Hiring Process Flowchart: Guide and Example

A hiring process flowchart is an easy-to-follow visual representation of the hiring process—making it more efficient and ensuring consistency so that no one on the HR team misses a step.

The flowchart covers the individuals and departments involved and the different activities, decision points, and interactions that make up each step of the hiring process.

Most companies seek to recruit the best talent. By using a recruitment process flowchart for hiring new staff—including hiring freelance talent—businesses can focus on acquiring the best candidates for current vacancies rather than worrying about the details of the selection process.

The setup of a process flow diagram depends on your organization’s particular hiring processes and priorities.

This article will explain why using a hiring process flowchart is important, the steps you should follow as you recruit, and some best practices for creating a flowchart. We also provide a hiring process flowchart example you can customize and use for your company’s recruiting purposes.

Importance of using a hiring process flowchart

The hiring process flowchart provides a clear, visual representation of the hiring process so that companies can quickly find the right candidates without wasting time and money that can come with a more haphazard approach.

In the ongoing search for new hires, a hiring process flowchart helps to drive consistency, covering everything from advertising job openings and sourcing talent to the interview and selection process. It can be used to identify inefficiencies and bottlenecks in the hiring process and reduce errors or omissions.

For example, suppose you discover that you have multiple people responsible for determining the qualifications of new hires. In that case, you might decide to put one person in charge of gathering the information so there’s no duplication of efforts. Or if the hiring process gets delayed due to checking references, you might assign more people to this task.

A well-documented and laid-out hiring process can enable businesses to improve their reputations, attract better candidates, and ensure compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.  

Compliance involves your business following the latest labor and employment laws and regulations. For instance, your company might have to follow government regulations governing workplace and employment conditions, including minimum wage and age levels. The flowchart will include a step to reflect these requirements in your job description and employment offers.

And then there’s the matter of accountability in the hiring process. A hiring process flowchart can spell out who’s responsible for each step, ensuring no missed or repeated phases.

The shapes, symbols, and colors of a flowchart can be easier to remember than plain text. They make it easy for the hiring team to stick to the process for applicant tracking even under deadline stresses.

6 recruitment process steps

You’ll want to use the recruitment strategy for your organization as the basis for creating your hiring process flowchart. You can take the basic recruitment process steps outlined below and adapt them to your organization’s particular needs.

1. Determine your hiring needs

Getting the right candidate to fulfill your staffing needs first requires defining what those needs are. What role will they fill, and what specific skills does the position require?

To collect this information, the human resources (HR) team may need to connect with the relevant department or team manager to determine what’s needed, including identifying the tasks the new hire will perform, articulating important qualifications and experiences, and gathering any other information relevant to the job.

For any new hire, determine which qualifications are essential and which are nice to have. A candidate should fill a talent gap in your business, so it’s essential to define that gap.

As you do this, look over an organizational chart of your company to determine what skills and qualifications are already present in your team and how a new hire might fit in.

You might develop an ideal candidate profile for a job opening to compare potential candidates.

2. Create a job description

A job description clearly outlines the duties and responsibilities of the role, describing all the job requirements, making it a crucial step in talent acquisition. A strong job description can help you attract suitable candidates by conveying to those interested in the job that you’re a company they should want to work for.

Additionally, the job description might go beyond expected compensation and give a good idea of what it’s like to work for your company, including any special benefits or perks. If there are specific goals you want a new hire to help accomplish, let them know in the job description.

A job description typically includes:

• The vacant position’s job title and department
• The location of the business
• Whether the job is in-office or remote
• Type of employment (full-time, part-time, shifts, or freelance)
• A summary of objectives and responsibilities
• Any minimum requirements
• Preferred qualifications and experience
• Compensation and benefits

3. Attract potential candidates

The next step is to get the job description in front of the eyes of the right people. You might do this in several ways, including:

• A career page on your company’s website
• Your social media channels, especially LinkedIn
• Posts on various job boards
• Job ads in traditional media
• Visits to job fairs and campus recruitment events

Many companies are looking to contract and freelance help to fill job openings. Through Upwork, you can find the top talent you need in fields like development and IT, design and creative, sales and marketing, and HR and training. You can post a job to find a suitable pro or browse and buy predefined projects with Project Catalog ™.

4. Screen and assess applicants

Now, it’s time to assess potential candidates. Since you may have received many applications, you’ll need to narrow your list to see who’s worth bringing into the interview process.

You might start by looking through the candidates’ qualifications and experience, including their level of education, to see how well they align with the job requirements. Some companies might be required to do background checks on applicants, including credit and criminal history probes.

A phone screening of potential candidates can help you confirm the candidate’s availability and see if they have any other relevant qualifications not mentioned in their resume. You might then conduct face-to-face interviews, which can be an in-person or virtual interview, with the most promising candidates.

During the interview, it’s good to ask questions, often behavioral ones, to judge how well the candidate suits the job. Include other interview questions involving character to assess how well the candidate might fit the team and your company’s work culture.

The interview step is often considered the most important part of the hiring process. So, you should be familiar with the candidate’s application and background to ask the right questions, including ones about any perceived gaps in their skills and experience.

You should have standard questions to ask all candidates to be fair in assessing their suitability for a position. It’s a good practice to make notes of their responses so you can compare qualified candidates to one another, helping you to make your final pick.

5. Check references

Either before the interviews or after the interview, check your top candidates’ references. This can help verify the candidates’ work experience and performance, confirming their qualifications and suitability for the job as well as whether they’ll be a good match for their intended team members.

When contacting a reference, find out:

• What the reference’s working relationship with the candidate is
• The reasons the person left a previous job
• What the person’s strengths and weaknesses are

6. Make a job offer

If you find a strong candidate, it’s a good idea to make an offer quickly to show interest and prevent another employer from scooping up the candidate. The offer involves negotiating the terms of employment, including salary, benefits, start day, and any other relevant information. Many jobs include a probationary period to assess a candidate’s fit before being accepted for full employment.

If the candidate hesitates in accepting the job offer, explore why and remind the person how the position fits with their career goals.

If the candidate accepts the position, the onboarding process might include giving them the tools and information they need to do their jobs and introducing them to their teams.

For example, with an on-site role, you might give the new employee an office tour. Or for remote work, you might provide the new hire with a digital tutorial on using their team’s project management system.

Hiring process flowchart example

Based on your company’s recruitment workflow, a properly prepared flowchart allows you to visualize the hiring process, helping turn a complicated task into a logical collection of manageable pieces.

You can modify a basic hiring process flowchart example like the one below to reflect your business’s specific needs. Expand upon these simple steps to reflect the complexity of your business and hiring process. Add details such as the individuals responsible and the time required for each step. This flowchart template can be displayed digitally as an Excel file or in a PowerPoint presentation. You can also have it printed for easy reference.

Best practices for using a hiring process flowchart

For a hiring process flowchart to be useful, it needs to reflect the priorities of your business and hiring strategy and evolve as your company does. Some best practices include:

• Keep it simple. The hiring process can be complicated, so the flowchart needs to make it easily digestible. Break your process into clearly defined steps, using the icons and colors of the design to indicate important stages, the steps for these stages, and decision nodes where you can take the process in different directions.
• Create a logical flow. The hiring process works best if you move step by step. So, identify those steps and use them as the building blocks for your hiring process flowchart.
• Keep basic composition rules in mind. Every flowchart should have a defined beginning and end point. Consider flowing from top to bottom, with line connectors between boxes.
• Use it as a communication tool. Share the flowchart with job candidates and internal stakeholders so they can gain a better understanding of what’s expected in certain stages.
• Identify areas for optimization. For example, your flowchart might only have one section for the temporary hiring process, with a more detailed process under regular hires. But if a growing number of hires are temporary, freelance, and contract workers, you might add more steps under this category.
• Identify key stakeholders. The flowchart should cover the different hiring processes and stages and spell out the key stakeholders involved, such as recruiters, hiring managers, and HR personnel.
• Update it regularly. Good hiring processes change as they adapt to new best practices and organizational changes. Make sure your process flowchart reflects these changes.
• Keep a channel open for internal recruitment. The best job candidates don’t always come from the outside. Your recruiting process and flowchart may accommodate the search for internal job candidates.
• Choose the right creation method. If you have a simple hiring process, you might create a flowchart manually. However, you might use a digital flowchart maker with built-in templates for more complex diagrams.

Streamline the hiring process with Upwork

A hiring process flowchart is about streamlining the entire recruitment process and making it more effective. Working with a wider team in your company, you can develop a flowchart that accurately reflects the stages and requirements of your hiring process.

You can also streamline your recruiting process by turning to the services and resources of Upwork. We can help you fill any gaps in your HR department. Check out our selection of experienced HR specialists.

These professionals can help you with any stage of the hiring process, including writing policies for recruiting, sourcing candidates, focusing on specific hiring platforms like LinkedIn, screening resumes, onboarding new hires, and more.