Recruiting tips

Not Your Average Recruiting Coordinator: 3 Ways to Add Value

To become a transformational recruiting organization you have to ensure that every member of your team is adding value beyond their day-to-day role.

A good place is start is the recruiting coordinator role. The recruiting coordinators support the interview process by scheduling interviews, arranging travel, and preparing offer letters and are a considerable part of the candidate experience.

So how can you or your reports become better than average recruiting coordinator? Here are some tips:

1. Be a problem solver

rubik

The most important skill a recruiting coordinator can have is to be a problem solver.

Countless urgent requests come up throughout the day in recruiting and it is imperative not to become overwhelmed as competing priorities arise. The best response is to remain flexible, expect problems to come up, and always prepare a Plan B.

Further, rather than being reactive and letting situations become a fire drill, try to anticipate potential problems. If a candidate is flying in for an interview but one member of the interview panel has not confirmed, have a list of backup interviewers available.

Or if the candidate has extremely limited availability and they need to meet 6 people in a 2 hour window, think about splitting the interview into multiple days or having it over the weekend. Leverage the recruiter and the hiring manager but also use common sense; it is about thinking logically and finding the best solutions to fit the needs of the candidate and the interview panel.

2. Seek out and build relationships

Recruiting coordination can be very similar to a customer service role. In addition to providing a great experience for candidates, you should be providing your client groups with the same amount of attention.

Remember that hiring managers and interviewers spend approximately 10% of their time on the recruiting, and their remaining time is focused on their full-time job – you should be doing anything you can to make the process easier for them. Think about reserving conference rooms near their desk or scheduling interviews for the middle of the day if you know they need to commute.

Building relationships with client groups also allows recruiting coordinators to confirm interviews faster which then leads to quicker communication with candidates. If an interviewer has a relationship with a coordinator, they are much more likely to accept and keep an invitation to interview.

Get to know the people you are supporting and let them get to know you. Don’t be a faceless person behind a computer taking up time on a busy engineer’s calendar – stop by their desk and find a common interest to bond over. Bring them a thank you card when they fill in last minute for an interview. Appreciation goes a long way.

3. Provide an exceptional candidate experience

Recruiting coordinators are some of the first company representatives a candidate meets and that experience is very important.

One way to ensure that the experience is stellar is a Candidate Experience Program with dedicated touch points for each part of the interview process (we have this program at LinkedIn and my comments are based on this).

Program touch points could range from a goody bag upon a candidate’s first arrival, to a welcome card and balloon on their first day. You could also form a taskforce that meets regularly to brainstorm new ideas and revise current touch points.

The three things to keep in mind when introducing a Candidate Experience Program:

  1. Scale – is the process agile and repeatable from 1 candidate to 100 candidates?
  2. Benefits to the candidate – are you providing information, reducing stress, or displaying company culture?
  3. Does it provide a truly unique interview experience – always aim to make the candidate feel special.

An impactful candidate experience is like a soapbox for building a better talent brand, and a strong talent brand allows a company to be more strategic in competing for new hires. A candidate who exits their interview with admiration of the company is someone who will continue to speak positively of the brand regardless if they were hired or not.

Although recruiting coordination revolves around repetitive processes there is still a lot of opportunity to have a voice and make an impact. Feel empowered to take intelligent risks and make decisions. Ultimately, a solid recruiting coordination team allows recruiters to be more successful and therefore allows a company to reach its hiring goals.

 

Want to stay ahead of the game and know the latest trends in recruiting? Check out the 2013 Recruiting Trends Report.

Recruiting Trends Report 2013

* image by Toni Blay

Have blog stories delivered to your inbox