WMBA 6401 Week 4 Recruiting Pipeline Memo Example

Memorandum

To: HR Director and Branch Services Manager, Elk River County Library

From: HR Analyst

Date: November 2, 2026

Re: Where the library assistant pipeline loses candidates, and one change at that stage

Summary

Last year Elk River County Library, an invented system of fourteen branches, needed to hire about 28 library assistants to replace those who resigned, and it hired 12. The shortfall left branches covering evening desks with overtime and pages. This memo counts every stage between application and accepted offer, finds the one stage where the loss is out of proportion and proposes a change there. The stage is the phone screen: of 120 candidates invited, only 74 completed one. Offering same-day online self-scheduling for phone screens, at about $1,500 a year, should raise completion to about 85 percent and add roughly five hires a year.

The Pipeline

Table 1

Library Assistant Hiring Pipeline, Last Year

Counts from the applicant tracking system for all assistant postings; composite figures.

Locating the Disproportionate Loss

Every stage loses candidates; that is what a pipeline does. The question is which loss is out of proportion to what that stage should lose. Three comparisons help.

The qualification stage loses 55 percent, but many applicants do not meet the requirements, and the loss is expected. The interview-to-offer stage loses 60 percent, but that is the stage where the library chooses, and a selective stage is working as intended. Offer acceptance at 57 percent is low and deserves attention later, but it involves only 21 candidates.

The phone screen is different. The library invited 120 qualified candidates who had expressed interest, and 46 of them, more than a third, never completed the call. For librarian postings, using the same process, 88 percent of invited candidates completed the phone screen. The applicant tracking system shows why: the median time between invitation and completed call for assistants was nine calendar days, because the recruiter schedules calls by email in batches twice a week. Hourly job seekers often accept another offer within days, and the system's notes record 31 of the 46 losses as "no response" or "took another job."

Breaugh (2008), reviewing recruitment research, emphasized that the speed and conduct of the recruiting process shape whether applicants stay in it. Becker et al. (2010), studying more than 3,000 candidates at one large company, found that applicants were more likely to accept offers made sooner after interviews, with no difference in later performance or turnover. The same logic applies earlier in the pipeline: delay costs candidates without improving selection.

The Proposed Change

Replace batched email scheduling with a self-scheduling link sent automatically when a candidate is invited, offering phone-screen slots within the next two business days. The library's applicant tracking system offers this as an add-on at about $1,500 a year. The recruiter's time currently spent on scheduling emails, about two hours a week, would shift to conducting more screens.

Expected Effect

If completion rises from 62 to 85 percent, the library would complete about 102 phone screens instead of 74. Applying last year's later pass-through rates, that would mean about 72 interviews, 29 offers and 16 or 17 accepted, roughly five more hires than last year from the same applicant flow. Each assistant vacancy currently costs about $3,800 in overtime and page hours to cover over an average of ten weeks, so five vacancies filled sooner would save roughly $19,000, about twelve times the cost of the tool.

What This Memo Does Not Address

The offer acceptance rate of 57 percent is the second weakest stage, and the exit and decline notes suggest candidates decline when they learn they will work mostly evenings. That problem connects to the scheduling findings in Week 3 and should be addressed through the scheduling changes already proposed, not through recruiting. Chapman et al. (2005) pooled many studies and found that what the job and workplace are actually like predicts which jobs applicants pursue and accept more strongly than most recruiting factors, which suggests that the schedule itself, not the recruiting message, must change.

Recommendation

Purchase the self-scheduling add-on, set a two-business-day standard for phone screens and report the completion rate monthly for the next two quarters.

References

Becker, W. J., Connolly, T., & Slaughter, J. E. (2010). The effect of job offer timing on offer acceptance, performance, and turnover. Personnel Psychology, 63(1), 223-241. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01167.x

Breaugh, J. A. (2008). Employee recruitment: Current knowledge and important areas for future research. Human Resource Management Review, 18(3), 103-118. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2008.07.003

Chapman, D. S., Uggerslev, K. L., Carroll, S. A., Piasentin, K. A., & Jones, D. A. (2005). Applicant attraction to organizations and job choice: A meta-analytic review of the correlates of recruiting outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 928-944. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.5.928