What kind of service level do you want to provide for your hiring managers?

#1 –Pipeline management SLA

Long Term/short term approach – It helps to overcome the challenge of time to hire.

Most Req are created when someone resigns/when they get finance approval for a new role. But every hiring manager knows when they need to open new Req OR they do have a prediction on how things will look like after 2 month/4 month/6 month/even after one year when they have performance review/ annual increment/Bonus release/they do know when someone is going to resign soon. Even when they have new product releases, they do discuss with finance or executive to forecast future hiring needs. So matter-of-fact, we need to be proactive and advise.

The aim is to make a sensible prediction so that (1) you can start attracting and nurturing the right talent proactively and (2) you can plan your approach and budget effectively.

Ask your hiring manager to create Standby Job Req (No approval need on the system from finance/executive) which they plan to open after 2 months till 1 year/more. We just have to keep adding passive/active candidates and ask them to complete online self-assessment/coding tests whenever they can.

#2 – Networking map SLA

Hiring managers do need to understand their role in the process and their engagement. Ask the hiring team to participate in a hearty planning session, which essentially sets up the hiring process for success from the get-go.

Get them involved in posting/sharing jobs at Linkedin/Twitter/Facebook/XING/ Quora etc. They may have less connecting in Linkedin but do have a more specific network of right skills than a recruiter so use them

Benchmark should not be more than 24 hours or less.

#3 – Talent Sourcing Jam/Experiment with Engagement SLA

A Talent Sourcing Jam involves inviting a team together and having them go through their network for possible candidate leads. You can also use their expertise to help target passive leads on social media sites like GitHub/ stack overflow or many others. During this, we will have each of them login into LinkedIn/GitHub and search for potential leads and add them into a google doc.

It does help you to build a relationship with the hiring team and gaining respect through Service Level Agreements in Recruiting. Over task don’t take more than 2 hours.

#4 – Interview Feedback (Case study/panel interview/final interview) SLA

Improve your candidate close rates with timely internal feedback- Top-tier talent is in high demand, and not often on the market for long. If you move too slowly, your top-choice candidates may be scooped up by your competitor and you’ll have to begin the recruitment process over with a new candidate. If you want to win these coveted candidates for your team, you must quickly collect internal feedback to make timely hiring decisions. Even if you decide not to extend an offer to a given

Candidate, it’s important to send them a status update. Lack of communication is one of the biggest complaints job seekers have, and rightfully so – they put a lot of time and energy into your recruitment process. Benchmark should be no more than 48 hours or less. Lever’s interview feedback reminders help nudge your team to meet internal SLAs:

#5 – Scheduling Interviews SLA

We allow candidates to self-schedule by creating and sending an Easy Book link so they’ll be offered a range of available times, pulled directly from interviewer calendars. Once a candidate selects an interview slot, the meeting is booked, and both parties will receive a calendar invite to confirm.

I understand sometimes the hiring team might have sudden schedule changes but we also need to keep in mind that candidates do plan his/her day schedule based on our confirmation so it’s important to set interview cancelation SLA with the hiring team to give a good candidate experience during the interview process. Benchmark should be no more than 2 hours or more from the scheduled time. Ideally, we all know how the next 2 hours schedule will look like

#6 – Bottleneck SLA

If the hiring manager/panel finds any bottleneck in the process/poor quality during the interview process they need to report back to the recruiter within 24 hours. This does help the recruiter to redesign his sourcing/ Screening/recruiter interview and it helps you save everyone time.

#7 – Post offer engagement SLA

Meet current employees and hiring managers. It might be a great idea to arrange for them to meet and interact with a couple of current employees. This will not only make them feel more comfortable with the team but will also give them an opportunity to network with others who share similar interests, hobbies, or backgrounds, regardless of their final decision to join your company or not. The tone of these meetings needs to be casual and not nosiness-like. One of the most common reasons for candidates to not honor their acceptance of the offer is a lack of direct and clear communication.

So fix lunch/ virtual coffee meetup with the hiring team and hiring manager should make themselves available after 1.5 weeks from the time offered was accepted.