Building an effective hiring process from scratch involves identifying your company’s needs and setting a path to find quality applicants. By examining past hiring practices and implementing new strategies, you can build a more efficient process. Read on for some ways to create a hiring process that gets results.
Primary Elements of the Hiring Process
There are three main aspects of the hiring process, with several steps under each umbrella. Take a closer look at the big picture:
Step 1: Recruiting
- Reach out to existing networks
- Gather referrals from existing employees
- Consider internal promotions
- Develop a talent pipeline
- Post on job boards
Step 2: Hiring
- Receive applications
- Screen applicants
- Conduct interviews
- Extend offers
Step 3: Onboarding
- Gather required documents
- Introduce benefits
- Establish job responsibilities
- Connect with trainers and mentors
- Follow up at established intervals
Each of these three categories is important for meeting key hiring goals and creating a positive experience for both the hiring team and prospective employees.
They also help with:
- Generating a pool of qualified candidates
- Keeping organized and meeting process deadlines
- Maximizing time-to-hire
- Effectively communicating with prospective employees throughout the process
- Creating a welcoming atmosphere during hiring
- Encouraging retention through a robust onboarding program
Using ApplicantStack to Build Your Hiring Process
Communication and visibility are core values that can guide how you structure your hiring process. All the stakeholders on the hiring team should have all relevant information at their fingertips. Relying on traditional communication methods for hiring tasks can obscure important information. Using an application tracking system like ApplicantStack provides a visual record of each phase of the process.
Creating a New Job
Once you identify a job that needs to be filled, you can enter it into ApplicantStack and populate it with associated tasks:
- Approval from HR or managers
- Identify important details like location, department, start date, salary
- Write a job description
- Post on job boards
ApplicantStack has an integrated posting module for each job board and social media site. You can quickly post open positions, see their status, and can even enable a text-to-apply feature for jobs where you need quick turnaround.
Receiving Applications
Candidates for every open job are entered into ApplicantStack for viewing and sorted in the order most relevant to your needs. You can sort by job, hiring stage, and importance, as well as by rating (once you’ve done some initial screening). This effort can help the hiring team keep track of the order of importance for scheduling interviews.
Candidates can indicate their preferred means of communication, enabling quicker response times.
Hiring Team Division of Labor
The email tab sends invitations for each individual’s assigned tasks, with options to set reminders and create calendar items. The email contains all the relevant data about the candidate, position, and stage of the process, so there’s never any confusion about where anyone stands.
Once you accept an assignment, you can create a task list that’s sortable by date and status and includes integrated contact links to complete tasks within the software. This instantly updates the candidate’s profile so anyone else checking in can see where they stand.
Offers and Onboarding
ApplicantStack creates customizable templates for offer letters. You can make offers from within the software and, once accepted, transition the candidate to employee to take advantage of the powerful onboarding tools. With mobile and desktop access, new hires can upload tax forms, access and download company manuals and benefits information, and e-sign required documents for their personnel file.
You can also create checklists for new hires to keep track of training and give them a sense of accomplishment in their new role. Checklists are a good reminder for managers and HR to periodically check in with new hires, help resolve concerns, and meet company retention goals.
Reports and Analysis
When setting up a hiring process from scratch, you’re likely to hit a few bumps in the road as you refine the procedures to best fit your company. ApplicantStack’s integrated reports can help you understand key metrics such as time-to-hire and identify bottlenecks in the process. Each hire can teach you something about how to improve your process and where you had the most success.
- How to Build a Hiring Process From Scratch - August 5, 2026
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- How to Reduce Time-to-Hire Without Cutting Corners - July 22, 2026
