Creating a great recruitment process can be tough.

The good news is that implementing Pinpoint gives you a great opportunity to make attracting, hiring, and retaining top talent easier. After all, who doesn't want to generate a constant stream of high-quality candidates, and establish a time-to-hire that your peers can only dream of!

As an HR leader, you have lots of decisions to make when building the right processes for your organization. We've worked with countless HR teams from different industries across the world, and we're looking forward to inspiring you by sharing how the best teams structure their process.

We've put together this implementation guide to provide you with a tailored, successful launch of Pinpoint. Whilst we're with you every step of the way, within this guide you'll find everything you need to get up and running at a lightning-fast speed.

Every company is unique and your approach here will depend on what features you want to use and what feels right for you.

Often, our customers vary their approach based on the business size, the number of people involved in hiring, the number of office locations, experience with rolling out new software, and unique internal complexities. So, it's really up to you to choose the best approach for your organization.

Here is the typical rollout approach we see if you need a bit of guidance:

There are two different approaches to rolling out Pinpoint, and each depends on how soon you want to go live, what features you want to use, and how challenging you see an implementation being.

Hiring managers who are unengaged in recruitment and averse to change might be better suited to an approach that requires less of them initially. Then, as they derive value, additional features can be introduced.

The size of your organization might also dictate which features are best for you.

1. Phased approach

Ideal if this is your first applicant tracking system, if you're in a hurry, or if you envisage there being challenges with adoption across your business.

Identify the features you want to roll out first, then once your team is happy with these you can gradually roll out the rest. You may wish to postpone using any of the following:

2. Maximum value approach

Great if your hiring managers and HR team are engaged in their recruitment efforts and keen to see improvements, but also willing to invest in the process.

In this approach you'll roll out all features from the outset and whilst this might take a little longer, you'll see the maximum value right from the get-go.

Understanding who will be involved in using Pinpoint, and what features they'll be using is the key to a successful implementation.

Due to the automation that Pinpoint provides, your processes are likely to change in a big way (for the better) so it's important to identify what they are, who is involved (and at what point), and how it's going to work.

Consider the following before your implementation:

Most people struggle with change.

We know you're going to hear “I'm busy, I don't have time for this, what's in it for me?".

Luckily, we created Pinpoint to make attracting, hiring, and retaining great people a lot easier. So hiring managers and HR teams will be bought-in when they realize just how much is in it for them.

To help you communicate this, we've made some super-useful templates to excite your teams, and clearly define the benefits of using Pinpoint.

Our top tip is to ensure that you include what Pinpoint is, why you've decided to use it, and how this is of direct benefit to them.

Here's an email template you can use to introduce Pinpoint to you hiring managers for the first time: https://help.pinpoint.support/en/articles/4135796-email-template-introducing-pinpoint

If you choose to roll out certain features at a later date, you can find email templates for those here:

Everyone has a preference for how they like to learn. Some people prefer to read a written guide and then give it a go, others prefer something visual like an interactive tour or video recording, and some prefer speaking to someone face-to-face.

Ultimately there's no right or wrong way to do it, so we think that the best approach is to offer people a choice.

One thing we do know for sure is that evidence shows that employees respond far better to a colleague than they do to an outsider. So when considering who leads training sessions, we'd recommend it to be one of your own HR team.

Here are some of the useful training resources we'll provide:

Help guides are best when:

Live training is best when:

Live training for the HR team (this relates to HR colleagues who aren't involved in rolling out Pinpoint) is usually longer, as they need to learn more functionality. We recommend 60-90 mins.

Live training for hiring managers is usually 45-60 mins unless there are a lot of questions.

If colleagues are going to self-learn Pinpoint, they'll need to understand what the expectations are and how to get help when they need it.

You can help them by:

1. Providing a forum for any questions

Let colleagues know how to get help when they need it. Maybe a Q&A session that colleagues can sit in on would be helpful, or an email inbox for them to submit questions to. You can iron out confusion early by doing this, and make sure the entire team is engaged from the off.

2. Set clear expectations

Someone holding you up? How can people reach targets they didn't know they were set? Make sure you're clear about letting colleagues know when they're expected to finish the training by, and what they should be able to do this new-found knowledge.

Use the Team Insights section in Pinpoint to monitor system usage and identify any users who might be struggling. Get in touch with them and offer additional support to encourage them back into the system.

Ensure all job vacancies go through your new system for maximum success and avoid allowing colleagues to accept applications outside of Pinpoint. It's all about changing habits (and breaking bad ones).

Sadly this isn't true of anything, not least your job vacancies. You need to make a conscious effort to attract applicants, otherwise your applicant volume and quality won't meet expectations. Pinpoint provides you with sourcing tools to attract more of the right candidates. Read more about that here.

Keep an eye on the performance of any ads you're running and address any that aren't meeting your expectations. We have guides in Pinpoint to help you write a more compelling ad such as this one.

Jobs boards are also a great way to generate applicants although the quality can be variable depending on which you go for. We can integrate your Pinpoint system with Indeed.com to automatically post your open jobs on there, and automatically remove them when you close them in Pinpoint. Just fill in the contact form for employers on Indeed.com and ask them to start scanning your job listings. You'll need to give them your URL (e.g. yourcompanyname.pinpointhq.com).

Another great way to generate applicants is through social media. Post links to your jobs on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, or anywhere else that your candidates might spend their time. You can copy the link to a specific job by heading to your job listings and right-clicking on the job then select 'copy'.