If you believe that a hiring pipeline is simply another buzzword, then most likely you are still using reactive hiring. You also probably feel stressed and unprepared whenever a new vacancy arises, especially for those roles that are difficult to fill.

You can be assured that the hiring pipeline is simply not another temporary buzzword! A bit of knowledge about this can go a long way and if you can build a healthy hiring pipeline, that can move you away from reactive recruitment and into proactive recruitment. You can also hire with confidence instead of just crossing your fingers after making job offers and hoping for the best.

With backing from an ATS, those days of an inbox full of applications, spreadsheets, and a list of complex subfolders for separating your various vacancies are long gone. An ATS eliminates all of the tedious time wasting and sorts each stage of the recruitment process for you easily into various stages.

What is the hiring pipeline?

This refers to all of the stages that every candidate follows starting at the application stage through to either being declined or receiving a job offer. It covers all of the various hiring process stages for each vacancy. Due to inherent differences between vacancies, assessment, interview, and screening procedures will vary.   

Generally speaking, all vacancies all have application, screening and interview processes. However, depending on the skills required or job level, you may need to add several interviews to the process, or personality assessments, or skills.

If you are attempting to use spreadsheets to track your hiring pipeline, it is easy to understand how fast you could lose track, particularly if you work with a hiring team. You can track the progress with each vacancy using an ATS, step by step, via your dashboard in real time.  

The data offered on your dashboard enables you to see which stage candidates are in the overall process. You can identify bottlenecks quickly in the process with real-time information, whether you need to start re-advertising or stop advertising for specific vacancies, or your lack of progress.

Your hiring pipeline used as a tool

A refined and well-managed hiring pipeline is a type of tool used for evaluating your recruitment process. You can check your advertising spend ROI and management expectations.

Whenever we are under pressure, falling into a rut can be very easy, as the saying goes, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.” However, the problem is, that our systems sometimes are broken without us even realizing it. We could do things better, however, we tend to not take the initiative until we absolutely have to!  

Having the ability to evaluate your hiring process directly from your dashboard along with the option of being able to delve into your analytics that are behind the numbers and graphs means you are able to evaluate progress easily. This allows you to easily identify what works and what doesn’t, as well as what you are doing wrong.    

There are 3 major problems that a hiring pipeline can help you identify as part of your overall recruitment process:

1. When to Hire

For both management and recruiters, the issue of when to hire can be a big headache. A position that involves critical skills stays open for far too long may start to have a knock-on effect. For any key position that is part of a series of processes involving a team of employees may stall productivity that is something that your business cannot afford to experience. Seeing the processes occurring on your dashboard and hypothesizing when it is time to hire is completely opposite.

2. Managing the expectations of management

Access to real-time analytics enables line managers and recruiters to evaluate the actualities of the process and be able to develop realistic expectations when it comes to filling vacancies. When a certain process is difficult to fill due to skills requirements, systems can be put into place in order to start building a pool of candidates for vacancies in the future. That is predictive hiring in addition to being proactive hiring.  

3. Budget

Another issue that raises its head on a regular basis in management meetings is the cost of hire.  Having the ability to analyze where you can achieve the best ROI on your job advertising spend is really important. Costs are also impacted by time to hire.

When you can identify which media channels or job boards deliver the best job candidates means you can control your budget better. An ideal cost saver is having the ability to draw candidates from within your talent pool.  

Future talent will come from the present hiring pipeline that you have

Your current hiring pipeline is a great tool to help you build your talent pool for hires in the future. A talent pool full of skilled candidates that are eager to join your company is truly a valuable asset. Rather than panicking when you have a new vacancy arise, especially those roles that are difficult to fill, you will be able to turn and draw on your talent pool.   

We often have a number of excellent candidates for a specific vacancy, but can appoint only one. If you do not have a talent pool to draw from, all this talent becomes lost to you. Whenever a similar position opens up in the future, you will have to advertise again and all of the time and expense that goes into having to find suitable candidates for the position.

If you have an engaged and robust talent pool that you are maintaining, then you won’t have to advertise. You can just source a well-suited candidate in just a few hours. It is not a far-fetched idea! If an ATS is used for keeping track of candidates within your talent pool and you are engaging with them on a regular basis, your time for hiring will continue to improve and your advertising spend will also.

Your hiring pipeline is a marketing tool as well

Today’s recruiters are responsible for marketing their employer’s brand as the marketing and sales department does for the company brand. If you have not started to build and invest into your employer brand strategy as of yet, keep in mind that your competitors already have, and you are running behind.

Having a strong employer brand may be the reach clincher when a top candidate decides to accept your offer or one from your competitor. There are some candidates that will decline a position with a higher salary for one that has a superior employer brand. Being able to attract and employ the finest talent is critical for the continued success of your company.

According to research, 83% of all job seekers take a company’s ratings and reviews into account before applying for a vacancy. So if your employer brand does not compare well, or even better, is outdoing the competition, there is talent that you may not ever be able to interact with.  

Getting an employer brand created is continually evolving and ongoing process and the way you treat candidates within your hiring pipeline reflects your brand. Candidates can be put off if there are delays in the hiring process or you take weeks to respond to applicants that are unsuitable (or not respond at all, which is even worse).  

Your hiring process involves promoting your employer brand just as much as filling vacancies. Business is driven by connectivity (as well as personal lives), so, therefore, people respond to you treating well by leaving great ratings and reviews. Conversely, individuals can react just as easily in frustration or anger and end up leaving terrible reviews due to feeling they have been treated poorly.

If it seems like tracking your hiring pipeline as you are building an engaged talent pool as well as marketing your employer brand might sound mind-boggling to you if you have not invested yet in an ATS. The automation competencies and artificial intelligence of an ATS can free you from all of the drudgeries that can be part of the recruitment process.

Once you have time, you will be able to communicate, optimize, analyze, and engage, and even more important, place your employer brand a couple of critical steps ahead of the competition.

I hope this little article can help you with your pipeline optimization. If you still have trouble or need help to find more candidates:

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