My daily routine to never (ever) lose track of a candidate
I started my career working with a Recruitment Manager who mastered the art of micro-management perfectly. She needed to be put in CC of every email, invited in every meeting, be across every little decision, and pretty much control everything. Besides the stressful side of this management style, and the negative impact it had on my confidence at the time, I realised it leads me to shape a daily routine that I have been following for more than 4 years now.
The initial routine
We had weekly one-on-ones where she would ask me a LOT of questions about my ongoing recruitment pipeline. It was quite painful. She made me feel so stressed that I couldn’t properly think and find the answers on top of my mind.
So I started this routine: I dedicated 30–45 minutes prior to our weekly catch-up, to rehearse the “tell me everything about your pipeline” show. I would check the status of each candidate, one by one, for each step of our process and for all our openings.
While this routine helped me survive my one-on-ones, I underestimated the real impact of this new routine: by checking on the status of all my candidates on a weekly basis, it helped me identify this one candidate who was supposed to come back to me yesterday, or this agency that I forgot to call, or this manager who never sent me his feedback… and I ended up building a weekly to-do list which ultimately helped me be more efficient.
It seems so naive today, but it was my first experience as a Recruiter and I didn’t know how rigorous and demanding this job would be. Even without a micromanaging boss, we’re getting tons of legitimate questions from managers or clients about the hundreds of candidates we’re dealing with every day. A little routine like this can really help.
This routine helped me in many ways:
- it trained my brain to visualize and memorize my pipeline in just a few minutes
- it improved my relationship with the hiring managers as I became the Recruiter who never forgets anything
- it improved the experience candidates had with me as I became better at memorizing their names (no more “Hello Miléna, this is Oliver” with “F*** who’s this Oliver?”)
The routine 2.0
This initial routine taught me that timing is of the essence in recruitment. We can’t control the reputation of our company, the managers’ attitude during interviews, the salary ranges, the office coolness… but in most cases, we can manage, or at least influence, the timing of our hiring processes.
And timing is key for candidates. We all know someone who said one day “my dream was to work for X, but I never heard back from them” or “the process is taking so long with this company, I’m not sure I want to join them anymore”.
While this weekly routine was helping me be more efficient, navigating through my ATS for up to 45 minutes per week was a bit heavy. I needed to find a way to be only one click away from a global overview of my pipeline.
I ended up building a Spreadsheet, where I added all my active candidates (the ones who agreed to start an interview process with us). The spreadsheet had one tab per jobs (or department), with one column for each step of the interview process.
It looked like that:
It was also a very good way to track my own performance and analyze my activity (conversion rates, candidates sources…). This Spreadsheet has been improved A LOT since then, but it’s another story 😉
Thanks to this new routine, I spent only a few minutes every day — always at the end of my day — to check the status of my candidates. If I realized I forgot to book an interview with someone, it was the best time of the day to call them. If I was waiting for a candidate to send me back a test or case study, I would text them asking for an update. And so on…
It also pushed me to be more reactive when I had to call a candidate who was not selected after an interview. As a Recruiter, I spend way more time saying “sorry but we did not select your application” than offering jobs. Rejecting someone is not my favourite thing and, let’s be honest, we all tend to push it back. Yet, when you see a yellow “TO DO” sign flashing on your spreadsheet for one day, two days, three days… it makes you feel so bad, you know you need to stop procrastinating. Well, at least it works for me 😅.
To put it in a nutshell
My motto could be to never (ever) lose track of a candidate. This daily routine helped me understand and follow two golden rules for a great candidate experience:
- Ensure regular contact with your candidates — saying you have no update is better than not updating someone
- Give candidates timely and specific feedback at the end of the interview process — telling them why they got the job or not is… your job
