ExpHire Recruitment Canvas: How to Start a Recruiting Process the Right Way

The ExpHire Recruitment Canvas consists of 5 phases and 10 tasks. Each phase includes two tasks, and to complete the next phases, the previous ones must first be drafted and validated. 

 

You can see below an example of a blank template.

 

The top part consists of operational elements. You are asked to indicate the title of the role sought, the date and the stakeholders who are collaborating in drafting the Recruitment Canvas.

 

This means that you must identify the stakeholders and invite them to a meeting to co-create the Canvas. Typically this role of initiating the drafting of the document can be filled by one of the co-founders in case of startups, the HR department for larger companies (or ExpHire if you are our client).

 

Stakeholders to invite are minimum 2 and include people such as internal recruiters, hiring managers, relevant team members, and possibly headhunters or ExpHire Experts. 

ExpHire is an innovative company that focuses on supporting companies in their selection processes. We are not a headhunting agency, we are different: we have built a network of technical and behavioral experts who assist you in the selection process by bringing their certified and objective ability to correctly and impartially assess candidates’ characteristics. Our Technical Experts are experienced in the same role you have an opening for, but have more years of experience and are therefore qualified to assess and select the best candidates. If you choose to use ExpHire’s services, we will guide you in creating the Recruitment Canvas and the Experts from time to time assigned to your projects will be among the stakeholders involved.

 

The meeting to compile the Recruitment Canvas should last no more than an hour. In fact the invitees are asked to work independently on a blank Canvas and to share with others the work done independently at the beginning of the session. 

 

Avoid writing a Job Description before completing the Canvas. There are chances that you will realize there is no need to actually recruit, and therefore no point wasting time writing it and there are also risks that the Job Description will influence or guide the writing of the Recruitment Canvas.

 

There are 10 steps in the Canvas to reason about and fill out in total:

• Problem
• Solution
• Company USP
• Role USP
• Candidate Skills
• Daily Job
• Process
• Sources
• Budget
• Value Added

 

Each of these elements has rules to follow, mainly inspired by the principles of synthesis and prioritization (remember that this is a one-page document that must capture the essential features). 

Let’s analyze each one individually by providing a couple of examples for two imaginary roles (CRM Manager and Front-end Developer).

 

Problem

What problem are you trying to solve by hiring a new person, opening the position for a particular role? Please note, the answer to this question cannot and should not be ‘I need to replace someone who has resigned,’ for the simple fact that companies are living things that change over time in an ever-changing environment; what you needed 2 years ago may not be what your company in general or a particular team needs now. 

 

The general problems that companies need to solve are related to three matrices: increasing sales, reducing expenses, and improving efficiency. Try to trace each of your problems to one of these categories, specifying the problem in detail. Try to identify only one main problem, at most two, and in any case never more than three; if you have more than three problems to solve, you will probably have to hire more people and thus fill several Canvases.

 

Take the example of two fictional roles within different companies:

• A scale-up that is thinking about hiring a CRM manager
• A large consulting firm that is thinking about hiring a Front-end Developer.

 

In the Problem section, the first company may write, “We have reached 100K subscribers to our newsletter and we are not leveraging the business potential of these users with marketing activities aimed at activating their interest and increasing their spending level.” 

For the second large consulting firm and related technical role the Problem may be: “We have two new clients and we know that the velocity of the back-end team is already higher than the front-end team and we want to avoid a worse misalignment of the two functions as new work starts. Our clients want to see their projects progress in parallel in the frontend and backend parts.”

As you can see in the first case, a problem related to untapped potential for growth has been identified (to increase revenues through CRM actions on a significant user base), in the second case we refer to a need to improve production efficiency (clients want to receive complete front-end and back-end projects at the same time, otherwise they risk losing them).

 

There are cases when an employee of a company resigns and the problem he/she was called to solve no longer exists. I give an example that happened to me: I decided not to replace the person who was in charge of writing reviews on our portal/blog when she resigned. In analyzing the results generated by these reviews, the expense for a dedicated person was not justified.  Therefore, I preferred to use that budget to hire a social media manager since the conversions from that channel were higher and generated more revenues.

 

This is to say that the Canvas can be ‘done’ in some cases at point 1: there is not enough of a problem to justify hiring a full-time person and opening a position accordingly.

Solution

With the Solution, things get complicated, because you are called upon to discuss several possibilities, the easiest and most immediate being to hire a person who has the characteristics to solve the problem; the others require more creativity and knowledge of your teams (and of the potential and aspirations of the individuals in them), of your present and future business strategies, and the ability to read and anticipate the context in which your company moves, as well as in prioritizing the different needs in an ever-updated way. 

The solution should also always be expressed in one sentence, at most two. 

Let’s stay with the examples given above.

The solution for the first may sound like “We need a CRM expert who can grow, engage and monetize newsletter subscribers.”

For the second may be “Add a resource to the front-end team to address the needs of current and new customers and reduce the project delivery gap between front-end and back-end.”

 

This is in the case where indeed the solution is to be found outside the existing resources in the company, but there are instances where this should not be the case.

 

Let me give an example from my personal experience. The company I was working for was beginning a path of internationalization. To manage the localization of the content produced in the various languages and the related marketing campaigns the owner of the company proposed to hire a Localization manager. Aware of the fact that in my team there was a person with a degree in languages and with the right soft skills (precision and attention to detail) to fill that role, I proposed this person as a solution to the new business needs (the person still fills that role today with satisfaction and success). This person was suffering, uncomfortable, and unhappy in a business developer role, so being able to identify the opportunity for an unconventional solution solved two problems: enhancing the characteristics and aptitudes of an existing resource and freeing up a position held with discomfort in favor of someone who can do it with enthusiasm and greater results.

 

Company USP

In our journey to find the perfect Company>Role>Candidate Fit we shift our focus to the role, but always from the perspective of its attractiveness to potential candidates. Here you should answer the question, “Why would someone want to fill this specific role?”

 

Every job position has its challenges, the boring and repetitive components and those that allow the person in it to demonstrate creativity and flair. I ask you to identify a maximum of 5 USPs for the role that is the subject of your Recruitment Canvas, these are those unique and characteristic elements of the role that make it attractive in the eyes of the candidates (or a part of them). 

 

The opportunity for growth, to learn from someone, to work with an experienced team may be among the USPs of the role; in other cases, autonomy of action, a large budget to spend, direct responsibility for the company’s product or accounts may be others; there are no right or wrong elements. Again you have to be honest and fair, some of these elements will be included in the Job Description, and lying at this stage will only lead you to find the wrong candidates and/or disappointed and unhappy employees.

Let us return to our two examples and see what Role USPs can be listed.

For the CRM Manager in a scale-up we might have:

• Ability and willingness to build the corporate CRM function from scratch.
• Decision-making autonomy and responsibility derived from it
• Small budget available to experiment each month 
• Choose the CRM tool, we trust your experience
• Bring good results and build your CRM team over the next two years

 

For the position of Front-end Developer in a consulting agency you may have as Role USPs:

• Work with Agile Scrum
• Budget for refresher courses on new development frameworks
• Ability to decide appropriate front-end development solutions on a case-by-case basis 
• Work in pairs of developers (pair coding)
• Half day free each week

 

As you can see the two Role USPs are very different and respond to the inherent characteristics of the roles themselves on the one hand and the type of candidates you want to attract on the other. 

 

In the first case you are trying to attract candidates who value autonomy in maneuvering and decision-making and who want to build something from scratch (and take the corresponding responsibilities); in the second case you are targeting those candidates who want to work in a modernly organized environment that is not stuck on static practices and that allows candidates to continue to learn over time from colleagues and with training.

 

Skills

Identifying key skills (hard and soft) is the first step in the third phase of the ExpHire Recruitment Canvas. The work you have to do at this juncture is absolute selection with the limitation of identifying at most 3 technical skills and 3 behavioral skills that are of paramount importance to succeed in the company in general and in the role in question in particular.

 

Technical skills are very important, especially if you are looking for non-junior figures who need to be able to start working with some degree of autonomy once hired. Behavioral skills must take into account the values of the company and the needs of the team, including balancing the team (you cannot have all similar or poorly balanced personalities on the team if you want to get the most out of teamwork).

 

The skills can also contain years of experience and degrees of seniority (for technical ones) and should never be discriminatory (avoid for example writing ‘MBA needed’, in fact an MBA does not give skills per se, but a method for dealing with work situations, a method that can be acquired by candidates independently).

 

Back to our two examples. 

For the position of CRM Manager we have the following skills:

• 2 years of prior experience using a CRM tool
• Know how to work on a strategic user retention plan
• Ability to think about and structure marketing automation campaigns
• Skills of accuracy and attention to detail
• Ability to collaborate with other team members
• Analytical skills and abilities, aptitude for interpreting data

For the Front-end Developer position we may have the following skills:

• Knowledge and experience with the angular.js framework
• Experience with another front-end framework
• Thorough knowledge of Javascript and CSS
• Skills of precision and attention to detail
• Proficiency in the most up-to-date design principles
• Ability to collaborate with other team members effectively (developers, designers, product managers, scrum master)

Remember to select only the main elements of the candidates here. You are not writing the Job Description at this stage, the goal is different, it is about identifying those traits that cannot be given up in the search. Do not focus on the “nice to have,” but focus on the “must have.”

 

Daily Job

The second step in this phase requires an effort of imagination and empathy on the part of the person filling out the ExpHire Recruitment Canvas, and especially the hiring manager’s input for the position. 

 

You must write a list of the 4 or 5 activities that the successful candidate will be expected to perform in his or her job, in everyday practice.

 

You need to be realistic; almost all jobs have repetitive tasks; being very honest and explicit in listing them helps you write the Job Description later. Be frank with candidates and manage their expectations, and be sure that these skills are tested during the recruitment process (with questions and tests that assess each candidate’s knowledge of them and potential for growth).

 

Don’t be afraid to write down seemingly trivial activities if these are important to the proper performance of the role, e.g., for a Personal assistant figure “Answering the phone and keeping the virtual agenda in order” are daily activities that are vital to success in the task at hand.

 

Let’s return to the above examples. 

The CRM Manager figure presents the following daily activities:

• Analyzing the results of email marketing campaigns
• Building emails with visual editors
• Interfacing with the content and design department to obtain and validate assets needed to create emails
• Build and refine marketing automation processes and user DB clustering

The Front-end Developer position must perform the following activities on a daily basis:

• Produce quality code
• Review code produced by own colleague (pair coding)
• Attend Scrum meetings and be responsible for declaring and reporting commitment against own sprint effort
• Interfacing and reporting any impediments and problems with head development and the product manager

 

Obviously these two people will find themselves doing a lot more activities, especially when related to a weekly or monthly scale. Here we just want to identify the constants underlying their daily work, whilst in the Job Description we can expand on both in terms of the tasks performed and what are the opportunities to partially build/invent their role.

 

Process

The fourth phase deals with defining the actual selection process. Having a clear idea from the outset of what steps are required for each selection in order to come to a conclusion with an offer is useful for everyone. First of all it is useful to the company, which in this way is able to assess the total effort and to understand and plan when a resource can presumably join the team. Then it is important for the candidates, to whom the selection process must be transparently communicated, possibly right from the Job Description.

 

I have personally been involved in selection processes as a candidate where I have had the impression of total improvisation (and thus perceived a feeling of unprofessionalism on the part of the company itself), where suddenly rounds of selection not originally planned for, such as additional interviews or tests, or a final presentation, pop up. If I had known from the beginning about the complexity of some processes I would have desisted from the start (in some cases where perhaps the position or company did not attract my full attention and trust anyway). We all would have saved time…

 

A good recruitment process should take weeks, not months, should give feedback to the candidates included in it promptly and professionally, and, as mentioned, should be explicit and not changeable. In compiling the Recruitment Canvas we look at the process from the candidates’ point of view (there are of course many other internal steps that we do not consider, but which do exist; here we want to answer the question, “As a candidate what will I have to do to eventually get a job offer for this role?”).

 

Note that a predetermined and unique company-wide process for every position makes me a bit skeptical; every role and team is different and should require an at least partially distinctive and unique process. For example, it is natural to have longer and more complex processes for technical or more senior positions, where the assessment has to cover more areas (getting it wrong costs the company more so it is better to spend a little more time to really find the best person).

 

Let’s map the processes for the two example positions and companies.

CRM Manager:

• CV submission
• Interview with internal recruiter
• Interview with hiring manager
• Assignment and presentation with hiring manager and team
• Reference check 

 

Front-end Developer:

• CV submission
• Online coding test
• Interview with hiring manager
• Interview with peer/team member

 

As you can see, the two processes are quite different and they are so for a specific reason, in the former soft skills are very important and need to be tested at multiple levels, the latter is a more technical process to which an initial skimming of CVs is immediately followed by a technical test to assess the candidates’ hard skills.

Sources

Step number eight in our Recruitment Canvas concerns the sources where we intend to find the most suitable candidates for the position being sought. Sources are many and varied, and sometimes they can be quite creative and unexpected; these should also vary according to the position. Always using the same sources to identify candidates is wrong because, for example, as seniority varies, the same role may require different sources to be used. Let me explain. If I am looking for a product manager probably as the main source to find suitable candidates I use a sponsored job post on LinkedIn, while if I am looking for a VP product I use Ted Talks given by product experts on this topic, because I want to identify not only an expert in the field, but also someone who is able to inspire with his/her words, actions and work an entire team.

 

The Sources should never be more than 5 so as not to disperse the effort into a thousand little rivulets and in doing so get poor results from each of them.

 

In our examples we have different sources for finding candidates.

 

CRM Manager:

• Internal referrals
• LinkedIn job post
• Website job post
• Blog and social media post

 

Front-end Developer:

• LinkedIn job post
• Github job post
• Internal referral
• Tech meetup
• Direct sourcing

 

As you can see the sources you choose are different for each position, if you can, try to diversify your Sources and select the most suitable ones from time to time. The order of priority is also important and tells you which sourcing activities to put more effort and spend more time and money on.

 

Gain

The fifth and final phase takes care of the money, the economic component related to recruiting new human resources. First you must try to estimate what added value the new resource will bring using a sound, quantitative rationale as the basis for this reasoning. You must answer the question, “What economic benefit will the recruitment of this resource bring?”

 

I am well aware that for many positions this is not easy, as we have seen in fact people are hired for three reasons: to increase sales, reduce expenses, and improve efficiency, but it is also true that each worker has a prevalence in one of these areas, but has an effect and impact on the others as well. Calculating the ROI of a human resource can become very difficult, especially for those positions that do not have a pronounced component related to sales or cost savings. However, you have to make an effort even for those figures not involved in sales in the company (which is usually very easy to calculate). You have to make a realistic and in good faith estimate and then check and verify it over time; it is a difficult exercise at first, but with time and some historical results you will get better and better at this job.

 

In addition to numerical and quantitative estimation of gain, you can also make qualitative summary assessments for a total of three elements.

 

Let’s go back to our two examples and analyze what gain these roles can bring.

 

CRM Manager. Currently the customer base is not monetized with CRM activities, but this scale-up knows that each of its active users spends an average of 20 Euros per month, plus it has learned that a competing company manages to convert 2 percent of its newsletter subscribers each month into consumers who make purchases. Having 100K newsletter subscribers can be expected to generate additional revenues with the work of a CRM Manager of 2000*20 Euro each month, or 480000 Euro per year. So in the Canvas this company can write in the Gain section:

• 480000€
• Growth in the number of subscribers
• Clustering of different targets and related monetization

 

Front-end Developer. The consulting company in question knows that it has two new clients bringing in 2 million Dollars in revenue with their projects, which cannot be completed in the absence of a front-end developer, theoretically one could also say that this is the gain value of this resource, but it would not take into account the teamwork that goes into completing the two projects. Each project has a team of 5 people working on it, so the value of revenues allocated to each is 200 thousand Dollars, so the front-end developer who will work on the two new projects contributes 400000 Dollars in revenues (if we take for granted the fact that the two projects will last exactly one year). In the canvas this company will be able to write:

• $400000
• Most satisfied customers by project delivery alignment (FE/BE)

As mentioned these are estimates and approximations that do not take into account many variables, and there are roles for which it is easy to approach the real value of the gain generated by a new worker and others where it is more difficult. 

Take the case of a corporate lawyer, maybe for years he is just a cost, but then on one occasion this worker includes a clause in a contract that saves a client a claim for damages of ten million Pounds, obviously in cases like these one has to estimate and say that potentially in 10 years a corporate lawyer saves the company 1 million Pounds a year.

 

Budget

The last and tenth step of the ExpHire Recruitment Canvas concerns the costs to be budgeted to hire a new resource. This item admits two elements: recruitment costs and costs related to the position itself (the expected gross salary). 

 

The first one is easier to evaluate. You can freely decide whether to opt for a more scientific and complex approach in which you take into account not only the explicit and external expenses of the recruitment process (job posting, headhunter, ExpHire services, participation in events and fairs, etc.), but also the implicit ones of the work and the time spent by hiring managers and team members involved in the process (whose time spent should be calculated and multiplied by the hourly wage, same thing should be done for internal recruitment resources). Take your pick, I personally believe that large companies may have the time and resources to do the full calculation, while startups and small and medium-sized companies should limit themselves to the calculation of direct and external costs and just keep an eye on the fact that the selection processes do not get out of control with the excessive use of internal resources employed for this purpose.

 

The expected gross annual salary for the position being researched is the second item in the budget and costs for our Canvas. Generally it should be a value expressed with a credible range with respect to the seniority of the role, i.e., it should avoid being a £30K-90K type range where it is apparent that the range is so wide that it prevents a focused selection process consistent with expectations because the expectations have not been defined (do you want a junior or senior figure? if you have such a wide range it is clear that you have no idea). However, those who have worked with our Recruitment Canvas are not in this condition because they have defined the salient aspects of the role and are able to determine a narrow enough range for the gross salary of a position (a range like €50-70K is acceptable). Keep in mind that ranges for junior figures are usually narrower than those for senior professionals, i.e., $130K-180K is an acceptable range, $30K-80K is not…

 

Now let us address the age-old issue, at least in continental Europe, the disclosure to candidates of the salary range. I am personally convinced that the range should be disclosed at the selection stage, if not in the job advertisement, at least at the first direct contact with the selected candidates after screening the received CVs. This is about not wasting anyone’s time: candidates, companies, and any external parties involved. No one in their right mind accepts offers that are economically lower than what they are currently earning, and if they do it is a red flag that needs to be thoroughly investigated, so it is totally unnecessary to bring forward in a selection process a candidate earning €55K for a position offering between €40K and €45K.

 

I have happened to interview with companies that include the famous wording in the Job Description that reads: ‘Salary commensurate with the experience of the figure identified.’ This is a phrase that means everything and nothing, except that the company probably does not have a clear idea of the position and the relative level at which to hire, does not have an assigned budget and/or does not want to communicate it, or worse, that the company is trying to exploit any difficult situations of the candidates (such as having lost a job) to make a ‘downward’ offer. Personally, if at the first interview a salary range is not made explicit or if it is not explicitly confirmed that this is compatible with my expectations, I end my selection process, the company is not serious enough for my standards and I hear more and more people making the same decision.

 

Money is talked about right away and without going into unnecessary detail and at the end, when you instead have to be ready to articulate and detail even a complex offer.

 

In our usual examples, the Canvas would be filled out as follows.

 

CRM Manager:

• Hiring – 12/15000€
• Salary – 45/55000€

Front-end Developer

• Hiring 15/18000€
• Salary 50/60000€