a huge impact on candidate experience. In our Job Seeker Nation study we found that nearly half of candidates note that the interview made the biggest impact on their impression of a job.

Just the interview day itself can make or break your candidate’s experience with your company. How do you ensure the schedule is seamless and your candidate isn’t left sitting in a conference room waiting?

With your mobile hiring app, you can:

• Track interview progress in real time
• Have interviewers check in and out of an interview in one tap of the finger” or something simple.
• Alert interviewers automatically when their interview is coming up and tell them where they need to be

As a result, your interview schedule goes off without a hitch and your candidate has a great experience. Meanwhile your interviewers know exactly where to be and when.

5. Get better feedback faster.

Securing feedback on a candidate after interview day is often an exercise in frustration. Chasing down busy hiring teams by email or phone is a common scenario and a major headache for recruiters. You want to get feedback fast and the last thing you want to do is keep a candidate hanging.

Your mobile hiring app makes the process of providing feedback as simple as clicking a button. Hiring teams can evaluate candidates on the go—anytime and anywhere. For recruiters that means no more waiting for days for feedback. Just a few clicks and your hiring teams can deliver near instantaneous evaluations. All of a sudden that evaluation process that took days shrinks to mere hours, and chances are, you’ll get better and more detailed feedback while the interview is still fresh in their minds.

You can’t afford NOT to makeover your recruiting process

The growth in mobile devices and mobile apps has radically changed the way people look for jobs. And recruiting teams stand to benefit just as much from mobile technology. Mobile recruiting fosters closer collaboration between hiring managers and recruiters, shortening time to hire at critical intervals during the hiring process. With a mobile app that acts as a “virtual mobile recruiting assistant” you can partner more closely with hiring teams and close on great candidates more quickly.

Armed with our tips, you’re ready to give your recruiting process a mobile makeover. Get ready to reap the benefits. You and your hiring teams win, but perhaps more importantly, a smooth interview and hiring process make for a great candidate experience. And in today’s hotly competitive job market, that could make all the difference in your chances of closing that perfect candidate.

The Jobvite Hiring Team Mobile App

Collaborate with your entire hiring team from anywhere, at any time.

Key Features:

• Action-oriented activity stream to complete pending hiring tasks
• Simple candidate screening tool to determine whether or not an applicant is a
  good fit
• Robust, mobile-optimized candidate profiles to research talent on the go
• Real-time interview schedules and day-of-interview alerts to ensure everyone
  is prepared
• Powerful internal messaging system to ping your entire hiring team
• Completely configurable evaluation forms to get the team’s input
• Click here to learn more »

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