Dave Norris

If you are going to commit to gaining feedback on your TA/hiring experience, do so for those that are hired and those that went through your process and rejected the offer. That will require a proactive approach and plan on how you will be reaching out to each type of indiv., the timing with which you'll do so, and the manner and messaging best used. Being proactive means that your TA team should be setting expectations early on in the vetting process that your firm cares enough about the candidate experience that they ask those that go through the process and get up to offer stage for valuable feedback that will be used to better your process. Knowing up front that this feedback is sought will help ensure you get the feedback in the end.

Once we stop learning, we stop growing and evolving. That's true of human beings as well as companies. The best TA org's have a continuous improvement approach, always looking to learn and improve experiences provided. One of the ways TA can uncover blind spots in their efforts is by gaining candidate feedback. I've seen more of those effort once the indiv. is hired and they are asked about the process they just went through and to share comments on how it could improve. Valuable insights to be sure. But we should not miss the opportunity to also ask candidates that rejected an offer for their honest feedback on why that is and their thoughts on the process. Different and needed perspectives would be gained there as well!

I've seen this too many times to count and even personally experienced it recently in a job search...An interview process should be thorough, but not too lengthy. Not enough firms have the candidates experience/perspective in mind when they put together their interviewing plans. Consider the following: Who do we NEED to interview a candidate for the level and complexity of the role. Don't add additional/nice to have's to a process because you'd "like to have their perspective". Control what is being asked and by whom? Reduce redundancy in questions by ensuring HM assigns specifics to each interviewer. Consistency: Don't add steps or people to a process because your unsure. Be fair with consistent questions and interviewers involved.

Beyond being concerned with overall Time to Hire in the TA process, I would suggest looking deeper into the pass thru rates for key steps in your candidate pipeline (ideally your ATS can report on that). This will help you understand "where" your time to hire is being impacted and which audience you need to get with to properly address slow downs. Example: I've had a scenario where the time to hire was adversely affected by the time it was taking the ave. candidate to move from first being shared with a hiring manager to being either rejected or being tagged worthy of a first round interview. In that case, better education and expectation setting with HM's on reviews was able to dramatically reduce time to hire. So look under the hood!

Using talent from diverse/international environments can help further innovate your solutions. Educating stakeholders on the benefits of inclusive hiring thru engaging talent that originates from outside the US is also the right thing to do. Many hiring leaders are under the misimpression that there are more barriers to engaging such talent than actually exist. Unless a role requires citizenship or gov't clearance to support/access/deliver solutions to federal clients/contractors, there is usually no reason a company couldn't leverage what I've often found are some of the best talent available legally working in the US. You will need an HR & legal team that can navigate the paperwork and a willingness to wait for transfer filings to clear.

Sadly there are not enough companies that take a bigger picture/long-term view when it comes to hiring. They focus on qualifying talent based on a well-defined and all too often lengthy wish list of past experiences and proven skills they believe are required to ensure a candidate will be successful in a role. They want a "know it all", been there done that candidate. The more progressive and smarter firms do use a minimum level of experience and certain baseline skills requirements when defining what's required for a role. But they are also wisely evaluating a candidate's demonstrated ability to learn, to grow, to raise their own bar of performance and recognize where they can improve. They make investments in talent for the future.