6 Practical Ways to Make Hiring More Transparent
Traditional hiring processes are very opaque for the candidate.
Job ads include copy-and-pasted laundry lists of tools & responsibilities, but rarely provide any real insight into things candidates actually care about.
Candidates crave basic information, and the sooner companies provide it, the more likely the candidate is to jump through the hoops set up.
The thing is, what candidates want to know is actually very clear and simple.
Think of the types of questions they'll ask in the first interview - that's what they care about.
Instead of going over the same thing again and again with every candidate, why not package that up into a digestible FAQ and proactively share it with candidates BEFORE they need to hit ‘apply’?
Being transparent is also in the company’s best interest - there is absolutely no point dragging a candidate through a hiring process, only to find at the final interview that their absolute minimum salary is 30k below the maximum. It’s a basic qualification exercise and will save you a tonne of time in the hiring process.
Not sure where to start? Pretty much every candidate wants to know these basics below, which we cover in more detail here.
Money, money, money!
The full remuneration details (base, bonus, health) should be disclosed. Hint: the candidate wants numbers here, not a bunch of words. Just tell them the truth. If the answer is ‘it depends’ or ‘how much are you after?’ or ‘we’ll discuss that later’, then you’re doing it wrong.
The hiring process
What are the stages, why do they exist and how long is the commitment? If you don't know the answer to this, then that's a bigger issue - you should figure out your process before you hit ‘go’ on the hiring button.
Working conditions
The hours and location should be crystal clear. Again, this is no time for vagaries. Either the candidate can work from home or they can't. There is no such thing as ‘remote friendly’ - just be super clear and manage expectations.
Organization's financial health
The organisation's financial health should be clear. Great you just raised a Series A; are you about to fire 30% of the workforce for 'efficiencies' or not? The sudden collapse of organisation’s like Metigy that had 20 open roles live the same day they went bankrupt, unable to even make payroll, make it essential to be as open and transparent with candidates.
(Actual) responsibilities
What do you expect the candidate to actually do on day 1. This is not future/goal responsibilities that might happen, one day, maybe. What is the candidate ACTUALLY going to do on day 1?
Expected feedback
What is the feedback that the candidate will receive at each stage & how will they be evaluated? No moving the goalposts and no ghosting. Do what you say, say what you do.
Transparency is a key tenet of ethical hiring and is increasingly becoming expected by candidates.
Learn more ways to adopt a modern, ethical hiring process
Hear from leading Alooba customers who are already running transparent hiring with Alooba
How can you accurately assess somebody's technical skills, like the same way across the board, right? We had devised a Tableau-based assessment. So it wasn't like a past/fail. It was kind of like, hey, what do they send us? Did they understand the data or the values that they're showing accurate? Where we'd say, hey, here's the credentials to access the data set. And it just wasn't really a scalable way to assess technical - just administering it, all of it was manual, but the whole process sucked!
Cole Brickley, Avicado (Director Data Science & Business Intelligence)
