Recruiting Mistakes: Efficiency Is Everything

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Contents

• Pressure from hiring managers is high
• Copy and paste on job postings is widespread
• Give candidates the chance to check whether they fit a role
• Why application forms need to match the role
• Why talent pulls the plug too soon
• Conclusion: don't hit the gas in the wrong place
• Frequently asked questions

TL;DR

Efficiency in recruiting must not come at the cost of employer appeal. Recycling old job postings by copy and paste or using one-size-fits-all application forms saves time in the short term, but it risks outdated information, poorly matched applications and more drop-offs. If instead you deliberately keep your job postings and forms current and precise, you get better applications and cut application drop-offs by up to 70 percent.

!A woman in an orange blouse looks up at her tablet with surprise and unease, while two colleagues review documents in the background. A symbol for the frustration caused by a rushed recruiting process.

Author: Dominik Becker · Published: 15/04/2022

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When we talk with our customers, they come up again and again: certain recruiting mistakes that have settled into people's minds. One of them is this. Efficiency in hiring is everything. Of course it's good when everything in recruiting runs quickly and smoothly. But efficiency must not come at the cost of employer appeal. And that happens fast when you focus blindly on speed, speed and more speed. In this article we explain why.

Pressure from hiring managers is high

Recruiters like you know this all too well. The pressure from hiring managers and leadership to fill open roles is immense. And that makes sense. Every day a role stays open costs real money.

We once ran the numbers with a cost-of-vacancy calculator. For an open role with an average annual gross salary of around 50,000 euros, your company loses about 400 euros a day on average. And since it can easily take two months or longer to find the right person, quite a sum builds up before you know it.

Copy and paste on job postings is widespread

If we may give you one tip here: don't give in to the temptation to pull an old job posting out of the drawer, patch it up quickly and then run it on all sorts of job boards. We understand the thinking behind it. It's more efficient. And it's true. You can't get a job posting online any faster than with this copy-and-paste routine. But this approach usually catches up with you somewhere else.

Think about it. The job posting you fished out of the depths of your applicant management system is probably six months old or older. The job title may have stayed the same. But the requirements for the role have almost certainly changed a lot since the first run. So have the needs of the audience you should be speaking to in your posting.

After all, our times move extremely fast and the job market is in constant flux. That makes it all the more important to look closely before you publish a posting and to ask yourself: what still holds true? And even if it takes a bit longer to get the posting online, we strongly advise you to call the hiring manager, ask for current details and rebuild the job posting from the ground up.

Give candidates the chance to check whether they fit a role

This matters. Why? Put yourself in your candidates' shoes. Right now they face an outsized supply of job offers. To decide who the better employer is, they need information about your company and the role itself that's as concrete as possible. The more precisely you describe everything, the better they can judge whether they're a good fit for your organization. If you don't, and you spread outdated information, you risk attracting talent that fit the job of a year ago but not the current one.

So with your misguided sense of efficiency in recruiting, you dilute your own hiring results. And that's not all. Your employer brand suffers too. Because at the latest in the interview with the not-quite-perfect candidates, it comes out that your role details weren't up to date. And that annoys applicants. After all, they've invested a lot to get to this point. They took the trouble to apply to you. They got their hopes up about landing exactly the job they dreamed of at your company, and then they realize: it's not quite the right fit. The role they applied for doesn't really exist anymore, and the work environment has changed too.

No wonder talent then vents its frustration on Kununu or on social media and makes the recruiting failure public. That's not good at all. Such messages spread quickly online, and reputational damage is the result. At the risk of repeating ourselves: all of this can be avoided with a single call to the hiring manager.

Why application forms need to match the role

There are more mistakes that go in a similar direction. For the very same reason people republish old job postings, they also use one and the same application form for all kinds of roles. Because it's quicker here too.

But does this approach actually bring you a good number of applications and a solid candidate experience? Not really. Here too it pays to put yourself in a candidate's position. Then you'll quickly see why this strategy can't work either.

Imagine a talented candidate applies for an open role, opens your application form and gets a shock. It's endlessly long, complicated to fill in and doesn't match the advertised role at all. That's a fast way to put candidates off. Because in other areas of daily life, people are long used to quick and simple processes.

Why talent pulls the plug too soon

An order on Amazon, for example, takes just a few clicks. And with just as little effort you order food on a delivery app, book your next holiday online or handle your banking. Why is recruiting still different? To candidates today that no longer makes sense. So many drop off when an application takes too long yet again.

And the most sought-after talent in particular can usually well afford to do so, because they mostly apply while in secure employment. Their motto is: if an interesting role lands in their lap and all the formalities can be handled quickly, great. If not, then not.

So here too you trip yourself up when you needlessly hit the gas in the wrong place. That's why we strongly advise you to tailor every form to the specific role you're advertising and not ask for any unnecessary or irrelevant information. Invest that time and you'll see that you get better-matched applications. That's exactly what counts.

Conclusion: don't hit the gas in the wrong place

But that doesn't mean your recruiting will take more time overall because you look more closely at certain points. You inevitably save time at other stages of recruiting, so the process doesn't get longer overall. Often it even gets shorter.

We've said it several times already. A job posting that's as concrete as possible plus a well-matched application form ultimately create a better image, and with it more interested and better-matched candidates. On top of that, application drop-offs fall by up to 70 percent. For you that means you can report concrete recruiting wins to your hiring managers much faster. Mission accomplished.