How we use Jira Service Management for our recruitment process! - Part 2

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It is never about setting up a process and being done with it. Rather, the focus should always be on optimizing it for the best outcomes. Thus, we didn’t stop at setting up JSM for our recruitment process. We looked at the process from different stakeholders’ points of view and came up with some neat things to make it more delightful for everyone. 

Let us dig in deeper, assuming you have already read through part 1 of this post.

Using email templates wisely

JSM has a feature that lets you customize the email notification content. Obviously, this feature is accessible only to the service project admins. The default seeded content for these notifications is not targeted at your prospective employees. Now, this should present itself as an opportunity to speak to the candidates. Make the content modifications in these templates & ensure your employer branding is prominent in them.

Additionally, you can also control what events generate notifications to the candidates. Easy peasy, ain’t it!

Some tips to spruce up your emails templates: 

1. Add your logo, add links to your Social media handles
2. Add credentials about your company e.g. Great place to work, Times award for best innovative product etc (we call out our 'Platinum marketplace partner' status)
3. You can even update the look & feel with custom CSS

Using automation for efficiency & effectiveness

If not for automation, human race would have missed out the chance to do all these amazing things while letting the code take care of routine stuff. So go ahead. Think about the repetitive scenarios that your recruitment process encounters. And then use Jira’s native automation to nudge relevant stakeholders in the right direction.

Here are some of the situations that really stand out as automation candidates:

1. Acknowledgement of candidate’s interest in the position
   1. It is not only about saying ‘We have received your application’ but setting the expectations right by saying ‘Here’s what the process looks like and it usually takes x amount of time’. This guarantees that the candidate has a humane experience while dealing with your employer brand.
2. Internal nudge if the candidate’s status has not changed for specific number of days
   1. Remember when we said that Recruitment team should be held accountable to the ‘service’ they provide? This is your opportunity to put in place a check. After all the ‘x amount of time’ can only work out if all involved move swiftly.
3. Automatically rejecting candidates who have already applied in the last 6 months
   1. Many organisations have the condition that the rejected candidates cannot apply once again in the next x months. This is easily achieved by looking at the reporter of the request. And if the automation finds that the same reporter has applied before, it can just ‘auto-reject’.

Canned responses for HR teams

Is the process becoming too mechanical already with automation? Well, don’t let that happen. Prospective employees are your future customers, offer them the best in class experience with consistent & detailed communication. Use something like Canned responses once you take help from your copywriters. This will save a lot of time for your HR team involved in the recruitment process. 

Do not stop at creating only a few response templates. Otherwise, there will be a repetitive & mechanical feel to the overall conversation. You always want to build on & continue to improve the candidate experience. It is not only about improving efficiency but also about not losing the human touch in these discussions.

Customer-facing vs. internal comments

One big thing that your team needs to be trained on - not putting in customer-facing comments by mistake. We solve this problem with a simple rule - only our colleagues from HR communicate with the candidates via these customer-facing comments. Everyone else does participate in the process, but they only post internal comments. 

Even the HR folks can commit this mistake of posting an internal comment externally, but the chances of that happening become exponentially less.

Using customer satisfaction ratings to your advantage

Apart from hiring the best possible candidates quickly, your recruitment process should also have another equally important goal. Which is to delight the experience of every candidate that has ever shown interest in joining you. Put another way, your recruitment team should be held accountable to the satisfaction ratings provided by your candidates. Satisfaction ratings & comments, especially from the candidates that were rejected along the way, are your guiding rails to improve the process.

To get more accurate responses, modify the satisfaction rating question. Look at the screenshot below.

Creating dashboard charts from the recruitment data

Once your recruitment service project is moving steadily, need for more insights will arise. That is where Jira’s native dashboard gadgets will come into play. You will be able to look at different charts and respond to the questions like

1. How many applications have been received for X position
2. What is the current status distribution of all applicants
3. Recent activity on different applications
4. Recent satisfaction scores and comments

You can even get some advanced insights such as 

1. Time taken to review applications
2. How many candidates are dropping off through the different phases
3. Offer acceptance rate etc

Here’s a very simplistic dashboard from our recruitment project:

Hope this helps HR teams to start moving to Jira & Jira service management, where rest of the teams are already working day in day out.