Article: Improve the hiring journey using Design Thinking

Recruitment

Improve the hiring journey using Design Thinking

The hiring process can be emotional and stressful for job seekers and talent professionals. Sashi Kumar, Managing Director of Indeed India, gives an insight on how to break down this hiring journey and use design thinking to make it better.
Improve the hiring journey using Design Thinking

Design Thinking is the best creative approach known in problem-solving. It results in innovative solutions that have known to work better for people. With technology, the recruiting trends are changing rapidly, which is why the HR department uses the Design Thinking approach. People choose the product or service based on the quality of experience they have with them. One of the finest examples of the same would be the rapid growth of Google Pay or Tez. Even with other UPIs in the market of, only Google grew as fast as it did because of people’s trust in the brand. 

Michael Eisner, Former Disney CEO, stated, “A Brand is living energy and it’s enriched or undermined cumulatively over time...the product of a thousand small gestures.” This is quite similar to the experience customers want with recruiting as well. A great organization also delivers great hiring experience. It is essential to deliver a great hiring experience since the job seeking process can be very demanding. Because of the known fact about job changing, many organizations like Google, help the candidate prepare for it by telling them what kind of questions a candidate can expect. 

The negative recruitment experience that the candidate experiences has an impact on the candidate as well as how people engage with the organization in terms of recruitment. Therefore it is important to map the journey of a job seeker to make it less stressful. As per Sashi Kumar, Managing Director of Indeed India, mapping the job seekers journey like a customer's journey map (Illustration of the experience of an individual) can be divided into four stages:

● Uncover the truth from insights and data: The data helps you uncover the mistakes organizations commonly make which create a negative impact on the job seeker’s journey. The most common mistake that the organization makes is not responding to the candidate. Irrespective of the result, the organization should revert to candidates in a fixed span of time. Second, organizations miss being clear about the roles in the job description. A candidate should be able to comprehend the roles and duties he is expected to perform from the description. And third, not letting the candidate know what to expect in the interview. Coming for an interview not prepared only makes the candidate more nervous. A nervous candidate can never demonstrate their full potential. The other data like your email tones, the attrition rate, etc. can help you know more problems and get to the crux of them.

● Document the practical and emotional steps of the journey: The level of stress for a job seeker varies. When they are happy and stable in a job, the only pressure is the workload. However, anxiety kicks in when the candidate is triggered and starts to look for another job. Similarly, the stress level for the recruiter also varies, when certain criteria are to be met while looking for a perfect candidate. These steps, when documented, can be analyzed to be approached in a better way. 

 ● Find the areas of improvement and implement them: The easiest way to discover the areas of improvement is by stepping in the seeker’s shoes. Once you have analyzed the above-mentioned emotional and practical steps, it becomes easy to understand what the recruiters of an organization can do to improve the hiring process. Implementing the changes will help both the organization and the candidate. 

● Measure the improved experience: After implementing the changes in the process measure, the metrics, and how it has impacted the quality of hiring engagement. The organization can get feedback from employees and ask them about the differences between before and after the changes are implemented.

The implementation of these steps can improve the hiring process massively making the difference in job seeker's journey. However, it can take some time to implement these steps. An organization can start implementing the changes on small parts of the process and then move to implement changes on the entire process. 

 

(This article is based on the talk, ‘The emotional side of recruiting: using design thinking to improve the hiring journey’ given by Sashi Kumar, Managing Director of Indeed India, during TAC 2019 organized by People Matters.)

Read full story

Topics: Recruitment, #PMTAC

Did you find this story helpful?

Author

QUICK POLL

How do you envision AI transforming your work?