Good recruitment process is the key to building a great team

“You’re hired, congratulations!”. This line has the power to create a huge impact on both a candidate’s and a recruiter's life. While a recruiter handles sensitive data regarding candidates, maintaining its sanctity is equally important to get a better output. To have the recruitment process more structured and organized, it is necessary to have a system that can streamline this process.

The ATS (Application Tracking System) in ERPNext bridges the gap between recruiters, stakeholders, and candidates. This data-driven process has successfully allowed recruiters to manage their hiring timely and efficiently. Let’s unfold the dynamic between a recruiter, candidate, and the system.

The girl behind, “you are hired” message from Frappe

Sydel began her HR journey with Frappe earlier this year in January ‘21. Her previous experience in HR was completely different since she came from a corporate setup that practiced a traditional approach to recruiting. The process there was standardized and well-defined. While Frappe is an established start-up, we’re still in the phase of setting up processes as per industry standard.

Remote hiring has been a tedious yet essential task. Sydel said that “as easy as it may sound, hiring the best talent from a pool of resources is difficult.” She deals with a variety of candidates, some who have researched the organization, some who haven't just like some candidates who fill out our questionnaire, and some who don't.

With the HRMS in place, Sydel can track candidate details efficiently and it has made her life easier. Right from the application process to the generation of the offer letter, the system-driven process is effective.

Breaking the stereotypical pattern of recruitment

The hiring game has substantially changed over the past couple of years. Face-to-face interviews are passé, and the need for an interview over a video conference call has gained utmost importance. Frappe has always been supportive of the “work from home” culture, close to 50% of Frappe, across India, have been hired through a video call.

The struggle to recruit digitally is an insane game, with multiple back and forth coordination one tends to lose out on their patience. Rescheduling calls is frustrating, messaging stakeholders and waiting for their response is time-consuming.

To mitigate the risk and reduce the turnaround time, Frappe follows a 6 step Data-Driven process in the ATS module at ERPNext.

Step 1 - Staffing Plan

Reema, Head - HR at Frappe, plans for a manpower requirement in the Staffing Plan doctype. This helps her keep a department-wise track of the budgeting and the number of candidates she is looking for.

Step 2 - Job Opening

The Job Opening form helps her add the job vacancies. It also helps her see the status of the job if the position is open, on-hold, or closed.

Step 3 - Job applicant + Employee referral

The Job Applicant form helps Sydel track the list of candidates who have applied for a particular job opening. If an applicant has applied through the reference of an internal employee, she can see the name of that employee as well. She can select the employee name in the Source Name field to link an applicant and their referee.

Step 4 - Interview Round

The interview round contains the expected average rating, skillset, etc. Here, the recruitment team defines designation to filter job applicants during the interview creation. With the help of the interview application form, the team submits the feedback, gives ratings, and reschedules the interview (if required).

Step 5 - Job offer

Sydel makes a record of the Job Offers that she has given to candidates. Once a candidate gets selected, a job offer is rolled out via email, and the same is recorded in the system. After a candidate accepts the job offer, they are asked to send their personal and professional documentation for further verification.

Step 6 - Appointment Letter

Reema creates an Appointment Letter that can be given to the recruited candidates. She can manually fill the introduction, terms, and closing statement, or select an appointment letter template to autofill the content. She can create new appointment letter templates for further ease of use. Once a candidate shares all of their documents, after verifying, they are uploaded to the employee master form.

Uniqueness and the struggle

Since it's remote hiring, the search criteria is narrowed down and filtered likewise to find the right candidate. At times, candidates find it easier to apply for jobs through various job portals because it is less time-consuming.

If candidates apply through web portals, they are required to fill a mandatory questionnaire that helps the recruiters to learn a candidate’s profile, in a better manner. If not filled by the candidate, the application form in the HR module is filled by Sydel for future references.

Dream on, dreamer

Who would have thought that “Dreamer” would be a position that an organization was looking to fill? Yes, one of the positions we hire for is Dreamer. This is when the explorers and experts come together to find a middle ground to align with the organization’s values and goals. Frappe encourages hiring people irrespective of their experience or educational qualifications.

The goal for hiring a candidate via the Dreamer position is to provide a platform for people who have chosen their careers by chance and not by choice. Frappe plans to break the barrier and try not to restrict a candidate’s efficiency.

Selecting the right candidate comes with a risk and challenges

Sydel was recruiting a Video Creator. She was looking for someone with experience and in-depth knowledge of core editing and scripting. She interviewed many candidates before finalizing Hrithik Mahajan. In his interview, he shared one of his very unusual and abstract videos, where he shot a video while painting his ceiling fan. Someday, he aspires to become a filmmaker. His liking for photography and cinematography landed him at Frappe.

For the position of Sales Development Representative, the recruitment team has been searching for someone who can get acquainted with working with the US time zone. Frappe being an Indian company, does not run on a 9 to 6 schedule. Democracy being our first principle, teammates choose their own working hours and the place of work. The team here is ready to take a risk on people to explore their journey and give quality results.

Sheldon from the recruitment team mentioned that they posted a vacancy on LinkedIn for the profile of a Legal Advisor. It went viral to the extent that they had to delete the job posting because they received more than 400 applicants within 2 days. Fortunately, they closed the position and are preparing the onboarding session for the same.

Wrapping it up

The 6 step data-driven process has helped our recruitment team. The human resource management system has bridged the gap between mapping a recruitment strategy and identifying business needs. It has streamlined these processes and helped them work in an organized manner. Our processes save time and reduce the overhead of sifting through rows and rows of unorganized data on random excel sheets. We bring order to chaos.

Rucha and team - Engineers at Frappe, have further enhanced the Application Tracking System in ERPNext. They came up with a multi-round feature. This can help recruitment team track interviews based on a candidate’s competency, panel interviews, walk-in interviews, etc. Job applicant will have summary of all the interviews. It will let the recruiters make an interview calendar through which they can send reminders for rescheduling, feedback submissions and interview reminders. This will further upscale the recruitment game and be beneficial to enterprises that expect a large footfall daily. The bottom line is to transform the organization and improve business outcomes.