Managing Hiring Processes

Objective

After completing this lesson, you will be able to manage hiring processes in SmartRecruiters.

Hiring Processes

Managing the hiring process is crucial for attracting and securing top talent. SmartRecruiters offers robust tools to customize and automate these processes, ensuring a smooth and efficient experience for both candidates and hiring teams.

Hiring processes in SmartRecruiters provide a structured approach to managing candidates through various stages of recruitment. A hiring process is visible on a job under the Hiring Process tab.

The SmartRecruiters Edit Hiring Process screen is displayed with stages New, In-Review, Interview, Offer, and a tile for each step in those stages.

A hiring process dictates the stages (high-level) and steps(including custom steps) a candidate goes through, from initial application to being hired. You can tailor hiring processes to organizational fields, ensuring each job type follows a relevant, specific workflow. A default hiring process is also available for all jobs that don't meet the criteria of any other defined processes. The hiring process is visible on the candidate profile, indicating their current stage in the recruitment journey.

All SmartRecruiters instances have a default Hiring Process that administrators can customize by adding or removing steps within the main In-Review, Interview, and Offer phases. Once a Hiring Process is configured, hiring team members can move each candidate through steps such as resume review, assessments, and interviews, and analyze the number of candidates at each step over time to identify opportunities for improvement.

Considerations for Managing Hiring Processes

A maximum of 120 hiring processes can be created.
You cannot rename standard hiring steps. You can only add, remove, and re-order standard hiring steps.
You can create custom hiring steps within each of the standard hiring stages (In-Review, Interview, Offer).

Customize the Default Hiring Process

Steps

Navigate to Settings.
Select Hiring Process in the Configuration section.
Select Edit above the hiring process.
Select Add Step above one of the available categories of statuses to open a list of available steps to add.
Choose a step from the list to add.
Alternatively, you can select Add Custom to add a new step.
To remove a step, select the X icon in the corner of the step tile.
To reorder a step, select the bottom of the step and drag it to the desired area.
Select Save Hiring Process.

Create a New Hiring Process

Steps

Navigate to Settings.
Select Hiring Process in the Configuration section.
Select +New Hiring Process.
Provide the hiring process with a name.
Select Add Step next to a stage to open a list of available steps for that stage.
Select Add Custom in the list to create a custom step and give it a name.
Hint
Best Practice - To support reporting and analytics, ensure that custom steps added to multiple hiring processes use exactly the same spelling and capitalization.
Continue to fill each stage with standard or custom steps as desired.
Select Save.
Note
For each stage of a hiring process, it's possible to have up to 15 hiring steps.

Assign a Hiring Process to Jobs

Instead of assigning a custom hiring process to individual jobs, you assign it to specific values in your organizational (Org) fields.

The following rules determine which hiring process is applied.

When someone at your company creates a job and selects Org field values:

If the selected Org field values match those assigned to a custom hiring process, that hiring process is automatically applied to the job.
If the selected Org field values do not match any custom hiring process, the default hiring process is applied.
Only one hiring process can apply to a job. Therefore, if you have (or plan to have) multiple hiring processes, you must ensure that their assigned Org field values do not overlap.

Steps

Navigate to Settings.
Select Hiring Process within the Configuration section.
Select the custom hiring process you would like to assign to jobs.
In the Apply to section, select the org fields to assign the hiring process to.
Select Save Hiring Process.
If you would like to apply the changes to existing jobs, select Save and Rematch.
Note
When a new process is assigned, and there are steps in the old process that are not also present in the new process, hiring teams will be able see an information icon at the top right corner of that step that notifies them that this is a step from a previous hiring process and candidates in this step should be reassigned as necessary to a valid step in the current hiring process.

Hiring Process Configuration Features

Workflows, Assessments, and Notifications

Workflows, assessments, and notifications can be added to individual steps in your hiring process. As you click through the stages and steps, a pop-up appears that lets you configure these options for each step.

SmartRecruiters Edit Hiring Process with stages; Team Interview step selected showing Required toggle, Workflows, Assessments, Notifications.

Any step within the In-Review, Interview, or Offer stages can be marked as required. When a step is required, candidates cannot move forward in the hiring process until they reach that step—it cannot be skipped.

Assessment Management

Assessments can be integrated into the hiring process to evaluate candidates' skills and qualifications.

Adding Assessments: Click on a step and select Assessment.
Choosing an Assessment Provider: Select the assessment provider from the list (requires integration setup).
Auto-Trigger: If available, the auto-trigger can be enabled to automatically send the assessment to the candidate once they reach the step.

Assessment Integration

If your organization uses third-party assessment tools, you can integrate them into the hiring process. After setting up the integration in the Apps and Integrations section, you can add in-line assessments to specific steps.

Notifications

For each step, you can enable a notification for the Hiring Manager. When enabled, the Hiring Manager is notified whenever a candidate enters that step.

Use Case Example: Standardizing Company B's Global Hiring Process

Company B is a multinational financial services company with operations across North America, Europe, and Asia. Their recruitment team faces a challenge: different regions and departments are using inconsistent hiring processes, leading to confusion, delayed hires, and poor candidate experiences.

The Challenge:

Corporate roles require extensive background checks and compliance screenings.
Entry-level positions in retail banking need quick turnaround times.
Senior executive hires involve multiple stakeholder interviews and board approvals.
Regional hiring managers are creating ad-hoc processes, making it impossible to track metrics consistently.

The Solution:

The Global Talent Acquisition (TA) Director works with regional leaders to create three standardized hiring processes.

Corporate & Compliance Roles Process
- Assigned to Departments: Corporate Functions, Legal, Compliance
- Custom steps added: Regulatory Background Check, Compliance Review
- Marked as required: Background Check step
Retail Banking - High Volume Process
- Assigned to Departments: Retail Banking | Job Level: Entry-Level
- Streamlined with fewer steps for speed
- Auto-trigger assessment enabled at Skills Assessment step
Executive Leadership Process
- Assigned to: Job Level: Executive, VP
- Custom steps added: Board Member Interview, Executive Committee Review
- Hiring Manager notifications enabled at key decision points

The Result:

Now, when any recruiter creates a new job, SmartRecruiters automatically applies the appropriate hiring process based on the selected department and job level, ensuring consistency, compliance, and efficiency across all of Company B's global hiring activities.

In addition, the company will be able to report more consistently on metrics such as time in stage.

Watch the video below for more details about creating a hiring process.

This video is for demonstration purposes. Any references made in this video to previous or later videos in this course (including titles, numbers, links, or sequence) may differ from the current course structure. Additionally, some functionalities shown may have evolved over time due to ongoing enhancements or business decisions.

Summary

Hiring processes in SmartRecruiters provide a structured approach to managing candidates through various stages of recruitment.
You can tailor different hiring processes based on organizational fields.
A default hiring process is available for jobs that don't meet the criteria of any other defined processes. This default process can also be customized.
Custom hiring processes are assigned to jobs by assigning them certain values for your organizational fields.
Workflows, assessments, and notifications can be added to the different steps in your hiring process.

Next lesson