Recruitment process: hiring well without a hiring department

A recruitment process is the path from deciding a role exists to somebody starting in it. In a small company it is usually improvised: an advert written quickly, CVs read in gaps between other work, interviews that wander, and a decision made on a feeling that everyone then rationalises. It works often enough to feel fine, and the failures are expensive and slow to appear.

The fix is not more stages. It is deciding, before the first conversation, what evidence would convince you — and then designing each stage to produce exactly that.

The stages worth having

• Define the role and the evidence: what someone must be able to do, and how you would know. Do this before writing the advert.
• Write the advert from the job description, with the salary range and a realistic picture of the work.
• Source: your own network, the obvious boards for the discipline, and a public link that makes applying easy.
• Screen against stated criteria, not against a general impression. The same criteria for every application, in the same order.
• A short first conversation — twenty minutes — covering motivation, the practicalities and one or two knockout questions.
• A structured interview with the same questions for every candidate, scored against a defined scale.
• A work sample that resembles the actual job, paid if it takes real time. This predicts performance better than any interview.
• References, taken seriously and asked specific questions rather than confirming dates.
• A decision made against the evidence, then an offer made quickly — good candidates are usually in more than one process.

Structured interviews — the same questions, asked in the same order, scored against an agreed scale — are consistently better predictors than unstructured conversations, and they are also the more defensible position if a rejected candidate ever challenges the decision. The cost is an hour of preparation per role. Check your local employment law on what you may ask, because the boundaries differ sharply between jurisdictions.

Running it

1. Write the scorecard before the advert: four to six criteria with what a weak, adequate and strong answer looks like.
2. Agree who is involved and what each stage decides. Every extra interviewer adds days and rarely adds information.
3. Publish the timeline in the advert and hold it. Candidates drop out of processes that go quiet more than for any other reason.
4. Screen in batches at a set time, so applications are compared against criteria rather than against whoever was read first.
5. Score independently before discussing. Talking first anchors the group on the loudest opinion.
6. Keep the whole process to about two to three weeks. Beyond that you are selecting for the candidates nobody else wanted.
7. Reply to everyone, including rejections. It costs minutes and it is the entire public reputation of your hiring.
8. Record why you decided, criterion by criterion. It helps at the next hire and it matters if the decision is ever questioned.

Where time actually goes

In most small-company hiring the delay is internal, not external: a week before CVs are read, four days to agree availability, a fortnight waiting for a second interviewer, several days deciding. Candidates experience this as disinterest, and the strongest ones — who have options — leave first. Fixing the calendar is usually worth more than improving the interview. Book the interview slots in advance, before you have anyone to put in them.

Ettex CRM works as a lightweight pipeline for candidates: contact profiles with custom fields for source, role and stage, a visual pipeline you move people through, notes and activity logging so every conversation sits on one screen, tags for the shortlist, change history showing who did what and when, and shared records so a colleague can pick up the thread. Applications arrive through Ettex Forms — one form with the questions you actually screen on, file upload for the CV, landing timestamped in a shared inbox with export to CSV or XLS. Scorecards fit Ettex Sheets, the job description and interview guide live in Ettex Docs, interviews go in Ettex Calendar, and the offer is signed through Ettex Signature.

Plainly: Ettex is not an ATS. Nothing here posts to job boards, parses or ranks CVs, offers a candidate portal, schedules interviews automatically, sends templated rejections in bulk, or reports on diversity. Using a CRM for candidates is a deliberate workaround that suits a handful of hires a year. If you hire continuously, buy an applicant tracking system — and note that candidate data is personal data, so decide your retention period and tell candidates what it is.

Common failures

• Criteria invented after meeting candidates, which means the decision was made and then justified.
• Unstructured interviews, where each candidate is asked different questions and comparison is impossible.
• Too many stages, each adding a week and little evidence.
• Silence between stages, which loses exactly the candidates you wanted.
• Group discussion before independent scoring, so the room converges on the first opinion voiced.
• A work sample that resembles homework rather than the job, or that takes hours unpaid.
• References used to confirm dates rather than to ask what this person needs to do their best work.
• No record of the reasoning, leaving nothing to learn from and nothing to point to if challenged.

Two documents do disproportionate work at the start. A job description template stops each hiring manager reinventing the shape of the role, and a competency matrix tells you which capabilities the team is actually missing rather than which job title feels overdue.

A recruitment process works when the criteria exist before the candidates do. Write the scorecard first, ask everyone the same questions, keep the calendar tight, and record why you decided.