Hiring managers and recruiters are faced with a huge challenge in today's war for talent.

Finding qualified talent, quickly, cost-effectively, and efficiently.

With unemployment at historically low levels, great candidates are receiving multiple offers and can afford to be choosy.

The pressure is on to cut hiring times and costs while also increasing diversity and inclusion.

Add to this, choosing the best person for the job and protecting our company's culture.

When combined, this is a daunting task.

The key to success is having a well-defined hiring process in place, with clearly delineated steps and timelines.

This hiring process checklist will help you create a smooth and efficient process that will result in the hiring of top talent.

Here's an 8-step hiring process checklist to use as a guideline:

1. Define the role and hiring timelines
The first step in any successful hiring process is to take the time to clearly define the position you are looking to fill and when it needs to be filled. What are the essential duties and responsibilities of the role?  What skills and qualifications are required? What is the desired culture fit? Answering these questions will help you create a detailed job description that will attract the right candidates.

2. Source candidates
Once you have a clear understanding of the type of candidate you are looking for, and the qualifications necessary to be successful in the role, it's time to start sourcing. There are many ways to find great candidates, including job boards, social media, employee referrals, and recruitment agencies.

3. Screen candidates
After sourcing a pool of potential candidates, it's time to screen them to see if they are a good fit for the role. This can be done through resume review, phone screens, or video interviews. The goal here is to whittle down the pool to a handful of qualified candidates who will move on to the next stage of the process.

4. Conduct interviews
Once you have a shortlist of qualified candidates, it's time to conduct in-person interviews. These can be conducted by a panel of interviewers, or individually. The goal here is to get to know the candidates better and to assess their skills, qualifications, and cultural fit.

5. Assessments
Depending on the role you are hiring for, you may want to administer assessments to further evaluate candidates' skills and qualifications. These could include aptitude tests, personality tests, or skills tests.

6. Reference checks
It's important to do reference checks on all finalists before making a decision. This will help you get feedback from previous employers about the candidate's strengths and weaknesses, and whether they would be a good fit for your company.

7. Make a decision
After completing all of the steps in the hiring process, it's time to make a decision. This can be a difficult task, but it's important to choose the candidate who you feel is the best fit for the role and your company.

8. Onboard the new hire
Once you've made your decision and extended an offer to the successful candidate, it's time to onboard them into the company.

If you'd like a guide to follow while creating your strategic hiring process, download our ebook, "How to Hire Great Software Engineers." This guide includes a step-by-step hiring process and best practices to help you hire top talent.

Hiring Process Steps

There are 7 or 8 vital steps in the recruitment process.

Each of them has an impact on the quality of your hires, their tenure with your organization, and by default the cost-to-hire.

Out of curiosity, I “Googled” "Hiring Process Steps," just to see what other companies were posting about. If you do the same thing, you'll find almost 300,000,000 results (297 million to be exact). After clicking through dozens of them, I can tell you quite a few are reworded versions of the hiring process linked in the next paragraph, but each one included a checklist with between 5-15 steps.

Check out, "The Ultimate Interview Checklist for Hiring Teams," to see the step-by-step interview process that you can integrate today to save time and money.

Another resource that I found insightful on the topic of creating a hiring process is, "The Hiring Process Checklist: A Step-by-step Guide," by Hire Success.

In the post, they elaborate on the 8 hiring process steps we covered in the previous section.

The industry average time to hire a new employee is 40+ days.

This number will vary based on the role you're hiring for, the size of your company, and how many candidates you interview.

‍Pillar customers have been able to cut their hiring process timeline in half using our interview intelligence software.

Interview intelligence software that's integrated into your ATS (application tracking software), video conferencing software, and scheduling software can reduce the workload on a hiring manager as they walk candidates through each step of the hiring process.

This reduction in time spent on administrative tasks allows the hiring manager to focus on more important tasks, like sourcing, phone screening, and onboarding candidates so that you make better hires.

Interview Process Checklist

This section will be broken into 3 parts:

1. Pre-interview Preparation
2. How to conduct the interview example
3. Post interview Checklist

Pre-interview, you should:
1. Have a candidate scorecard ready - this will include all of the necessary skills for success in the role.
2. Review the job description, candidate's LinkedIn profile, and resume (or CV) for comparison.
3. Prepare semi-structured questions that probe for each past performance or familiarity with the criterion on the scorecard or utilize the title-based question prompts in Pillar's interview software.
4. Select the format of the interview (e.g., one-on-one, panel, video conference, phone)
5. Use interview intelligence software or create an interview process checklist to serve as a guide and keep the interview on track.

How to conduct the interview:
1. Start with an icebreaker question to help the candidate relax.
2. Introduce yourself and any other panelists that will be joining the interview.
3. Ask the candidate each prepared question and allow them time to describe their experience and qualifications for the role.
4. Probe specific examples of past behavior relevant to each criterion on the scorecard using the semi-structured questions you prepared.
5. Ask the candidate if they have any questions for you about the role or company.
6. Thank the candidate for their time and let them know what the next steps in the process will be.

Post-interview Checklist:

1. Review the candidate scorecard and your notes from the interview.
2. Determine if the candidate is qualified for the role and a good fit for your team and company culture.
3. Compare the candidate to others interviewed for the role to make a final decision.
4. If the candidate is not selected, kindly provide feedback on why so that they can improve their candidacy for future roles.
5. If the candidate is selected, extend an offer and begin the onboarding process.

The key to a successful interview process is being prepared at each stage of the process from start to finish.

Interview checklists for hiring managers and recruiters vary slightly, but the goal is always the same: to ensure that you find the best candidate for the job.

By following the steps in this checklist, you can be sure that you're covering all of your bases and making the best hiring decisions.