How to Create a Seamless, Personalized Recruitment Journey in 2025
“It’s fine to celebrate success, but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” -Bill Gates
Ask anyone in Recruiting or Talent Acquisition, and I can almost guarantee they didn’t have this role on their list of “things I want to be when I grow up.” It’s just not. Not because it’s a bad job or because we are sometimes looked upon like used car salesmen or ambulance chasers. But it is not one of those “pedestal positions” we usually see and hear as role models.
I was dared into Recruiting many years ago. I had a Director of my local office look at me and ask me why I hadn’t tried it. I told him I didn’t think I would be in a “Sales” role. He laughed and said I have heard you on the phone with my (then) 4-year-old daughter and said I knew everything I could about negotiation. So I tried it and started learning the ropes.
Then, my husband’s company decided to move to another part of the state, and we were not interested. So he started to look for a new IT job. I would not work with him because I did not want to be responsible for our household, but he worked with several recruiters then and at other times over the past 20 years. I learned a lot of lessons on how I do NOT want to do business and how to cut my losses.
The not-so-secret secret to creating a seamless and personalized recruitment strategy is to just put yourself in the candidate’s shoes.
Job Descriptions and Postings: We have all had to look for work. We have been greeted with very formal, almost legalese job descriptions (which may have been written by some with a law degree) and very sloppy, misspelled details on who they want to hire. Is that your company, your brand? If the answer is no, then start there. Your job description is the formal outline of the roles and responsibilities of the job. The job posting is where you have fun – this is where you bring your unique style and company personality into it.
Making Commitments: Then, you must honor your commitment to those applying to the posting. You didn’t realize you were in a “committed relationship”? You are. You have now become the representative for the entire brand and organization. Set a standard for how long before you either reject or move a candidate forward. The same way you get frustrated when your prospect or client doesn’t call you back is the same as the candidate who spent time applying. It is amazing how much goodwill can be generated by a rejection if sent in a timely manner.
Scheduling Interviews: You also have to set yourself up for success by identifying who needs to review and decide on candidates for interviews. Then, get those people to block time to make it happen. They don’t get bumped (unless it is a critical failure), and they don’t get ignored – you make the commitment and meet. This helps reinforce for both parties that this is not just a “paper exercise” but a real, tangible thing for the organization.
Know ahead of time how many people and times they may need to meet with team members, including whether by phone, video, or onsite, and communicate that with all parties. Try to operate with as few gotchas as possible for everyone involved.
The Important Selection: Be ready to “pull the trigger”. When everyone is in consensus, please do not try to shoot for “just one more person.” Your candidates are not rotisserie chickens that can rest idly by for 8 hours and just be contently waiting for news (and by 8 hours, I mean weeks on end). That rarely works in a company’s favor and can leave a less than pleasant experience for the candidate that you were not sold enough to accept them without seeing just one more sample.
How can you put this all in place? That is where we can help. With our Recruiting Services we can perform a Recruitment Audit to ensure you follow the legal requirements and corporate values in your search process. One of the easiest ways to help with that is to implement an Applicant Tracking System. It can (seriously) give you back hours of your time with a team like SDHR Consulting to help implement one of our partners and work with your team to use it, subsidize your current TA team if there is an influx of roles or even Recruitment Transformation – where the end goal is we work ourselves out of a job!
