The recruiting funnel is a funnel-shaped model of the recruitment process.

It tracks the number of people entering the funnel and the number of people exiting the funnel at each step.

The process begins with Large Backlog of candidates, and the goal is to narrow that down to a Short List for interview.

Each step in the funnel has a threshold for people to pass to make it to the next step.

For example, it is very common for HR to read the resume of every candidate to determine if they meet the job requirements.

The steps in the funnel are:

1. Large Backlog

2. Resume

3. Phone Interview

4. In-Person Interview

5. Hired

In addition to tracking the number of people at each step, the funnel also can estimate the time it takes for a candidate to move from one step to the next.

The time is estimated by averaging the time it took for a candidate to move from one step to the next in the past.

The funnel is useful in that it gives a very tangible picture of where the recruiting process can be improved.

At any given time, it will be obvious where things are bottlenecking, and what can be done to improve that bottleneck.

For example, if the bottleneck is at the resume step, HR may be spending too much time reading every resume.

One way to improve this is to read some of the resumes and ask someone else to read the rest.

The average time required to move on to the next step will decrease, and the bottleneck will be eliminated.

As another example, if the bottleneck is at the Phone Interview step, the interviewer may be overloading the number of phone calls to make each day.

One way to improve this is to hire an assistant to make the phone calls.

The average time required to move on to the next step will decrease, and the bottleneck will be eliminated.

As a third example, if the bottleneck is at the In-Person Interview step, the interviewer may have too many people to interview in a day.

One way to improve this is to hire an assistant to interview some of the candidates.

The average time required to move on to the next step will decrease, and the bottleneck will be eliminated.

As a fourth example, if the bottleneck is at the Hired step, the interviewer may be taking too long to make a decision.

One way to improve this is to hire a second interviewer to make the decision.

The average time required to move on to the next step will decrease, and the bottleneck will be eliminated.