EP113: Cloudreach - How Broken TA Processes Can Affect Recruitment

All-In Recruitment is a podcast by Manatal focusing on all things related to the recruitment industry’s missions and trends. Join us in our weekly conversations with leaders in the recruitment space and learn their best practices to transform the way you hire.

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

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Lydia: Welcome to the All-In Recruitment podcast by Manatal, where we explore best practices, learnings, and trends with leaders in the recruitment space. If you like our content, please subscribe to our channels on YouTube and Spotify and stay tuned for our weekly episodes.

I'm your host, Lydia, and with us today is Raj Ghir, most recently with Cloudreach. Welcome to the show, Raj.

Raj: Hi Lydia, thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Optimizing the Hiring Process by Doing More with Less Mentality

Lydia: So, what's your journey in Talent Acquisition been like so far? You're very passionate about this field. What are some major observations you've made about the industry recently?

Raj: So, I’ve been in recruitment altogether now probably about 10 years, coming up to now. I started from an agency side, working with various tech businesses. There’s always been a lot in the tech space. I think throughout my journey, I’ve definitely gravitated more towards the candidate experience side of things and wanting to deliver a good service, but also partnering with hiring managers and stakeholders to deliver a really good process.

I think my journey is taking me naturally into more internal positions as an acquisition partner and moving more into a senior tier partner, which was my most recent role. I think helped drive that passion and really helped me focus on what I’m looking to do around human-centered hiring, focusing on candidate experience and everything that we do, as well as trying to optimize processes.

In terms of the remark here, we all know what’s been going on the last few years, with redundancy, and a lot of great people being out of work. What I’ve noticed, in terms of a trend, is businesses definitely looking to focus on doing more with less, so to speak, so not necessarily hiring big TA teams that we’ve seen in the past. I’ve definitely noticed a lot more around recruitment technology coming up, more recruitment tech businesses approaching, and obviously a big push around AI.

This has been really a big talking point at the moment. And yes, what I’ve noticed is very much around how can we use that technology to not only streamline processes but enhance the overall process. So, yes, it’s a really interesting time for recruitment and something to explore more.

Lydia: Yes, and looking at the trend, as you said, it's more technology and different ways to build these processes within your teams and even within the organization. It’s also dealing with the different stakeholders.

So, in relation to that, what areas do you prioritize when it comes to working with different stakeholders inside a company?

Raj: I think for me, you’re obviously looking to bring in great talent throughout your role. It’s around looking at the data that’s for me, I always focus on looking at data around the hiring process, around various different conversion rates, and things like “time to hire,” “where you can then focus on,” and “are there any bottlenecks or problems?” I always focus on, what is it from the candidate’s perspective, when we’re building or delivering a process. I really want to focus on those a lot.

I try to focus a lot on how we communicate with candidates at every stage—how are they being kept informed and engaged throughout our process, which I think is really important for delivering a positive experience. Things that we focus on Cloudreach, we’re looking at things like candidate packs, especially in the world where there’s a lot more remote hiring and video interviews when they start the process, to help them understand what that interview process looks like, what to expect, stuff around the culture of the business, and not just about saying things that’s a great place to work, but really giving them tangible things to look at in terms of how do we work? How do we communicate? How is good performance rewarded, and things along those lines?

I think it is really important to give a full pitch to the candidates. So I think that’s one thing that I really try to focus on when it comes to living a candidate experience. But I think also there are things we can do behind the scenes that can also help to improve those efficiencies.

So, the initial thing that I always try to focus on in roles is that initial conversation with hiring managers. That role briefing, how are we aligning with hiring managers very early on to help us deliver a great process? I developed something here at Cloudreach that focused us on a template that allowed recruiters to capture all the information they possibly could and almost treat this document as a go-to for any particular role. Again, it’s one place you can use to access all the information about your sourcing strategy and how you’re recruiting for a particular role. Or something that can be used as a template moving forward.

Other things around how we can speed up getting candidates onto the top of the funnel. One thing we found produced as well was around what we call talent sprints, where a group of people in the team will come together and source one particular role to help really build up the people getting into the process. Then we focus on things around like interviewer training, trying to maintain higher standards, and, like I said before, tracking the data where we have to make sure everything we’re doing is working.

It’s not implementing loads of stuff, and it’s not working in the end. So, I think for me, those are the main things I try to prioritize—how we can align, how we can deliver great processes and always keeping the candidate experience at the forefront of everything that we do.

Ensuring Fairness and Consistency Across All Candidates with Structured Interviewing

Lydia: Speaking about the candidate experiences, let’s go back to the very basic experience, or rather the default experience, which is the interview process.

So in your view, or your experience so far, the different initiatives or different templates that you've created, what are some key components of an effective interview process, especially for recruiters to follow?

Raj: I think for me, the cornerstone of an effective interview process all comes down to two things, which I think are structure and fairness. So when you’re looking at the structure, you’re very much looking at, how are we assessing candidates in an objective but also in a fair way. Everywhere I work, one thing that has to be really paramount in terms of delivering that structure is developing concise and detailed scorecards.

So, having set criteria such as what good (hire) looks like and how are we scoring something are very easy for interviewers and hiring managers to follow. It allows for every candidate in the process to be interviewed in a fair way, interviewed in the same way as well. We don’t want to create a process that differs from candidate to candidate. So I think that, firstly, is very key, and having that structure, I think lends itself so hiring managers don’t deviate too far away from it and ask questions to one candidate that may not be asked to another.

We need to try our best to make that as fair as possible. And then I think that lends it to that structure to how we give feedback to candidates. So having that structure in place allows us as recruiters to go back to candidates who maybe were successful, also who were not, with very detailed feedback as to where they maybe fell slightly short, and points of improvement, but keeping things as structured as possible.

Again, everything that we do with that stuff is not just about ticking a box and making sure we’ve done one thing, but it’s around providing really strong and actionable feedback that essentially respects candidates’ effort and time.

So, I think having that structure in place essentially gives every candidate a fair shot and a fair chance to impress, but also allows us as recruiters to really understand what are we assessing for. You’re taking the opinion out of it as much as possible, and using everything in terms of data focus to make a decision. I think at the very basis where the focus should be, and then where you go from there to improve things, I guess we use the data to allow you to go that way.

Using Candidate Feedback to Improve Hiring Processes

Lydia: Now, getting the feedback from candidates, theoretically, it sounds like it will happen and it has this whole feedback loop. But in reality, how likely is it for a candidate to give you that feedback post interview?

Raj: I think it’s tricky and you can’t expect every candidate to do that. But, I think a lot of it stems from the experience they get throughout the process. For me, candidates are more likely to give you feedback if they’ve had a positive experience or if something has gone unwell. But, I think also having that open conversation throughout the process.

So, it’s not a case of them exiting a process and then you ask for feedback. I think in your conversations with candidates, building that relationship creates that open dialog. I think it opens candidates up and gets them a bit more relaxed as well. So, at the end of the process, if you do ask, you’re more likely to get that feedback. But again, you can’t ever expect candidates to definitely give it every time, but I think that’s a good way to get that feedback, and I can talk about it in more detail.

But for me, receiving feedback from candidates who were objective is, I think, some of the best feedback you can get as a recruiter. If someone gets the job, you always probably get very positive feedback there. And it’s maybe not going to be the most honest, but I think having that openness can also allow you to get maybe not so positive, some negative feedback, but stuff that you can use going forward.

Lydia: So, in terms of assessing an assessment into the different interviewing skills that you have for your team, those within your recruitment team, how do you go about evaluating the effectiveness of their interviewing skills?

Raj: I think the big thing in that is creating a culture where the team feels very comfortable sharing what's worked and what hasn't worked. I think being open to feedback is really key.

I think for me, the big thing is, no one is perfect. No one's going to be able to do everything right 100% of the time, and we're all going to make big mistakes or do things that we maybe haven't learned yet. For me, learning from experiences is really key. I deliver training sessions to the team quite regularly to keep them updated with standards and what we expect. But also, I don't claim to know everything myself, so it's learning from the team and picking up things that have worked quite well.

But also, any feedback we do get from candidates is useful. So that's something, for me, that's really important. And then what we've tried to do here at Cloudreach as well is bake that into guides and templates that even newcomers to the team can use to just look at what's best practice. We don't necessarily want people to work via a script when it comes to interviewing, but to understand what different techniques might work better than others. And again, you want to make it as personal to you as possible. But I think just having that openness to always be learning and be open to feedback, even if it is negative at times lends itself to always improving.

Lydia: It's definitely a culture piece within the recruitment team to be able to create that habit or routine where everyone's open to feedback, and everyone's willing to give that feedback without hesitation.

Raj: Yes, and I think also it comes down to a relationship with your hiring manager and the manager you're recruiting with. How well do you understand the role you're recruiting for? So you can ask the right questions as well. Before, people were very quick to try to rush and find people and interview them, but if you take the time at the beginning of the process to truly align with your hiring manager. So when you present candidates to them, you're assessing for the same things they're looking for. And I think it also makes a big difference in improving how you interview.

How Broken Talent Acquisition Processes Damage Employer Brands

Lydia: We've spoken about interviewing skills or other non-aligned expectations between hiring managers and recruiters. Now, how do broken TA processes such as this, impact both the candidates and also company?

Raj: Yes, I've definitely noticed it a lot more, possibly because people have been a lot more vocal now on social media and LinkedIn. But I think, ultimately, a broken TA process can have quite a big negative impact on both candidates and the business. Looking from the candidate side of things, ultimately, they're receiving a poor experience through a broken process. Obviously, there's frustration, and it ultimately gives them a negative perception of the company. I, myself, whenever I've been job searching, from my own experience, it does leave a sour taste in your mouth when a company has taken two to three weeks to give you feedback, and it just tends to be a generic response.

And seeing it from both sides of the fence, so to speak, a lot of it just comes down to a lack of process, a lack of awareness in terms of how it affects the business, having a broken process. I think, from the business perspective, sometimes it's kind of obvious in terms of losing potentially really good talent. Your time to hire tends to increase, and that comes with increased costs, especially if you've got an NTC that you need to fill. And then, ultimately, it harms your employer brand.

People, especially online, talk a lot more about the negative experiences than the positive. And the last thing you want as a recruiter is that perception of your business. So, when you go out to other candidates and they've read a post about your company that isn’t so positive, it starts you off on the back foot. And I just think, if everything you do as a recruiter, if you're always thinking about how that's going to impact the candidate more than anything else, I think that's a very good starting point. You can work really hard to make a process efficient, but if the candidate experience isn’t being thought of, it can almost have a detrimental effect.

Using Data to Address Recruitment Bottlenecks and Optimize Hiring Efficiency

Lydia: So, when it comes down to data, Raj, how do you use that data to story tell the candidate experience that you're going for? What is the goal of that candidate experience? I mean, how do you use that data to visualize or envision the kind of candidate experience that you'd ideally like to reach?

Raj: That’s a great question. I think in terms of the data that I focus on, there are two sides to it. One is as an individual contributor, hiring for particular roles. There are two areas I tend to look at. One is your time metrics, so you look at overall time to hire—from the moment you start sourcing for a role to when someone either accepts an offer or joins. And while that is a good starting point, what's really key is how you can break that down into the different segments of the recruiting process. I think that’s when you can start to build a story. You might do really well with your time to source, and within two weeks you’ve found great candidates. But if your time to interview is taking weeks and weeks, it’s about looking at particular areas within that process to find out what is maybe taking so long. What are the particular bottlenecks? I think that’s how you can eventually start building a story.

But even more so is looking at conversion rates from stage to stage. So, when you're messaging a lot of candidates, are only a few percent coming back to you? And if that's the case, is there a reason? Do you have to look at how you're messaging, for example? Or are you speaking to lots of candidates, and then when you present them to hiring managers, most of them get rejected? So again, I think that’s how you start to build a story. Numbers are great, but if we just look at them, especially from a hiring manager's perspective, numbers on their own don’t really mean much. I think sometimes in recruitment, we put a lot of emphasis on these figures. But unless we’re delivering a story to the manager that they can understand and makes sense to them, it almost seems pointless to do it.

So, I think if you understand where those time-to-hire or time-to metrics are taking longer than they should, but then also look at whether there are particular stages where a lot of candidates are dropping off, you can go into that detail. I think, for me, the best way of delivering a story to managers all comes down to the level of effort. As a recruiter, my job is to make a manager's life easier. I don’t want to make their life more difficult with what we’re doing. So, if we notice they’re having to conduct a lot of interviews, for example, and that’s taking them away from their actual day-to-day job, that’s a good way to resonate with them—because that’s what they don’t want to be doing, right? So, what can we then do to fix that? Do we need to align better at the very beginning? Is there a lack of understanding from the recruiter about the role, for example? Or, even beyond that, during the interviews, are candidates failing a particular interview? And is it because it's too difficult, or are the candidates not being prepared well enough?

So, yeah, I think looking at data and so on could be a whole podcast because it’s super interesting. I think you always need to have that in the background. As a recruiter, you should always understand, individually or as a team, how you are performing. One thing Cloudreach did was make all our data transparent, so anyone on the team could go in and look at another recruiter and say, "Oh, why are they doing much better than me?" But it’s not a case of hitting you over the head with it. It’s about saying, "Okay, we all want to improve, so let’s use the internal data we’ve got to make everyone as good as they can be." So yes, it’s really, I think, an important aspect of improving the overall experience in the process.

Balancing Technology and Human Touch, Transforming Talent Acquisition

Lydia: You alluded to recruitment technology is really transforming the TA space and creating a different whole different set of skills for a recruiter now. Soม with recruitment technologies coming in and the emphasis on data and now AI into the recruitment process, how do you think the role of a recruiter or Talent Acquisition professional has changed?

Raj: I think with AI and technology, it's all fantastic with the stuff that's coming out. But, I think the key thing to remember and the way I look at it as well, is that, essentially, these are just tools. And there's always talk about AI is going to replace or replace the recruiter and everything along those lines. But the way I look at it is we need to use this technology because it's there to make our lives easier through efficiencies and automating repetitive tasks.

However, I only see technology as useful if it allows us as recruiters, to focus on what I think is the most important part of our job, and that's building relationships, whether it's with candidates, or whether it's with our internal stakeholders and hiring managers. So again, I was talking a lot more about how TA partners are expected to do more with less, and I think that's where it comes down to how smart can we be with the technology that that we have available to us now.

The simple things like scheduling tools that allow candidates to pick their own time and make a lot of stuff for more self service, which I think, again, is a path. I think we should probably explore more in terms of our recruitment process, trying to make it more accessible to candidates. So, here's a technology like that we can use to help with that. Some really cool tech that's come out more recently is around AI note taking, which I think is what I've seen and why I've used myself a game changer.

So again, not worrying about having to type notes where you could miss out on some key information, having AI write your notes for you, so you can focus just on the conversation, on the person in front of you. So I think as recruiters, how we can show more value in what we do is from the more personal touch. Can we deliver much better candidate experience through our interactions with candidates? But then on the other side, how well are we using the data? We have to give those stories to managers to help make improvements and efficiencies.

So yes, I think the other two things for me, recruiters need to be much more data literate, so understanding what the data was telling them and how they can then build a story to deliver to to managers, but also really focusing on how we're building relationships, how every interaction with a candidate leaves asking questions. Again, technology and AI need to use it as an enabler to allow us to do to the best that we can.

Lydia: And finally, Raj, what is your favorite or most memorable recruitment story?

Raj: It's a few, but I think it's a tough to pick one particular moment. For me, the most memorable moments are always when it comes to candidate feedback. I think especially candidates who didn't get jobs with us. Obviously, not everyone you speak to, you can get a job. So I think for me, the most memorable moments are when candidates reach out to give positive feedback on experience even when they haven't got the job.

I think it's more memorable when you haven't actually asked for it. I've had a couple of examples in the last few years where I've been left LinkedIn recommendations, but I've not even asked for it, just to purely talk about the experience they had with me and and how I help them, even though they may not have particularly said, “I got the job.” It reinforces myself of why I'm passionate about candidate experience. It makes me think what I'm doing is though it's not perfect, it is working. So, I would say that's probably for me, the most memorable moments in my recruitment career. I always ask for feedback, but when you get unexpected…

Lydia: Yes, definitely rewarding.

Raj: It’s very nice. And I think it has been tough for a few years for recruiters with everything going on. So, I think those little pockets of positivity where they are trying to hold on to them as much as possible. It means we’re doing something right which we think is great.

Lydia: So, thank you so much for your time and these generous insights in particular looking at what's broken inside a hiring process, or trying to find ways in which we can improve that and how to look at technology. So thanks again, Raj. And for those who are listening in, who want to maybe pick up a conversation with you, or chat about one of these topics in a little more detail, where can they connect with you?

Raj: I think the best place to connect with me is on LinkedIn. I’m really keen to speak to people around this topic. And yes, thanks so much for having me on the podcast. It's been a pleasure.

Lydia: Thanks, Raj. We have been in conversation with Raj Ghir, former Senior Talent Acquisition Partner at Cloudreach. Thank you for joining us, and remember to subscribe to stay tuned for more weekly episodes from All-In Recruitment.