101+ Recruiting Hacks

to Accelerate Your
Hiring in 2018
Foreword

I’ve said it many times: the best recruiters aren’t necessarily smarter or
better than their peers, they just know how to get 12 hours of work out of an
8-hour day. In our business, it’s all about efficiency. We have to streamline
our efforts, avoid redundant efforts, automate manual tasks and multitask
all day every day… all while creating a seamless hiring manager and candi-
date experience. No pressure, right?
Thankfully, there are so many tools, technologies, tips and tricks out there
that, with a little practice and experimentation, you can quickly find ways
to get 5 minutes, an hour, even a full day back on your calendar if you play
your cards right. This ebook is a fabulous compilation of some tried and
true recruiting hacks to get you started on that path. Give ‘em a shot and
just watch how much more you get done. Happy recruiting, everybody!

If you’ve ever waited tables and “been in the weeds” with six large tables
all seated at once, then you have an idea what a day in the life of a recruit-
er is like. Just as a waitress can’t afford to take 15 separate trips back to Stacy Zapar
the kitchen for each meal, the ketchup, the coffee pot and extra napkins,
Founder, Tenfold & The Talent Agency
recruiters can’t afford to be inefficient and disorganized in their daily pro-
cesses. We need to figure out how to do it all “in one trip”, if you will. Multi-
task. Work smarter, not harder. Focus. Avoid distractions. Scratch things off
the list and move on to the next. This is the REAL key to recruiting success.
Hack [hak]: a strategy or technique adopted
in order to manage one’s time and activities in
a more efficient way, derived from solving a
computer hardware or program limitation.
The above definition perfectly encapsulates what we’ll be sharing in this
ebook - minus the computer hardware part. By “hack” we mean a creative
shortcut, an innovative tactic that allows you to tackle a problem in a novel
way. Hacks allow you to generate impact without maxing out your recruit-
ing budget or overhauling your entire interview process. Oh, and there’s
a certain secret sauce associated with hacks. Not everyone is using them,
because not everyone knows they exist.
In this ebook, we share tips that embody one or all of those qualities:
creative, a shortcut, innovative, underutilized. Armed with these 103
recruiting hacks, we hope teams can hit their most ambitious hiring
goals faster in 2018.
Need to step up your employer branding game? Refine your interviewing
techniques? Leverage data to plan your 2018 headcount? You’re in the right
place. In addition to Stacy Zapar, we sought the advice of talent leaders
at Medallia, Netflix, Thread, Whisper and LevelUp to gather best-in-class
hacks across eight key elements of the hiring process. We’re releasing them
rapid-fire, roughly in the order they fall in the recruiting lifecycle. Read all
the way through, or jump to the chapter that aligns with your most press-
ing recruitment goals.
Contents

1 Employer branding 8
5 Interviewing 32

2 Sourcing and referrals 14

6 Closing candidates 36

3 Hiring manager-recruiter collaboration 22

7 Data-driven recruiting 40

4 Candidate experience 28
8 Diversity recruiting 46
1
Employer branding
1) Hire a photographer to capture team photos
We know, we’re all photographers these days. Still, we promise that
hiring a professional to take headshots and team photos for one day
will pay off. You’ll be able to proudly use these photos in all your em-
ployer branding efforts - whether on your website, in blog posts, or
even conference presentations. And you’ll help your employees put
their best foot forward on LinkedIn and other social platforms where
future hires are checking them out.
2) Customize your careers page with employee spotlights
Candidates want to hear from current employees. Why did those
team members join? What does their role entail, and why is it
fulfilling? Use the pictures from the professional photoshoot above
to portray employees in their work environment. With Lever, seam-
lessly build a custom page that reflects your brand and encourages
candidates to apply.
3) Create a company hashtag for employees to use in social posts
If you don’t have an employee nickname (like Eventbrite’s Britelings
or Quora’s Quorans), poll your team to create one. Start plastering
it everywhere in your office - with hashtag included - to ingrain it in
8 9
employees’ minds. Whenever you see employees post on social me-
dia with other employees, reach out to ask them to use the hashtag.
At Lever, our employees are Leveroos and we use the hashtag #in-
sideLever.
4) Post on your employee blog biweekly
Start by creating a blog series that periodically spotlights a different
employee. Use a simple Q&A format - with questions like “What’s
your favorite [company] memory?” and “How would you characterize
your team?” - and feature a high definition photo of the employee in
the post. Don’t forget - candidates want the inside scoop.
5) Spend 30 minutes each week responding to company
reviews on Glassdoor
You can sign up for a free employer account on Glassdoor. Once you
do, block off time on your calendar each week to respond to both the
positive and negative reviews. Express gratitude for glowing write-
ups, and reply with concern to those that are less than stellar. The
bottom line: 30 minutes will go a long way toward conveying your
brand’s humility and humanness.
6) Analyze company reviews to learn which cultural
pillars to highlight
If you haven’t yet fully defined your employee value proposition,
Glassdoor reviews can be a great source of insight. Analyze your
reviews to find 5-10 common qualities that your reviewers find spe-
cial about your team, and have your employees select which ones
resonate most. Then, make those the values you spotlight.
7) Roll out a “LinkedIn Profile Revamp” campaign
Host a company-wide meeting at which you ask employees to add
three elements to their LinkedIn profile: 1. The impact of their role,
2. What they think is special about your team, and 3. Their favorite
activities outside of work - whether that’s concerts or chess. Recruit
marketing team members to walk around and help employees craft
stories.
To make those job postings way
more effective...
8) Create an ‘impact description’, not a ‘job description’
Top candidates don’t just want a job that pays the bills - they crave
impact. When you post opportunities, describe what candidates will
accomplish in their first month, three months, six months on your
team. This will save time later in the interview process - candidates
will have a more concrete, inspiring sense of what’s expected of
them, and hiring managers will have thought ahead to how they can
successfully onboard new hires.
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9) A/B test your job postings
LevelUp, a mobile payments company in Cambridge, drove a 15
percent increase in the number of inbound applicants by A/B testing
job posting titles and descriptions. With unlimited job postings in
Lever, you can write two versions of your impact description, see
which delivers the most quality candidates, and stick with the most
effective.
10) Identify and remove bias from your job postings
Detect and eliminate phrases that might deter women or underrepre-
sented minorities from reading further - terms such as “coding ninja”
or “closer”, to widen your pool of interested candidates. Textio, for
example, is a tool that teams use to write more inclusive, attractive
job descriptions.
11) Run your jobs postings through “user testing” with employees
If you don’t want to invest in a tool, leverage the insights of your
coworkers. Arrange a meeting with a diverse set of employees, read
your job postings out loud, and ask them to react aloud to words
they do and don’t like.
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 Ariel Jolo
Global Employer Brand Manager, Medallia
12) Ask candidates “How did you hear about us?”
Candidates don’t hear about a role or company from just one source.
Using Lever, we added a custom application question to all job post-
ings: “How did you hear about us?”, with multi-select checkboxes
for our common buckets (referrals, job sites, publications, etc). This
supplements the candidate’s origin and source data to shed light on
what attracts them.
13) Schedule quarterly Employee Value Proposition
“health checks”
Your talent brand breathes, grows and evolves over time, whether
you like it or not. Plan for change by scheduling regular EVP “health
checks” with a few key individuals each quarter. Identifying the
characteristics of your org helps you be proactive about making
changes to your org, rather than reacting to them.
14) Treat your brand like you treat your favorite family pet
Take your brand out for a walk - go to events, have your engineers on
the floor. Or, even better, ask them to give a talk! Introduce people in
your community to your brand - host meetups and networking events,
and engage with people on social media. Feed your brand - crowd-
source information to fuel your brand with hashtag contests, calls
for information, and employee spotlights.
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15) Co-locate your teams and managers
To build a great employer brand, think globally and be inclusive.
We push for global mindsets and information sharing at Medallia by
having co-located teams and managers - for example, our Employer
Branding Program Manager sits in our Argentina office and reports
to our Talent Operations leader in California. We also emphasize
being mindful of other languages and cultures. We partner with our
Inclusion Practice Lead and local Medallians to ensure our commu-
nications initiatives send the intended message.
16) Leverage your internal experts for Talent Branding
You probably have subject matter experts inside your company that
run programs you can use in Talent Branding, even if you don’t
know it. For example, if you’re planning an advertising campaign,
talk to your Marketing or Demand Generation teams. They bring best
practices and can provide company-specific insights you won’t find
elsewhere. A great talent brand aligns to your product brand, and
this can be only be achieved through collaboration.
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2
Sourcing and referrals

Hacks from

Stacy Zapar
Founder, Tenfold & The Talent Agency

A few sourcing hacks from our foreword author herself, Stacy Zapar

17) Use calendar “chunking” for sourcing, phone screens, etc.

Block chunks of time on your calendar for sourcing, phone screens,

candidate feedback, hiring manager meetings, etc. If you don’t block
the time, it might get booked with other lower priority items (and
sourcing should be a daily priority!). Personally, I focus on sourcing
first thing in the morning and do my calls and meetings later in the
day, but find a system that works best for you. And while you’re at it,
include a lunch break for much-needed recharging time. We all need
that too!

14 15
18) Make OneTab your best friend
If you’re a “tab junkie” like I am, who opens up multiple candidate
profile links while you source, this life hack is for you. Use a browser
extension called OneTab. It will zap all of your open tabs into a sin-
gle one so you can re-open each tab as you’re ready to review it.
19) Give tree ring sourcing a try
When you’re sourcing candidates, start narrow and work your way
out. Use a Boolean AND operator for both required and desired
skills, and use a small zip code search radius, then slowly expand
your search from there (if necessary). It’s better to nurture the right
candidate from the start than it is to bulk message 500 “maybe” can-
didates, just hoping that something sticks. If you’re not finding the
right candidates, slowly expand your search geographically or move
some of the “requireds” to “desireds”.
20) Find any candidate’s email address
Did you just come across your dream candidate, but you aren’t sure
how to contact them? Work emails tend to follow a pattern, like
firstname@company.com, or FirstInitialLastName@company.com.
To find the pattern, create this string using the company’s URL:
“contact OR email * * companyname.com”
To get you started, here’s the spreadsheet I use to track company
email patterns.
You can find more stellar hacks from Stacy here.
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21) Host team-wide sourcing jams
Make sourcing fun and find new candidates faster by hosting a
company-wide sourcing session - complete with music, pizza, and
even beer. Be sure to kick off the “jam” by equipping everyone with
sourcing best practices and templates, then display them on a large
screen so that your team can use them real-time.
22) Tap into the “People also viewed” section of qualified
people on LinkedIn
Look on the right side of most LinkedIn profiles, and you’ll see other
profiles that are often searched along with that one. Think of the
most talented people on your current or former team, and dive into
that section of their page.
23) Pull all candidate profiles from online hubs into your ATS
Forget the hassle of keeping track of candidates on GitHub, An-
gellist, and LinkedIn. Bring their information into one centralized
location - reach out to all your candidates in your ATS.
24) Set up a Google alert for your top prospect’s name
If there’s a candidate you’re courting, use Google Alerts to get noti-
fied when there’s an article published about them online. That way,
you can send a related follow-up to show them that you’re paying
attention. We bet they’ll be impressed.
25) Throw quarterly referral-a-thons
Wasting time asking your team to submit referrals at every company
meeting? Plan a referral-a-thon once a quarter - an hour-long referral
party at which employees race to submit as many referrals as they
can. Schedule it in the morning when employees first get in and have
energy, and provide breakfast and fun tunes while you’re at it.
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 Special sourcing hacks for
Lever Nurture users
26) Send automated follow-ups to check in with candidates
Second and third follow-ups can double your candidate response
rate, but it’s not easy to remember to send them. Save yourself time
by automating your follow-ups in Lever Nurture.
27) Capitalize on engagement notifications
One feature in Lever Nurture allows you to see when candidates
open and click your emails. Even if they don’t respond, this is key
info that can drive you to reach out again. Oh, and guess what?
When candidates do respond, we automatically progress them to the
next pipeline stage, so you can stay organized and quickly see who’s
ready to engage.
28) Use Lever Nurture Recommendations to resurface
archived candidates
Why spend hours searching for new talent when you already have in-
credible talent sitting in your ATS? Lever Nurture Recommendations
will suggest qualified candidates you’ve already pulled into your
recruiting software - who you perhaps didn’t hire because the timing
was wrong - who could be the right fit for your open role.
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29) Send for your hiring manager to increase candidate
response rates
Having trouble getting candidates to respond? Try sending for their
future manager or an executive. They’ll be much more likely get back
to a sender who they recognize or know they’d be working alongside.
30) Identify, clone and improve your best performing
reach-out templates
To help you really think like a marketer, Lever Nurture Reports help
you look across every reachout from your team and see which ones
get the most opens, clicks and responses. Find what’s working,
socialize that with the rest of the team, and your overall sourcing
effectiveness will rise. If you notice one sourcer or recruiter has a
particularly popular reach-out, call them out! Ask them to share
which technique they think is driving their success at your next team
meeting.
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31) Reward employees who submit referrals
with restaurant gift cards
Bottom line: referrals are one of the most rewarding recruiting tactics
around. In fact, our research shows that one in 16 referrals are hired,
compared to one in 152 candidates who apply through your website
or job boards. But it helps to incentivize your employees to submit
them. If you don’t have a referral bonus ins place, publicly acknowl-
edge and reward the employee who’s submitted the most quality
referrals with a gift card to the restaurant of their choice.
32) Share a new “Sourcing Tip of the Week/ Month”
in team meetings
Learning tips from your peers is way easier than scouring the web
for them. Start a tradition of team members sharing new tips regu-
larly - that way, you’re always keeping your tactics fresh, varied, and
effective.
33) Integrate “open role spotlights” into your company’s
weekly all-hands
To drive “referrals that count”, make key roles you’re trying to fill top
of mind for the whole team. When you give the recruiting updates
during your next company-wide meeting (you do do that, right?),
focus on the highest-priority positions. Be sure to highlight the qual-
ities, skills, and experience you’re looking for so that team members
recommend the most fitting candidates.
20
Hacks from
Tennyson Jones
Recruiting Researcher, Netflix
34) Pore through your coworker’s connections
Connect with an existing team member on LinkedIn, source their
connections, send that employee the names of the people you found
in their network, then ask for a simple “Would you refer this person?
yes/no?”. It’s an easy way to get referrals you may not have gotten
otherwise.
35) Find where candidates hang out (online)
No need to make it to every candidate meetup when you have the
internet. Are you looking for Social Media people? Try Instagram.
Engineers? Try Github. Or maybe Reddit. Or Twitter. Designers? Try
Dribbble. Or Tumblr. Or Pinterest. Different communities of people
have different online forums they flock to. Not everyone’s on Linke-
dIn.
36) Build rapport with candidates who aren’t right
Great people know great people - if I’ve built a great rapport with a
candidate who ends up not being right for the job, they almost al-
ways have zero problem sending me the names of other great people
who may be closer to what I’m looking for. So always ask for referrals
if you feel comfortable - this tactic has resulted in a few different
success stories of mine.
37) Use the “Find more people like...” feature
LinkedIn Recruiter’s search bar allows you to type in an exact name
and pull profiles similar to that individual. I like to use this with the
existing team, dream hires, or even people we’ve passed on whose
backgrounds were great otherwise.
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3
Hiring manager-
recruiter collaboration
38) Go through 10 resumes with your hiring manager
before kicking off every candidate search
Print out a batch of candidate profiles, then push your hiring manag-
er to tell you what excites or deflates them about each one. This will
clarify what they’re looking for, help you bring candidates in that
match their ideal template, and propel your search forward.
39) Account for attrition when you headcount plan
If you haven’t already synced with your hiring manager about
headcount planning for 2018, time to get on it! But when you do,
don’t forget that turnover is inevitable. As you strategize together to
build their team, discuss the reality that you’ll likely need to hire into
backfills. It may be unpredictable, but promotion and attrition will
require you to recruit more talent overall throughout the year. Look
at past turnover to assess how many more candidates you may have
to hire in 2018.
22
40) @-mention your hiring manager within your
ATS to communicate easily
Forget lengthy email threads. Use @-mentions - just like you use
on Twitter on Facebook - in Lever to quickly sync with your hiring
partner.
41) Block off time on your hiring manager’s calendar
so they can shadow you
As someone whose job is to hire candidates, your hiring managers
benefit immensely from seeing you in action. They’ll instantly learn
new, effective questions, and even absorb best practices like allotting
substantial time for the candidate to ask questions or selling them
on company culture. And don’t forget to ask for their feedback after-
wards - you can learn from them as well.
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42) Shadow your hiring manager in return
During your search, sit in a couple of your hiring manager’s inter-
views to make sure they feel empowered to ask the most effective
questions. By seeing whether or not they ask every candidate similar
questions, for example, you can help them reduce unconscious bias.
And afterwards, set up a casual meeting to share any feedback you
emerge with.
43) For faster cycles with your hiring manager, use their
favorite communication channels
Chances are your hiring manager doesn’t hang out all day in your
ATS. Oh, and they’re probably in back-to-back meetings. In your
intake meeting, ask about the best way to get hold of them, and
leverage your ATS’s integrations to speed up the conversation. The
Lever + Slack integration, for example, allows you to set up interview
reminders, send interviewers candidate profiles, and send feedback
reminders right in Slack.
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44) Send hiring managers a brief feedback survey midway
through your candidate search
Create a survey through SurveyMonkey or Google Forms. Ask ques-
tions like “Do you currently think we’re targeting the right candi-
dates?”, “Which qualifications would you like to focus on more heav-
ily?”, and “What can we both do better to hire the right candidate?”.
Afterwards, you can make slight but impactful adjustments to match
what your hiring manager is looking for.
45) Sync your emails with your ATS
Did we mention your hiring manager is insanely busy? This will
make their life easier. Empower them to communicate with other in-
terviewers and candidates wherever they are - whether that’s in their
email or applicant tracking system. The full history of candidate
communication should live in both places!
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 Hacks from
Melissa Trahan
Head of Talent, Thread
46) Make a list of your “reach” candidates with your hiring manager
These can be candidates who are not ready to leave their current
role, or those whom you know you’ll have to woo considerably be-
cause they’re at the top of their game. Regardless, return to this list
to ensure you’re keeping the hiring bar at their level. Not getting a
response from them? It goes a long way to send as the hiring manag-
er or CEO/CTO/whoever is the most relevant stakeholder.
47) Institute quick 5 minute feedback after every meeting
In this brief feedback session, ask questions like: “How could the
meeting have been better?”, and “How can we improve upon the
overall process?”. That way, future meetings will go more smoothly,
and you can ensure that you’re continuously creating better experi-
ences for candidates.
26
48) Orchestrate a coffee meetup between your candidate
and hiring manager
End your hiring process by giving your finalist candidates the chance
to meet more informally with their future manager. This is a great
time for them to surface questions, build more rapport, and hear
more detail about their potential manager’s journey at your com-
pany. Often, it can be the turning point meeting that drives your
candidate to say yes.
49) Support your recruiter/hiring manager conversations with data
Know the market, and be able to share exactly how many leads and
emails you’ve sent. You can make smarter hiring decisions togeth-
er when you know realities such as which recruiting methods are
leading to the most hires, how many candidates are applying and
replying to sourcing reach-outs, and your offer acceptance rate.
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4
Candidate experience
50) Streamline and shorten your application
Give your candidates a better experience by stripping your appli-
cation of unnecessary details or questions. Use a modern ATS that
allows you to create simple, intuitive applications that candidates
can quickly complete. This is no longer a nice-to-have, by the way
- a poor digital experience will lead candidates to question how
forward-thinking your organization is compared to others they’re
evaluating.
51) Send a pump-up email to your hiring team before
the first interview of the search
Spend 10 minutes crafting a message that will align and excite your
interview squad. Use bullet points to list info such as: a link to your
candidate’s ATS profile, any fun or interesting facts you’ve learned
through your research, why your candidate wants to switch roles,
and your candidate’s potential impact on the team. This will help
them give candidates a better experience.
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52) Hire a candidate experience specialist
In a competitive talent market, making every candidate feel special
can literally be a full-time job. Recruit a new team member who
can take them on a company tour, bring them from one interview to
another, and serve as their main point of contact.
53) Introduce roundtable questions to stimulate lunch conversation
If your interview schedule includes lunch, help everyone at those
long lunch tables get to know your candidate, and vice versa. Buy a
set of roundtable questions to spark fun topics; examples include:
“How would you spend $1 million?”, and “What superpower do you
wish you had and why?”.
54) Snooze candidates to prompt regular check-ins
Is the candidate you just reached out to not ready to switch roles?
Make sure you’re top of mind when they are. When you “snooze”
candidates for a custom number of months or weeks in Lever, you’ll
receive a reminder to reach out at the future date you set, along with
any notes so you can pick up where you left off.
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 Hacks from
Michelle Hart
former VP of People Operations, Whisper
55) Personalize a short video for your candidate
Make a video for every candidate who receives an offer, to let them
know how excited you are. First of all, this makes them feel special,
and secondly, you can increase acceptance rates - and promote your
brand even if the candidate turns down your offer. In the video, be
sure to feature different team members, gorgeous footage of your
headquarters with the landscape around it, and mention the compa-
ny benefits they have to look forward to. Everyone in the video can
also address the candidate by name and tailor their message to what
they’ve learned about their interests. For example, our team mem-
bers will joke: “Can’t wait to challenge you in that foozball match,” if
they talked about it during the interview process.
30
56) Place a culture book featuring company stories
on your lobby table
Don’t let your candidate sit in your lobby twiddling their thumbs.
Help them pass the time by featuring employee stories or interesting
facts about your team while they wait for interviewers! This is a sim-
ple way to get them energized about the team before their interview.
57) Host a 10 minute tour before every interview
If you can, leave a 15 minute buffer between every candidate’s arrival
time and interview. Show them the lay of the land, help them envi-
sion what their day-to-day would look like, and even introduce them
to any team members they may not meet during their interviews.
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5
Interviewing

58) Use Easy Book to help candidates self-schedule 61) Bring in your sales leader to teach the team how to sell

Make it effortless for candidates to schedule their own interviews
using Easy Book, and you can spend less time coordinating them
yourself and more time on strategic recruiting. Bonus: The interview-
er and candidate will both receive a calendar invite once the time is
booked.
62)
59) Give every new interviewer a cheat sheet
There’s a lot of information you’ll want to share with interviewers
about how to effectively interview for your open role. Create a quick
cheat sheet with details like sample questions, qualities to prioritize,
and tips for how to authentically share their own story and that of
the company.
60) Organize a quarterly interviewer check-in
Recruiting and sales have so much in common. At your next inter-
viewer training, bring in your most seasoned sales leader to share
their strategies for finding new business, building rapport, and
ultimately getting their prospect to say yes.
Customize each hiring process with interview kits
Build these kits in Lever, and you can give each interviewer a set list
of questions, change up scorecards according to role, and include
additional info for interviewers to keep in mind. Remind your inter-
viewers of all the important info you relayed at the beginning of your
candidate search. And give your interview panel complementary
questions, so your interviewee doesn’t have to repeat themselves five
times over.

Let’s say you’re looking to build your sales team. Chances are you’ll
hire several sales development reps, all of whom will meet with the
same interviewers. To help those interviewers do their best work, or-
ganize a quarterly interviewer check-in. Ask your hiring manager to
lead the check-ins with you, as you share process updates and revisit
interview best practices.

32 33
To get the fastest feedback in the west 67) Standardize 4-point ratings instead of 5

(or east or north or south)... Don’t give interviewers a “neutral” or “middle” option - they may
just sit on the fence. Instead, ask them to form an opinion. At Lever,
we use the following categories: “1: Strong no hire”, “2: No hire”,
“3: Hire”, and “4: Strong hire”.
63) Block 15 minutes on each interviewer’s calendar after
the interview to get feedback in
68) Increase your technical interview efficiency
Submitting feedback is a crucial part of the interview process. Help
with coding challenges
your interviewers allot time for it by including it in their interview
invite, and save them from viewing feedback as an extra burden. Coding-based assessment platforms like HackerRank and Codefights
reduce the need to rely solely on resumes that can’t possibly capture
all of your candidates’ qualifications. Evaluating candidates on their
64) Automate interview feedback reminders
performance rather than experience will help you hire better and
How frustrating is it to send your interviewers one message after
reduce interview bias.
another, pleading with them to submit feedback? Instead, set up au-
tomated feedback reminders in your ATS. Bonus: Your interviewers
69) Schedule a retrospective with all interviewers once
will receive emails that don’t have your name on them, and you don’t
you hire a hard-to-fill role
have to be the bad guy.
Debriefs can sometimes be stressful or time-consuming. Structure
your post-mortem right, however, and it’ll save you time on your next
65) Enforce a 24-hour feedback submission deadline
candidate search. Ask questions like: ‘What went well in the pro-
Ingrain this rule in your interviewers’ minds during interview train-
cess?’, ‘What went wrong?’, ‘How could we have filled the role more
ing, emphasize it in your interview kit, and reiterate it during your
quickly?’, and ‘Where could we have found more qualified candi-
quarterly check-ins. Timely feedback is a crucial part of your recruit-
dates?’.
ing success - you’ll update candidates faster and move them through
your process more smoothly.
70) Spotlight new hires at company-wide meetings

Take your whole team behind the hiring scenes by sharing facts
66) Give a gift card to the interviewer with the fastest
about new hires’ interview processes before they join. Talk about
feedback submission throughout each process
their background, how they’ll impact the team, and what you
Everyone is motivated by gift cards, right? Encourage your interview-
learned in the process. At Lever we like to share the ‘turning point’
ers to log their feedback at record speed by rewarding the person
- the moment when the balance tipped in favor of the candidate
who does it the fastest. You should be able to measure this right in
joining the company - to help us recruit better in future.
your ATS!

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6
Closing candidates
71) Mail your candidate your snazziest company swag
To woo your candidate, surprise them. By sending them branded
gear - like a cozy sweatshirt or socks - you’re relaying the message
that you really want them to be a team member. In fact, you clearly
already see them as one.
72) Collect and permanently log candidate compensation data
While it’s illegal in some regions to ask candidates about current
compensation, you should still meticulously track information like
your candidate’s expected compensation and their competitive offer
details, all in one place. First, it will set your team up to give your
candidate the most appropriate, competitive offer. Second, you’ll be
able to use this data to inform how you compensate future candi-
dates for the same role.
36
73) Use one simple tool to conduct background checks
Background checks may be uninspiring, but they’re a necessary step
in the interview process. With tools like GoodHire and Checkr, you
can screen employees with exceptional speed and accuracy. Not only
are these tools intuitive for the company, but they’re optimized for
candidates as well.
74) Send a welcome email to new employees, GIF included
It takes 5 minutes or less to make a GIF, but they’re incredibly mean-
ingful to candidates. Here at Lever, our recruiting team sends every
new hire an email with a GIF of their future team cheering excitedly.
And here’s the bonus: they include the entire company in the email.
Then, every Leveroo sends a welcome email of their own - which
often feature more hilarious GIFs. But this can be a closing strate-
gy as well! Even if your candidate hasn’t yet said yes, you can still
send them an email with a GIF and ask your team members to reply
expressing their excitement.
37
 Hacks from
Ray Carroll
VP of Sales, Engagio
75) Uncover your candidate’s favorite hobby, and send them
a photo of your whole team performing it
You can always give a big boost to your close with thoughtful gifts
or gestures. Say your candidate’s favorite hobby is dancing - think
about how much joy they’ll experience when they receive a photo of
your whole team pretending they’re in a dance battle.
76) Send candidates a custom mug with their
potential employee number
If you keep track of employee numbers on your team - i.e. the 33rd
person to join your team is employee #33 - this gesture could be
particularly meaningful. Send them something thoughtful and ever-
lasting like a mug that reads “#45” so they know that you’re already
reserving that spot for them.
77) Create a GIF saying “We want you!”
At Engagio, we make a team-wide GIF for candidates we want to join.
It’s a personalized, light-hearted, and simple way to show amazing
talent that they’re special. Our message is: we want you more than
the other teams you’re considering, and we’re doing everything we
can to make that clear.
38
78) Call to close - don’t email
Conversations are always more meaningful over the phone than by
email. You can clear up any questions, hear the emotion in your
candidate’s voice, and convey your excitement way more easily. It’s
simple, but crucial. Pick up the phone every time you’re speaking to
a candidate you’re pumped about. Email just won’t cut it.
79) Easily send offer approvals to hiring managers when filling out
your offer template
Worry no longer about emailing your candidate’s future manager an
approval form to fill out, or having to drop it on their desk. In Lever,
sending that offer approval form is a step in creating your candidate
offer letter.
80) Ask candidates to write their favorite snack on your interview
sign-in sheet, and send it to them
When your candidate signs in for their final interview, have a box
on the form that asks them for their favorite snack. That way, if you
decide to send them a gift that shows that you’re thinking of them,
you can mail their favorite one!
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7
Data-driven
recruiting
81) A/B test your reach-outs
Experiment to see what’s engaging candidates. Try sending the same
message for your hiring manager and as yourself, for example. Or try
asking “Can we set up a 15 minute call this week?” at the end of one
email, and be less pushy in another by asking “Would you be inter-
ested in hearing more about the role?” in another. Subtle changes
like these can sometimes make all the difference.
82) Use flexible requisitions and postings for headcount planning
Maybe you want to hire 10 people for one job posting, and five for
another. No worries - in Lever, you can do both. It’s easy as can be to
link multiple requisitions with one job posting, or multiple postings
to a single requisition.
40
83) Know your company’s high-level goals cold and
tie your asks to them
If you’re in charge of hiring, have a clear grasp of your team’s overar-
ching KPIs. That way, when you want to advocate for something like
more budget to hire, you can directly tie that ask to a goal your team
is invested in.
84) Regularly check your conversion rates throughout the process
Once a month, step back to look at the percentage of candidates who
make it to the screening process, to an onsite, to offer, and to hire.
Are your rates changing for better or worse? Where do you lose most
candidates? What can you do differently to improve conversions?
Sounds like a great topic for a team brainstorm.
41
85) Reward teams or locations that have a faster 88)
time to hire quality candidates
When you hire exceptional talent more quickly, the benefits are in-
numerable. You give those candidates a better experience, cut costs,
and help your company experience their contributions sooner. Look
in your ATS to uncover which team is moving the fastest and give
them a small reward!
89)
86) Publicly call out team members who are doubling down
on the strategies that drive the most hires
Say you dig into your recruiting metrics to see that sourcing is your
most successful recruiting strategy. Share that context with your
team, and give regular kudos to the recruiters who are ramping up
their sourcing efforts.
87) Initiate a team check-in once you know how
workload is being distributed
In Lever, you can see which recruiters are screening and interview-
ing an inordinate amount of candidates, and which team members
aren’t as busy. Pull that information, then schedule a team meeting
to discuss ways to redistribute the work.
42
Set goals for how many sourced hires you want in a given
quarter, and plan a team offsite if you hit that number
Most people can get inspired by the promise of a celebration. If you
discover that sourcing is the surest way to find high-quality candi-
dates, motivate them by planning a team outing if together, you can
source your target number of candidates.
Use interview calibration reports to identify
bias in interviewer feedback
In Lever, you can identify patterns of negative vs. positive feedback
from interviewers. Who is consistently rating candidates harshly?
If you do notice a trend, we suggest proactively checking in with
that particular interviewer. Perhaps there’s something they want to
change about the candidates you’re sourcing.
43
 Hacks from
Pat Morey
Recruiting Specialist, LevelUp
90) Shift interviews that lead to a hire earlier in the process
This has the potential to seriously uplevel your overall success.
In one specific instance, we found that every candidate who received
a 1 or 2 for a live-coding, problem-solving session resulted in a non-
hire after completing the exercise while on-site with us. We then
changed our traditional hiring manager phone screen to include a
piece of this session, so if a candidate failed the exercise, we knew
it probably wasn’t worth the time to have them complete a full-on
site. While it may filter out more candidates, it gave our hiring team
a more solid data point to judge before moving a candidate to the
next stage and helps maintain a higher bar for candidates we meet
on-site. I really like using Lever’s interview feedback calibration to
effectively do this.
91) Set annual KPIs for recruiting metrics
Establishing KPIs (key performance indicators) is crucial if you want
to measure and improve success. I suggest setting pipeline speed
and offer acceptance rate KPIs because they’re pretty simple yet
they measure both the effectiveness and efficiency of your recruiting
process. The quicker the better when interviewing and closing candi-
dates, and pipeline speed helps track that. The acceptance rate is a
good measure of how well your process delivers candidates that are
a good mutual fit for the role, and then how well you convince those
candidates to join. There are countless other metrics you can track,
but these act as great vital signs for your recruiting efforts. Check
in on them monthly to make sure you’re on track to hit your annual
goals.
44
92) Build SLAs to get back to candidates faster
An SLA (service-level agreement) is essentially a standard that is
set to get back to someone by a certain time. It usually relates to
customer service functions, but we’ve explored it here to get back to
candidates in a certain timeframe. If roles are taking too long to fill,
look at the stages in your process where candidates stay the longest
and install time limits to make a decision on a candidate within that
stage quicker.
93) Schedule post-mortems to analyze recruiting
data from the process
After a role is closed, I look in Lever Reports with my hiring manager
to see where the process could be improved next time around. I like
to look through interview feedback to see which key traits we should
hone in on when hiring this position in the future, which data points
weren’t looked at enough during the interviewing process, and which
members of the interview panel had the most helpful and accurate
insights to share. Conversion rates that don’t meet your benchmarks
can also help diagnose specific stages of the process that might need
to be reanalyzed for future hiring rounds.
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8
Diversity recruiting

94) State your commitment to building a diverse 97) Explicitly request a diverse range of referrals
and inclusive culture on your careers page Challenge your employees to think beyond the obvious – past their
Even if you just add one simple sentence, you can send a strong mes- three best friends that may or may not be all from the same demo-
sage to your applicants. Add it at the end to your job descriptions too graphic. Emphasize that diversity requires deliberate effort, and it’s
to drive the point home! something all employees can help with – by making introductions to
great people they know, even if they don’t fit the “traditional” profile.
95) Conduct blind resume screenings It only makes the team stronger in the long run.

This will help you minimize unconscious biases. Studies have shown
that people with ethnic names need to send out more resumes before 98) Ensure that underrepresented employees are

they get a callback, and that resumes with female names are rated included in your interviews

lower than ones with male names when all other things on a resume But don’t overload them either. As much as candidates want to meet
are equal. with their diverse potential coworkers, if your one female engineer is
in every single interview panel, it’s not fair to her performance and
96) Ban “culture fit” as a reason for rejecting a candidate sanity either.

When interviewers want to reject candidates for “culture fit”, or

a “gut feeling”, it’s an indication that unconscious bias is at play.
Challenge your interviewers to articulate a more specific explanation
– it’s a great way to uncover hidden biases and have open conversa-
tions about them (never punish or shame people – we are all inher-
ently biased a little bit!).

46 47
99) Check the temperature of your office falling off after on-site panels at a disproportionately high rate. This

The temperature in most buildings defaults to what’s most comfort- tells you there may be some sort of bias in a particular stage. With

able for men. It’s entirely possible that some of your candidates can’t this information, you can put on your detective hat: maybe it’s an

even be comfortable in their interview without shivering slightly and untrained interviewer turning those candidates off, or it’s the types

thinking about how cold they are. Planning outfits for interviews is of questions that are unfair to a specific group. Either way, time to

stressful enough - don’t force them to scour their closet for that per- investigate and take some action.

fect mix of warm but formal attire before their next onsite.
102) Change the reading materials you have in your lobby

100) Stray away from oddball questions like “How many If you’re going to provide magazines, try to make sure them relevant
golf balls would fit inside a 747 airplane?” to your industry as opposed to clearly gendered options. Unless

Brain teasers and off-the-cuff questions have been found to be you’re in fashion, GQ probably doesn’t belong in your lobby.

not that helpful in predicting great hires vs. those who need to be
rejected. Instead, map out structured interviews (planned questions,
asked across multiple candidates) with behavioral questions. Focus
on the “why” and “how” to learn about the candidate – what their
strengths/weaknesses are, as well as how they learn and prob-
lem-solve.
103) Print inclusive bathroom signs
Lever’s bathroom doors have a sticker that says “For those who iden-
tify as,” above the mens and womens signs. Try doing the same! The
smallest bit of writing can send a strong message to future hires.

101) Intersect your conversion rates with the demographic

data collected through Equal Employment Opportunity
(EEO) questions

Remember that conversion rate is the answer to a question like:

“What percentage of resumes submitted are moved to phone
screen?”. And what’s demographic data? It’s as simple as the
optional set of EEO questions that can be enabled in Lever. Try
examining these data points together. For example, you might find
that underrepresented candidates are passing phone screens, but

48 49
Conclusion
We forgot to mention one thing we love about hacks: they’re easy to start
applying today. Though after reading all 103 of these, you’ve ideally gath-
ered that already.
But with so many hacks to choose from, where do you start? We recom-
mend going back through the chapters above and choosing a couple from
each one to tackle. And teamwork. We recommend teamwork. Share this
ebook with your colleagues, and ask them to start applying these hacks
too.
A huge thanks goes to our hacks contributors, without whom this ebook
would have been impossible. Cheers to Medallia’s Ariel Jolo, Netflix’s
Tennyson Jones, Thread’s Melissa Trahan, Whisper’s Michelle Hart,
Engagio’s Ray Carroll, LevelUp’s Pat Morey, and Stacy Zapar from Tenfold &
The Talent Agency for making us all a bit more savvy.
50
About Lever
Built from the conviction that recruiting is the responsibility of everyone at
the company, Lever’s Talent Acquisition Suite draws the entire team togeth-
er to efficiently source, nurture, interview, and hire top talent through ef-
fortless collaboration. Incorporating best-of-breed automation, intelligence
and design, Lever helps employers develop stronger candidate relation-
ships in fewer clicks, by combining powerful ATS and CRM functionality in
one modern platform.
Lever was founded in 2012 and supports the hiring needs of over 1,400
leading companies around the globe including the teams at Netflix, Lyft,
Hot Topic, and Cirque du Soleil. With an overall gender ratio of 50:50, Lever
is also fiercely committed to building a team culture that celebrates diversi-
ty and inclusion. For more information, visit https://www.lever.co.
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