Transform Your Hiring Funnel with Automated Workflows

Shane Gray
3 min readSep 1, 2023
Photo credit Carl Heyerdahl

Recruiters today face an overwhelming amount of tasks — from reviewing resumes to conducting interviews and paperwork. But implementing some simple automations can help ease the burden.

The Problem: Recruiter Overload

Between sourcing, interviewing, and administrative tasks, recruiters have a lot on their plates. An average day may involve:

  • Sifting through a mountain of resumes
  • Conducting back-to-back interviews on various platforms
  • Finalizing paperwork for new hires

It’s an endless cycle that consumes time. The traditional hiring process is also highly inefficient. On average, a corporate role attracts 250 resumes, leads to 4–6 interviews, and only 1 hire. Clearly too much effort goes into candidates who don’t move forward.

The Solution: Automated Workflows

This is where simple automated workflows come in. By automating repetitive recruiting tasks, you free up time to focus on building relationships with top talent.

You don’t need fancy AI tools. Look for everyday processes that can be standardized.

Case Study: Email Screening Automation

Here’s a real-world example workflow automation that saved me time screening applicants.

When I was growing a sales team, I set up an auto-response for all email applicants with a simple request — leave me a short voicemail explaining their interest and pitching our product.

Here was the email I used, I am sure you can come up with your own situationally relevant versions for different roles.

Hi there,

Thanks for your application to join the sales team.

We appreciate you taking the time to apply and your interest in joining the team. As this role will require spending some time on the phone please pick up the phone and call [my number]

Please leave me a voicemail with the following info

1. Why you would like to work with us?

2. Why you think you could be a good fit for the team?

3. Your 60 second pitch for our product ( if you haven’t checked out our product you can read all about it here )

You won’t need to spend more than 3 minutes on this call in total and you will run out of voicemail recording time if you do!

Don’t forget to include your name and number so I can get back to you.

I will wait until I hear from you until I progress your application for this role.

I promise everyone who leaves me a message will get a response to their application from me personally.

Best,

Shane

So what happened?

This filtered out about 80% of applicants who didn’t follow through.

For the 20% who did, I could hear their enthusiasm and communication skills before responding to them as promised.

Importantly nobody felt like their application went into a black hole.

The key was putting the ball in the applicant’s court to demonstrate real interest which also meant they received a positive experience.

What automations can you come up with to streamline your hiring workflow?

The right ones can save you hours of manual work, allowing you to focus on building relationships with top talent.

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Shane Gray

A veteran of technology business development and strategy with the uncanny ability to distill a complex issue into something that is clearly understandable.