We had 10 days to find next TRAFFIT star

Here in TRAFFIT, we like things moving fast forward. We have to keep up with the changes in the HR market (which has changed tremendously due to COVID-19), but with the competitive IT market too. We honestly feel that when you do things long and slow, it doesn’t mean they are going to be done better. They often become overcomplicated and ineffective.

Last year we’ve found an interesting study saying that:

“According to studies, an average CV spends 23% of its lifecycle time in HR screening (9,18 days) while the best candidates are off the market in 10 days”

We’ve started wondering, is that even possible to complete the full process in 10 days (I mean candidate perspective — from the day he/she applied to the day he/she received the offered or was rejected), and still keep the perfect candidate experience we are known for? Especially with the world average being 3 times longer!

THE BIG PREPARATION TIME

To shorten the recruiting processes, we had to prepare really well. What did the TO-DO list look like?

That doesn’t mean only deciding on the number of steps. That means creating a timeline and most of all — assigning people responsible for every step. Collective responsibility doesn’t work in this case.

Anika, our People&Culture Manager, was kind of a “project manager” involved in every step of the process, keeping an eye on other participants and guarding the timeline. Hiring Managers were responsible for job interviews and feedback. That was mostly Damian (IT Manager) for IT roles and Mick Griffin for Marketing and Customer Success roles. Some roles had a “Task” stage where other team members were involved too.

This is what our timeline looked like:

We’ve shared it on the job post — so that the candidates were aware of how long will the process take.

Sure, sometimes you can try as much as you can, but you can’t keep up with it. Some candidates asked for more time or were postponing the job interviews. That happens. But this timeline was our goal.

Does it mean making it shorter? Not at all! Even the opposite. We’ve wanted the candidates to be aware:

• what will the process look like?
• how long will it take?
• what are the challenges in this position?
• what is the offered salary?

Every job post had the details of the offered salary with a link to our Traffit Pathways showing what salary is achievable in the future.

The analysis is the key. We have analyzed the previous recruitments and chose only the sources with a high CR rate. Besides job boards dedicated to IT jobs, the team started sourcing. Even our IT Manager got the bug and discovered he is a very talented sourcer!

We focused on the quality, not the number of applications.

More applications = More work = Less time to handle the promising ones

AUTOMATION

We feel that automation is a great way to get rid of the boring, time-consuming, and repeatable activities — without losing the personal touch. We automated most of the email communication, also the ones with rejection reasons (different templates for every rejection reason).

Our candidates were receiving the emails right away after being moved to the next stage and it allowed us to keep everything proceeding smoothly. This is an example of an automated message sent from the Hiring Manager’s mailbox to every candidate that applied:

PROTIP

The worst scenario from our perspective is when you collect applications for 2 weeks and start the preselection process after reaching a certain amount of CVs. If we were doing that, probably a huge percentage of candidates would not be available when we’ve reached them for the first time. Systematic preselection is the key.

Is it difficult to do, when your Clickup and Jira are always full of tasks?

Yes

Is it worth it?

Also a big YES

DID WE SUCCEED?

Partially.

We had 6 open positions in Q4 of 2021. We’ve managed to reach the goal for the Customer Success Specialist and Marketing Specialist roles, for 4 other vacancies it took us from 12 to 15 days from the application date to offering the job.

We were really happy with the result — not only the time of hiring but also the people chosen to join the team — so we’ve decided this recruitment timeline to become our standard.

(HAPPY) END

The last vacancy in 2022 we needed to fill was a UI Designer. We received 70 really good applications. It took us 16 days from that day when Adam applied and sent us his portfolio for review to the day we offered him the job.

Close enough!

And you know what?

He said YES 🙂

Originally published at https://www.traffit.com on June 7, 2022.