What Is The Recruitment Funnel: Everything You Need To Know

Hiring employees is very important for every company because all managers want to hire experienced and talented people who will make their business grow and develop.

Suppose your hiring managers use inappropriate methods for hiring employees. In that case, they will not be able to hire the right people for your company because the hiring process has different steps, each of which must be done correctly in order to find and hire skilled employees. 

The hiring funnel is something that employers and hiring managers should consider before hiring employees so that they can hire the best people through it and enjoy its benefits.

In this article, we are going to talk about the recruitment funnel, explain its importance and benefits, and examine its different stages.

What Is The Recruitment Funnel?

The recruitment funnel is a tool for recruiting talented people and defines the different stages of the hiring process. 

The recruitment funnel helps hiring managers access numerous candidates at the top of the funnel, and after passing through different filters, only a few top talents remain. Then, among them, hire the desired employees who are more skilled than others. 

The recruitment funnel includes the recruitment process from the time you publish the job description ad until you hire the desired candidate and they sign the employment contract.

Moreover, the recruitment funnel helps you to have the least error in decision-making and hire the right employees for the company. 

The recruitment funnel helps employers filter the specific characteristics they are looking for in candidates; in this way, they can find and hire the talent they want in less time. As a result, using the recruitment funnel saves time and energy.

In addition, using the recruitment funnel helps managers to avoid inappropriate bias in the hiring process so that all candidates have an equal chance to go through the hiring process.

Why Is The Recruitment Funnel Important?

Now that you are familiar with the recruitment funnel, you have probably realized its importance in the process of hiring people. 

This section will examine what makes the recruitment funnel important and makes managers hire the right talents and skilled people.

• It enables hiring managers to hire the right talents
• Reduce extra costs
• Save managers time and energy
• Gives employers a complete overview of each step of the hiring process
• It builds a systematic and effective process for hiring top candidates
• It organizes the whole hiring process from start to end
• It narrows down a large number of candidates to top talents 
• It helps managers to break the hiring process into different stages
• It will help employers to focus on areas they need to pay more attention
• It will increase job offer acceptance rates
• It decreases unconscious bias during the hiring
• It causes all candidates to have an equal opportunity for getting the job
• It will improve the candidate’s experience
• It will help managers to determine and reject unqualified applicants
• It will improve the efficiency of the hiring process

The things we mentioned in this section are the most important reasons for the importance of the recruitment funnel. 

These reasons allow managers and employers to use the recruitment funnel to hire the best people to find and hire talent quickly.

Different Stages Of The Recruitment Process

In the following, we will examine the different stages of the recruitment funnel, and you will understand what effect this funnel will have on the hiring process of your employees.

1- Awareness

The first thing at the top of the hiring funnel is brand awareness, the most important thing you should pay attention to before doing anything in the hiring process.

Research has shown that about 75% of job seekers research about that company before they apply for a job, and if it has a good brand image, they are more willing to cooperate with that company. So try to work on your brand awareness so that more people hear your business name and attract to your company.

For this purpose, you can participate in different campaigns, start being active on social media, or spread the name of your business to others through different channels.

2- Attraction

When you create brand awareness for your company, it’s time to attract people to your business and services.

This is the second part of the recruitment funnel; in this part, you have to write the recruitment advertisement and a comprehensive job description.

You should try to provide important and key information about the employment position, write information about your company and services, and write the job description attractively that attracts people to request open positions.

Then you should publish the recruitment ad in different places where you know that many candidates will check it; for this, you can publish your ad on social media, online job boards, job boards, etc., so that candidates can see it and apply for available job positions.

3- Interest

In the third stage of the recruitment funnel, when you have published your ad, and many candidates have seen it, you must prepare the ground to make them interested in your company.

In other words, at this stage, it is better to provide a platform to answer the possible questions of the candidates so that they can be sure that they will find the answers and know more about your company before they send you a resume.

For this, you can focus on your company’s website and social media and ensure that you have shared complete and correct information with people, and candidates can get information about your business by checking your website; why? 

Studies have shown that more than 50% of candidates check a company’s website before sending a resume to learn more about their services and background.

Therefore, the website and social media are very important to make people interested in your company.

4- Application

In this section, you receive the candidates’ resumes and must go through this step well to ensure you finally hire the best people for your company.

Try to make the process of applying and sending resumes as easy as possible for candidates; this way, more people will apply for your job positions, and the risk of losing talented candidates due to the difficult application process will be greatly reduced.

In addition, using an autoresponder to let candidates know that their resume has been received and is being followed up will make people feel at ease that sooner or later, their resume will be reviewed.

At this stage, you can inform the candidates about the resume review process and the next steps, which creates a feeling of intimacy and makes people feel good that they want to work with you.

5- Evaluation and pre-selection

At this point, you have received a lot of resumes, which undoubtedly do not all have the characteristics of the candidate you are looking for, so you need to filter them in order to select people with the skills you want.

Because this section is about evaluating the candidates’ skills, abilities, knowledge, and work experience, remember that it can be very challenging.

To pass this stage successfully, you can use evaluation tests (also known as pre-assessment hiring tests); with the help of these tests, you can measure the skills and knowledge of the candidates in any department you want so that you can hire the best people according to the results obtained. 

If you can pass this step well, you can be sure that you have finally selected qualified people for the next steps of the recruitment process.

6- Interview

The interview is an important part of the recruitment funnel; at this stage, you should have a list of your desired candidates and set a time to interview each, so you can get to know them better.

Note that a standardized interview helps remove bias from the hiring process and ensures all candidates have an equal opportunity to get the job role.

Note that in order to have a good interview with each candidate, adjust the interview time according to the job position because the interview time for hiring a secretary or assistant is different from the interview time for a technical position, so save energy and set the interview time correctly.

To finish the interview stage well, you can prepare the questions you want to ask the candidates during the interview in advance so that you can get more information from them in less time.

Also, do not forget to keep the candidates updated after the interview and tell them that you will contact them for the next steps.

7- Hiring

The recruitment stage is the last stage of the recruitment funnel and is just as important as any other stage. At this stage, you should send a job offer to your final candidates so that they accept it and your cooperation begins.

In addition, at this stage, you should ask them about their motivation, long-term goal of working with you, goals, etc., to have good and long-term cooperation.

The steps we explained in this section are from the first to the last stage of the recruitment funnel; if you follow them correctly, you can be sure that you will eventually hire the best and most talented people and enjoy the benefits of the recruitment funnel.

What Are The Most Effective Recruitment Funnel Metrics

After you are familiar with the different stages of the recruitment funnel, you should know how to implement and use the criteria of the recruitment funnel well.

Because if you go through the stages of the recruitment funnel wrongly, it can cause disruptions in the recruitment process and prevent you from hiring skilled employees for your company.

In this section, we explain to you the metrics that, by knowing them, you can use the recruitment funnel correctly to hire employees.

• Improve the candidate experience process and make it more effective
• Improve your company’s brand awareness
• Measure the cost of each step of the hiring process
• Pay attention to the quality of hiring and ensure you are hiring the top talents
• Pay attention to the job offer acceptance rate
• Consider the time of hiring new employees
• Pay attention to recruitment sources

If you pay attention to these metrics, you can ensure that you have used the recruitment funnel well and have gone through the recruitment process correctly, eventually making you hire the right people for your company.

Conclusion

As we mentioned earlier, hiring employees is very important because their ability and skills guarantee the success and growth of your business and company.

In addition, employers and hiring managers are always looking for a way to hire the best people in the shortest possible time, so the hiring funnel is the best option for managers who want to hire talented, experienced, and skilled people with specific characteristics. 

In this article, we have comprehensively explained the recruitment funnel, examined what makes it important, explained its different stages in full, and provided the metrics that ensure the recruitment funnel is used effectively. 

We hope that this article’s content will help you find and hire the employees you want and enjoy the benefits of the recruitment funnel.