A recruitment pipeline is like a sales pipeline. However, with a recruitment pipeline, you need to look at each stage of your recruitment process, whether that be sourcing, screening, skills testing, interviewing, onboarding, or something else entirely.

In practice, a recruitment pipeline looks something like this; you add candidates into the pipeline — or they add themselves in depending on if they apply for the position or you headhunt them. The goal is to have candidates spread across the different stages of the pipeline and to know which candidates are in each stage, and how long they’ve been in that stage.

It’s a good idea to have individual candidate pipelines for each open position. Some recruiters and hiring managers have general pipelines that include candidates that are a good match for company culture, in readiness for when a suitable position opens.

Benefits of using a pipeline

Using a pipeline to direct your hiring strategy helps you move from a reactive hiring process to a proactive hiring process. This will ultimately save you time and money and give you access to the top talent when you need it, essentially speeding up the hiring process. Some core benefits of using a recruitment pipeline:

1. It offers a steady supply of top talent

Many people think that once you’ve got to the stage of screening and interviewing suitable candidates this means that you can stop sourcing. Because surely one of these candidates will be perfect, right? It doesn’t always work like that.

It’s a good idea to continue to source candidates and leave your job advert up until your new hire has signed the contract. If the unfortunate scenario occurs where your top candidate pulls out at the last minute, then you’ll have to start over, and the process will take far longer.

2. You can track what works and what doesn’t

With a recruitment pipeline, you can track exactly which parts of your process are slow or taking too much time and use this to improve the efficiency of your hiring process.

For example, if you have numerous candidates in the interview stage, this isn’t efficient, and you need to know why. Is the job description detailed enough? Have you been thorough enough screening the candidates before offering interviews?

Once you understand the parts of your hiring process that are working well and what’s slowing you down, you can take steps to speed up the recruitment process and find the ideal candidate faster.

3. Increases the quality of your candidates

If you invest in marketing strategies for your recruitment process, this could be social media posts and ads, working with an agent, or using jobs boards allows you to passively attract candidates who resound with your brand and improve the quality of your hires.

Setting this process up correctly vastly improves the candidate experience, and also helps keep hiring managers informed and in touch with what’s going on.

Delivering a top-quality candidate experience also equates directly to higher employee satisfaction and increases the likelihood of your new hires recommending your company to friends.

How to create the ideal recruitment pipeline

A recruitment pipeline is generally made up of core steps. A key consideration is to ensure enough candidates are in each stage of the pipeline to ensure continuity.

1. Create a process for sourcing passive candidates

The best candidates may not be actively looking for a new job at the moment but would consider moving to the right company and the right position. To ensure you’re on the radar of top talent, it’s key to understand how to find passive candidates.

Social media and specifically LinkedIn is a great place to start finding out about potential passive candidates. If you’re working with an agency, it’s also a good idea to let them know your hiring goals for the next six months so that they can get ahead with sourcing passive candidates.

2. Champion your brand

Having clear, open, and honest brand messaging helps to attract candidates to your business while providing a detailed job description will also help to attract qualified candidates.

Be clear about who you are, what your company mission is, what the company values are, how you operate and what your company is passionate about. Talk about your company's CSR policies and be vocal on social media. Having this transparency in your hiring process will increase employee satisfaction and decrease turnover while making it more likely people who fit with your company culture and believe in what you do will want to join your team.

By doing this, it’s more likely you will receive speculative applications which will go towards increasing your passive candidate pool.

3. Invest in recruitment marketing

Advertising without identifying your target audience is likely to lead to disappointment and poor results. Think about this in the same way you market your product or service and choose the right platforms that your target audience will see and engage with. Recruitment marketing is the same as any other marketing and it’s important to measure and track the results you’re getting from your efforts.

Some channels to consider include:

• Paid advertising on social media
• Email newsletters
• Job boards including Monster, Indeed, and LinkedIn

If you're working with an agency such as Upstack then this is a key part of the strategy they use to find you the best candidates for the job.

4. Measure and track the performance of each stage

So, while it has a core structure, the pipeline isn’t rigid and is flexible. For certain positions, it’s worthwhile adding stages to your recruitment pipeline. For example, if you're hiring for software developers you will need to add a testing stage.

You can customize it specifically to your company’s needs. And it’s worth remembering that your recruitment pipeline is only as good as the tools you use and the strategy you employ. Get your hiring strategy and process sorted before moving on to more advanced recruiting practice and seek advice from professionals where needed.

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