TL;DR
- Acas is blunt about the starting point: “It's up to employers how they recruit for their organisation. There are no set processes that are required by law. But employers must follow a fair process”, with discrimination and data protection law applying throughout. Since the process is yours to design, evaluation is the only way to know whether it is working and whether it is fair.
- Evidence comes from four places: the numbers you already hold, the hiring manager who lived through it, the recruiting team who ran it, and the candidates who experienced it. This article gives three original questionnaires, for hiring managers, the recruiting team and new starters, and points to our candidate survey for the fourth. Each is short enough that people will actually complete it.
- Run the review as a meeting with an owner and a decision, not a report: six numbers, three questionnaires, one page of findings and no more than three changes. Keep the data protection limits in view, because the ICO says you must not keep information for longer than you need it and that you should set and document clear retention periods for recruitment records.
Most organisations evaluate their recruitment process only when something has gone wrong: a vacancy that stayed open for five months, a new starter who left in week six, a complaint. By then the evidence has gone. A recruitment process evaluation questionnaire, asked routinely of the people who were actually there, turns hiring from a series of anecdotes into something you can improve.
This article gives three questionnaires you can send as they stand, lists the six numbers you already hold, explains how to run the review so that it ends in a decision, and covers the data protection limits on what you can keep. It describes the UK position and is general information, not legal advice.
A hiring process is a set of stages with owners and dates, and most of its failures are handover failures between them. See how New Dynamics workflows run your own stages with a completion view, so the state of every vacancy is visible without a status meeting.
Why evaluate at all
Acas puts the position plainly on its recruitment guidance: “It's up to employers how they recruit for their organisation. There are no set processes that are required by law. But employers must follow a fair process.” It adds that other laws apply throughout the whole process, including discrimination and data protection, and that employers should follow good practice and their own policies.
Two consequences. Because almost nothing about the shape of the process is prescribed, nobody will tell you it has drifted; you have to look. And because fairness is required, consistency is not a nicety: a process that treats candidates differently by accident is the one that produces both bad hires and complaints.
Four sources of evidence
- The numbers you already hold, in the applicant tracking system or the spreadsheet that stands in for one.
- The hiring manager, who knows whether the shortlist was any good and whether the person is working out.
- The recruiting team, who know where the process jams and which stage everyone dreads.
- The candidates, including the ones you rejected, who are the only people who can describe the experience.
Questionnaire 1: the hiring manager
Send within two weeks of the new starter's first day, while it is fresh. Ten questions, five minutes.
- Did the job description and person specification describe the job you actually needed? (Yes / Partly / No, plus one line)
- Were the essential requirements genuinely essential? Which would you drop next time?
- How good was the shortlist? (Scale 1–5) What was missing from it?
- Were you clear about your part in the process and when you were needed? (Scale 1–5)
- How long did you wait at any stage for something you needed? Which stage was slowest?
- Did the interview questions and assessment help you decide? What would you add or remove?
- Were you confident that every candidate was assessed the same way? (Yes / Not sure / No)
- Did the offer and onboarding handover happen smoothly? (Scale 1–5)
- Six weeks in, is the person doing the job you hired them for? (Yes / Too early to say / No, plus one line)
- What one change would most improve the next hire in your team?
Questionnaire 2: the recruiting team
Send after each campaign or monthly, depending on volume. Eight questions, five minutes.
- Which stage of this campaign took the most of your time, and how much of it was avoidable?
- Where did the process stall, and what was the cause? (Manager availability / Scheduling / Approvals / Assessment design / Systems / Other)
- Was the brief specific enough to search against on day one? (Yes / Partly / No)
- Which sourcing channels produced the candidates who reached final stage?
- Did we keep every candidate informed within the times we promised? (Yes / Mostly / No, with the gaps)
- Were the interview panels prepared, and did they use the agreed questions and scoring? (Scale 1–5)
- What did candidates ask most often that our materials should have answered?
- What one thing would you change before the next campaign?
Questionnaire 3: the new starter
Send at the end of week four. The person is still close enough to the process to remember it and settled enough to be honest. Eight questions, three minutes.
- Did the advert describe the job you are now doing? (Scale 1–5)
- Was it clear how to apply and what would happen next? (Scale 1–5)
- How long did you wait between stages, and did anyone tell you what to expect?
- Did the interviews give you a fair chance to show what you can do? (Scale 1–5)
- Were you told about adjustments you could ask for, and were any you asked for made?
- Was the offer clear about pay, hours, terms and start date? (Scale 1–5)
- Between accepting and your first day, did you hear enough from us? (Too much / About right / Too little)
- What nearly stopped you from accepting?
For the candidates who did not get the job, our candidate portal post carries a ten-question candidate experience survey written for everyone who applied, which is where that fourth source of evidence comes from.
The six numbers you already have
| Number | What it answers | The trap |
|---|---|---|
| Time to fill, by stage | Where the process actually goes slowly | An average hides one disastrous stage |
| Applications per vacancy, by source | Whether the advert and channels work | Volume is not quality |
| Drop-off between stages | Where candidates give up on you | High drop-off after assessment usually means the assessment is unexplained, not hard |
| Offer acceptance rate | Whether pay, process and warmth are competitive | A high rate with slow filling may mean you only offer the desperate |
| New starters passing probation | Whether selection predicts performance | Small numbers; read over a year |
| Diversity of applicants at each stage | Where your process narrows the field | Monitor at stage boundaries, not only at the end |
Look at drop-off and diversity together: the stage where most candidates leave and the stage where the field narrows are often the same stage, and it is usually one nobody has looked at since it was introduced.
Consistency: the question the questionnaires cannot answer
Managers will tell you they assessed everyone the same way; the evidence is in the paperwork. The US Office of Personnel Management's guidance on structured interviews describes what consistency looks like: candidates “asked the same predetermined questions in the same order”, and responses “evaluated using the same rating scale and standards for acceptable answers”. In the evaluation, pull three recent campaigns and check whether the question sets, the scoring and the recorded reasons actually exist. If they do not, that is the finding.
How to run the review
- Set a date and an owner each quarter, or after every third campaign in a small organisation.
- Gather before you meet: the six numbers, the three questionnaires and three sampled campaign files.
- Meet for an hour with HR, a recruiter and two hiring managers, one of whom hires rarely.
- Leave with no more than three changes, each with an owner and a date, and write down what you decided not to change and why.
Three changes is a deliberate limit. Recruitment reviews that produce fifteen recommendations produce none.
What you may keep
Evaluation means holding on to information about people, which data protection law limits. The Information Commissioner's Office guidance on keeping recruitment records says that “under data protection law, you must not keep information for longer than you need to”, that the law does not specify timescales for recruitment records, and that you “should carefully consider how long you need to keep this information for and set clear retention periods”, establishing and documenting standard periods for the different categories of information you hold. Its example notes that, without a clear business reason, an employer should not keep records for unsuccessful candidates beyond the period in which a claim arising from the recruitment process could be brought.
In practice: aggregate the survey results, keep the analysis rather than the raw personal data once the review is done, tell candidates in your privacy information what you do with their feedback, and make the retention period a line in your recruitment policy rather than a decision somebody makes in a hurry.
Three findings that are almost always true
Before you start, know what you are likely to find, because it shortens the argument:
- The delay is internal. Candidates are rarely the reason a vacancy stays open. Manager availability, approvals and scheduling are.
- The requirements are too long. Ask hiring managers which essentials they would drop and the list shortens by a third.
- Nobody told the candidates anything. The single most common complaint, the cheapest to fix, and the one that most affects whether good people apply again.
Frequently asked questions
What should a recruitment process evaluation questionnaire include?
Questions the respondent can actually answer from experience: for hiring managers, whether the job description matched the need, the quality of the shortlist, clarity of their role, waiting times, whether the assessment helped them decide and whether the hire is working out; for the recruiting team, where the process stalled and why; for new starters, whether the advert was accurate, how the waits felt and what nearly stopped them accepting. Keep each to under ten questions.
How do you evaluate a recruitment process?
Gather four kinds of evidence: the numbers you already hold, the hiring manager's view, the recruiting team's view and the candidates' experience. Add a check of three sampled campaign files for consistency of questions and scoring. Then meet, agree no more than three changes with owners and dates, and record what you decided not to change.
What metrics should be in a recruitment review?
Time to fill broken down by stage, applications per vacancy by source, drop-off between stages, offer acceptance rate, the proportion of new starters passing probation, and the diversity of applicants at each stage boundary. Read them together rather than singly.
Is there a legally required recruitment process in the UK?
No. Acas says it is up to employers how they recruit and that there are no set processes required by law, but that employers must follow a fair process, with discrimination and data protection law applying throughout. This is general information, not legal advice.
How long can we keep candidate feedback and recruitment records?
Only as long as you need it. The ICO says you must not keep information for longer than necessary, that the law does not set timescales for recruitment records, and that you should set, document and apply clear retention periods. Aggregate survey results and delete the raw personal data when the review is complete.
Your next step: pick one campaign and ask
- Send the hiring manager questionnaire for the last three hires.
- Pull the six numbers for the last quarter, broken down by stage.
- Sample three campaign files and check the questions, scoring and recorded reasons exist.
- Meet for an hour, agree three changes with owners and dates, and set the next review date.
For the fair, consistent process these questions are testing, read and download our recruitment and selection guide. The guide is free to read, and the PDF uses our short download form.
Want hiring stages, owners and completion visible in one place so the review has evidence rather than recollection? Book a New Dynamics demo and bring your last three vacancies. You can also email contact@new-dynamics.com.
