Many HR professionals start their careers as recruitment coordinators, and perhaps a distant memory now, you are familiar with the logistical nightmare being one is. Chase hiring managers for available times, schedule candidates, reschedule, send reminders, rinse, repeat.
Primarily responsible for setting up and managing interviews through a hiring process, recruitment coordinators are an essential piece of the talent operations puzzle. So, it’s no surprise that more coordinators are hired to share and minimize the burden as hiring volume increases.
The traditional approach of scaling recruitment coordinators during periods of growth often creates a vicious cycle of hiring and firing coordinators to match unpredictable hiring volumes. Despite workforce planning efforts, scaling coordinators is inherently reactive– there’s no control over how quickly you close roles for new coordinator hires or how soon they can be productive. Existing coordinators drown under a growing pile of work, holding out hope for reinforcements that might not arrive in time.
Worse, training new coordinators happens during a hiring storm where expectations are high. The result? A constant risk of errors and missteps, keeping your team in a cycle of operational fighting.
Returning to your time as a recruitment coordinator, you might remember your day-to-day being mostly repetitive and uninspiring. Traditional recruitment teams accept that this - tedious, repetitive, uninspiring work - is how talent operations teams are built and a rite of passage to climb the TA/HR ladder. On the other hand, modern recruitment teams understand that technology is an enabler and lean into automation to streamline and minimize inefficiencies, empowering teams - newbies or experts, to focus on high-impact tasks.
Take scheduling interviews as an example; according to Cronofy’s Candidate Expectations Report, 56% of candidates drop out due to frustrating scheduling experiences. Additionally, 70% of candidates consider the recruitment process’s smoothness a key factor in accepting offers. As Mark Harman, Global Head of Recruitment Operations at Wise, explained, relying heavily on coordination teams for interview scheduling created significant administrative burdens. By automating these tasks, their team could focus on more strategic responsibilities, reducing bottlenecks and improving efficiency in the process.
It’s natural to feel torn about fundamentally shifting how your team operates even when you recognize the dire needs. There’s a real fear of displacing the people who work tirelessly to keep interviews moving forward, adapt to changing priorities, and ensure candidates don’t get lost in the shuffle. But rethinking your process to leverage more automation doesn’t mean taking coordinators out of the picture.
The real opportunity is that you can now enable them to upskill and become strategic players. When ONWA enabled interview scheduling with Cronofy, Tanya Towner, an HR coordinator at ONWA, got some time back in her day to upskill and focus on other tasks, such as giving new candidates great onboarding experiences. Read the full story here.
Some examples of what your coordinators could be spending their time doing include:
- Partnering with recruiters to uncover insights about candidate drop-offs and inefficiencies in the pipeline
- Supporting hiring managers with market data and streamlined processes to make better hiring decisions
Realigning your coordinators and connecting their day-to-day to hiring outcomes ultimately improves candidate experience, time-to-offer, and future-proofs your team.
Start by evaluating your current processes, identify your gaps and prioritize impactful changes. Automation is an opportunity, not a threat; lean into it. Challenge yourself by asking these questions: what repetitive tasks could you eliminate? How could you enable your coordinators to deliver a better candidate experience?
Being a great talent leader today means caring about the fundamentals again and guiding your team through change to achieve the results you want.
Want to see how interview scheduling automation with Cronofy can improve your time-to-hire?
