Berlin Survey Results — Part 3: The stresses and strains of the recruitment process

Searching for a new employee can be painful.

Our tech recruiters know what it feels like to wait for a response from a candidate for weeks or struggle to schedule a job interview with an ever-busy developer. It takes time and effort.

But the thing is, changing jobs is tough as well. It is often associated with lots of stress and lack of time on the job applicant’s side. And, most of the time, it’s not a candidate’s fault. Let’s face it, in a reality where Berlin tech companies are fighting for the talent, the hiring process in general is broken.

If we want to fix it, we need to know what’s wrong with it. This is why we asked tech candidates the following question:

What is the most stressful part of the application/recruitment process?

We made a list of 11 options and asked our survey participants to pick up to 3. They could type in their own answer as well.

To see who our respondents were, check out the 1st article of this series:

Berlin Survey Results — Part 1

Turns out, the biggest problems in the recruitment process are:

1. “Test assignments take too much time” ≈ 42%

2. “The recruitment process takes too long” ≈ 35%

3. “There are too many steps in the recruitment process” AND “HR and the hiring manager(s) don’t exchange interview feedbacks” ≈ 34%

The pains of the recruitment process

We did get some particularly helpful responses under “Other”. Some of them expanded the existing options, and some were completely new.

For example, a recruitment process doesn’t just take too long, it can also be very resource-consuming and exhausting for a job applicant:

For me this time it was very stressful because I tried to response each and every person contacting me, and not just response, but check what they offer, which company is it, how good financially they’re, etc.

And then, here’s the bias caused by the lack of professionalism on the recruiting side:

HR may ask questions about the technologies that he\she does not know. And if a candidate’s wording does not correspond the one that he\she has, that candidate is filtered out.

As we have mentioned in our previous article, time is not the only concern when it comes to test assignments:

The tests are sent out even before getting to know the candidate and are too difficult for an average programmer. Better have an assignment to discuss with and show to the team in person.

Finally, there is one thing that’s worse than a much-delayed feedback — and that’s no feedback:

There is no real feedback, “we decided to hire another candidate” says nothing about why company didn’t want to hire me.

Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash

So, let’s sum it up.

Here are the areas of the recruitment process that are often broken:

• The structure (duration, people involved, the sequence of stages, etc.)
• Skills assessment procedures
• Feedback and communication (both within the company and between the company and candidate)

A bad (stressful and frustrating) recruitment experience can turn the applicant away from your company. So, when hiring, invest some effort into revising and improving your recruitment process. Collect feedback both from those you’ve hired and those you’ve rejected. Be transparent.

All in all, it’s a candidate-driven market. Be sure to keep up with it.

That’s it for now. In the next article, we’ll see what a great recruitment process looks like from the candidate’s point of view.

Stay tuned!