It’s time to remove the notion that candidates will be grateful to only be in the running. Recruitment is a two-way street, and job seekers prefer employers who make an impact and value their time along the recruitment process. A reliable recruitment framework is a must if you want a competitive edge in finding, engaging and encouraging talent to apply.

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In this article, we’ll detail everything you need to know about the key steps of recruiting and how to improve them.

• What Is the Recruitment Process?
• Importance
• Recruitment Process Steps
  • Analyze Hiring Needs
  • Develop a Recruitment Plan
  • Start the Talent Search
  • Begin the Selection Process
  • Onboard New Hires
  • Evaluate The Process
• Tips To Improve Recruitment Processes

What Is The Recruitment Process?

The recruitment process is an HR function involving finding qualified candidates for open roles. The process starts when there’s a need to hire new employees and concludes after selecting the best-fit candidate. It streamlines key activities to fill an open position, like broadcasting job opportunities, identifying potential candidates, collecting resumes, screening applicants and conducting interviews.

Importance

Recruitment is complex and involves a criss-cross of activities coinciding. To improve hiring success, your team needs to be experts in building quality candidate pools, encouraging job seekers to apply at your company and collaborating until they find the ideal candidate.

Starting the process without the right amount of planning is a recipe for disaster. Here’s how your team can benefit from a well-planned framework:

• Expedite Hiring: With the proper steps, you can declutter all your recruitment activities. Streamlining all the phases of acquiring talent improves the hiring time compared to walking in blind without a plan.
• Decrease Recruitment Costs: When you save time, you also save money. The longer a position remains open, the higher the recruitment costs can run. A streamlined method helps you optimally use your company’s finite resources.
• Find Quality Candidates: A well-crafted process helps your team keep their eye on the prize with clear-cut procedures to engage eligible applicants and build robust candidate pools for present and future needs. Your company culture and professionalism shine through a well-crafted framework and encourage the right talent to apply.

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Recruitment Process Steps

The length of the process depends on the size of your company and the nature of the open role. Some companies have lengthy, drawn-out recruitment procedures, while others have a straightforward method to recruit new employees.

Despite the differences, every end-to-end recruitment process includes the following key stages:

• Preparing and planning
• Developing a strategy
• Talent sourcing and screening
• Hiring and onboarding
• Controlling the process

With that in mind, here are the critical steps of the process.

1. Analyze Hiring Needs

While taking necessary measures to hire someone for a vacant role in your company is one of the top reasons to start the talent search, it’s not the only reason your company might need new blood on the team.

In addition to processing recently vacant roles, conduct an internal analysis to find gaps in productivity and performance across teams and departments. Start by asking internally:

• Are all key processes, tasks and responsibilities evenly distributed in your organization?
• Does the input of time, effort and resources match the work output?
• Does your team lack a certain level of expertise? Will external hiring address a specific need?

Consider gearing up to start the talent search if the answer to most or all the questions above is Yes.

Here are some things to keep in mind as you look to hire.

Process Job Requisitions

Department managers or supervisors also convey the need to hire new employees by submitting job requisitions — a formal request that details the critical elements of the job.

Provide team and department leaders the option to fill out an internal document that consists of the following aspects:

• Job title
• Name of the manager submitting the request
• Reason for request
• Name of the department
• Employment or contract type
• Estimated start date
• Compensation
• Estimated budget

Create Job Descriptions

The specifications mentioned on job requisitions will help you determine how critical the role is and the key responsibilities of the job. The job descriptions you develop will eventually guide what you need to convey to job seekers.

Job descriptions must include the following elements:

• Job summary
• Job level
• Location
• Reporting manager
• Responsibilities and tasks
• Job requirements
• Work conditions

iCIMS provides tools to create, review and approve job profile descriptions and streamlines the job creation process. Source

When To Consider Outsourcing

Staffing agencies and recruiting firms are on the rise and bring an array of perks to the table. Outsourcing the process can help you leverage ready-made talent pools, vast talent networks and advanced hiring methodologies to tackle intensive recruiting functions.

Consider outsourcing in the following situations:

• Hiring for Senior Positions: You must avoid failure when recruiting for C-suite positions. Relying on recruiting professionals to do what they do best significantly reduces the chances of bad hires.
• Conducting High-volume Recruiting: When there are too many open positions and deadlines, your recruiting team might need a hand to take on intensive recruitment phases.
• Finding Talent for Specialized Roles: Assistance from an external team will help you find talent for in-demand positions which require technical or niche skills.

2. Develop a Recruitment Plan

Once you’re clear about the level of expertise to look for in an ideal candidate, the next step is to define the what, how and why of the process.

State Hiring Goals

Start by clearly stating your company’s hiring goals and then defining a path to help you achieve them in the long run. When your recruitment goals are broadly defined, breaking down your requirements into achievable targets is vital. Consider the following examples of attainable targets:

• Reducing recruitment costs and time to hire
• Building deeper talent pools
• Reducing retention and attrition
• Enabling diverse hiring to improve workplace diversity

Define the Timeline and Assign Personnel

Estimate the time needed to recruit new employees for every open role. Be sure to consider future hiring needs based on the existing skill, performance and productivity gaps.

Next, decide who will do the recruiting and hiring. Both those terms seem interchangeable but, in reality, are different. Your HR team, recruitment professionals or talent acquisition specialists manage recruitment activities like attracting and processing applications.

The hiring process involves coordinating with the hiring manager, who submits the hiring request, to vet and select the top candidate from the talent pool.

Identify Talent Sourcing Channels

Your recruitment strategy must define suitable talent sourcing methods to help you find top talent, improve your company’s visibility in the job market and acquire more applications. Be sure to pick sources that effectively allow you to find the best candidates with the right skills.

Need more information? We’ll cover the different methods of sourcing talent in the section Start the Talent Search.

Develop a Recruitment Process Flowchart

Outlining the candidate journey to clearly state the vital candidate touchpoints and the key people in charge is good practice. Decide on rounds of interviews and where along the processes you want to conduct them.

Zoho Recruit shows recruiting activities in chronological order with time spent and on each stage. Source

Specify different paths and their triggers. Visualizing the workflows lets your team know which course of action to take at different stages.

Evaluate Costs and Assign Budget

SHRM estimated the average cost of recruiting new employees is approximately $4,700. However, the longer the process, the higher the costs. With that in mind, determine the recruitment costs based on the estimated time, number of vacancies and the assigned personnel.

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3. Start the Talent Search

Next, it’s time to start circulating job postings and networking with potential hires through the decided talent sourcing channels. Start your recruitment marketing efforts to spread the word about employment opportunities.

An all-around talent sourcing strategy typically includes a combination of internal and external recruiting.

External Recruitment

You’re recruiting externally when you look for potential hires from outside your company. Extending your search outside your organization is necessary to bring in fresh blood:

• Job Advertisements: Post job announcements on third-party employment and job boards frequently used by your target audience.
• Career Pages: Job seekers interested in your company are likely to check your company website regularly. Developing a dedicated career page to display open jobs is an excellent way to pitch opportunities.
• Social Media Recruiting: Target passive candidates who might not be actively searching for a job change by posting opportunities across social channels like LinkedIn.
• Employee Referral Programs: Allow your existing employees to recommend people from their professional and social circles on an incentive basis.

Smart Recruiters finds candidates by deploying job ad campaigns across different talent sources. Source

Internal Recruitment

Sometimes, talent hides in plain sight. Identifying potential hires from your existing talent pools is key to filling open roles quickly and reducing recruitment costs while you’re at it.

Internal recruitment involves taking measures to fill vacancies by finding the top candidate from your existing workforce. To recruit internally, you can rely on the following approaches:

• Internal Job Postings: Announce open jobs to your existing workforce and allow them to apply.
• Nominations: Allow managers to suggest candidates from their team for an open role.
• Succession Plans: Check succession and promotion pathways to identify, select and train an existing employee to level up.
• Talent Databases: Tap into your existing human resource information systems (HRIS) to identify and nominate potential talent from your organization.

Oracle HCM Cloud offers a deep-dive into past and active succession plans. Source

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4. Begin the Selection Process

The hiring process begins when your company receives applications. The candidate selection process involves the following activities:

• Screening Applications: Scan resumes to narrow the selection process to relevant applications. Respond to the candidates and let them know that they qualify for the role.
• Evaluate Candidates: Put your potential hires to the test and assess them objectively based on their industry knowledge, problem-solving abilities and personality traits. This can include things like paid and unpaid tests or more elaborate projects. Consider industry standards when deciding how to evaluate candidates. For example, hiring a Marketing Specialist differs from hiring a Full Stack Engineer.
• Interview Shortlisted Candidates: Schedule a date and time to interview potential hires. Ensure you ask relevant questions to determine if values and attitudes align. The number of interviews per applicant depends on how critical the role is.

Workable allows managers to score candidates on templated scorecards during the interview process. Source

• Verify Background and Check References: Check the integrity and authenticity of the references, qualifications and other essential information associated with potential hires. While most background verification searches occur at the end of the hiring cycle, you can file for searches at any point during the process.
• Make an Offer: After finding the ideal candidate for the job, it’s time to share the good news with them. Send the selected candidate a formal offer letter by mail or email and detail the compensation, benefits and start date in the document.

5. Onboard New Hires

Once your selected candidate accepts the terms of employment, it’s time to integrate them into your company.

Ensure that your company has internal procedures to manage post-recruitment activities like processing onboarding forms and bringing the new hire up to speed.

Bullhorn uses auto-fill functionality to expedite E-Verify submissions. Source

Here’s a tip: rely on an onboarding checklist and develop an orientation program to introduce your new employee to the team and acquaint them with your company culture.

6. Evaluate the Process

You might be eager to bring the process to a close. However, don’t stop after hiring. Ensuring that your procedures are always up to date by frequently assessing the validity of the methods. Finding weak links and bridging gaps is the key to creating a top-notch framework.

Are there ways to tighten the process? Start by analyzing and looking for weaknesses in the following aspects:

• Quality of candidates from talent sources
• The number of applications from different talent sources
• Existing recruitment workflows
• Candidate engagement and communication methods

Have your recruiting efforts impacted the bottom line? Return on investment indicates whether the input matches the output. Next, assess recruiting costs and take action to control them:

• Job advertising and job boards
• Average cost-per-hire
• Administrative expenses and overhead costs
• Outstanding charges when positions remain open for too long
• Background verification fees
• Pricing plans of your recruitment tools
• Cost of outsourcing services from recruiting or staffing agencies

Jobvite provides deep analytics on candidate pipelines, job ad campaign performance, expenditures and recruiting metrics in interactive dashboards. Source

Read our article on recruiting KPIs to learn how to measure the effectiveness of your process.

What if the selected candidate turns down your job offer? The following ways will help you prepare for when potential hires decline offers:

• Evaluate your offer
• Check your employer branding tactics
• Revise your benefits
• Look for vague clauses or terms
• Eliminate anything that indicates bias

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Tips To Improve Recruitment Processes

No matter how experienced your recruiting team is, there’s always room for improvement. Consider the following ways to optimize the process.

1. Upgrade Your Tech

Now’s the time to ask: Is your organization’s recruitment software up to the mark? Or worse, is it non-existent?

With the right tools in your tech stack, you can equip your team to handle the complexities of recruiting new talent while delivering excellent candidate experiences.

Start by assessing your current tools against your technology needs to identify areas you can improve. Need more information? Our recruitment software features and requirements checklist is a good starting point to learn about the features that will benefit your company.

A modern recruitment system provides all-in-one capabilities to streamline the talent acquisition process, expedite hiring and optimize expenses.

If you’re looking for tailored experiences, consider the following options to integrate with your existing tech and build a recruiting ecosystem:

• Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS): Automatically screen thousands of applications, scan resumes and parse applicant details into similar profiles. Streamline the candidate journey with defined next steps.
• Pre-employment Assessment Tools: Evaluate candidates and produce comparable scores objectively. Rely on standardized assessments to test your potential hires to determine their competencies.
• Interview Scheduling Software: Interview shortlisted candidates and track different interviews on a centralized calendar.
• Video Interview Software: Besides conducting interviews remotely with video tools, allow your candidates to submit video responses that your team can collectively review.
• Background Check Software: Conducts compliant verification searches to determine the integrity of candidates, verify documents and uncover potential red flags to optimize hiring decisions.
• Recruiting CRM: Manage all candidate communication campaigns and engagement efforts in one place. This system is ideal when nurturing candidates throughout the process is one of your recruiting goals.

2. Enable Data-centric Recruiting

Data is the new currency, which is why 44% of recruiters plan to increase spending on analytics tools, according to a study by Talview.

During the selection process, you’ll gather a ton of vital data on job outreach, candidate engagement and team performance. Instead of relying on intuition and assumptions, accessing measurable insights will help you optimize how you hire.

You can:

• Uncover the perceptions held by your candidates throughout the process and identify how to engage them better.
• Uncover patterns or trends to predict outcomes and take proactive measures to make improvements.
• Optimize recruiting and track vital DEI metrics to prevent them from dropping below a certain level.
• Use in-depth analytics to help eliminate bias and assess applicants on what matters most: skills and competencies.
• Develop data-rich reports to aid decision-making.

3. Consider All Forms of Talent

Talent is everywhere if you look in the right places. 53% of employees who quit during the Great Resignation said they changed their career paths in the past year. Workers didn’t leave the workplace entirely but were searching for growth opportunities.

To put things in perspective, Willis Towers Watson reported that as much as 44% of workers could be active job seekers. Now is the right time to consider all forms of talent movement.

Consider the following areas you can find talent:

• Internal Talent Mobility: Providing internal opportunities enhances talent pools and reduces recruitment costs since you already know the individual. Plus, they’re already familiar with your company’s values.
• Boomerang Employees: Leave the door open for former employees to reapply at your company. LinkedIn reports that 4.5% of all new hires among companies that use the platform were rehires.
• Past Applicants: Tap into candidate relationship management databases to locate applicants who left a mark and consider them for future roles.

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Conclusion

Perfecting the recruitment framework takes time, effort and learning from experiences; not all businesses start with that knowledge. While there’s a learning curve to the process, as long as you develop a framework that streamlines the key phases, your candidate selection efforts will have a better chance of paying off.

A step-by-step process will help your company make a lasting impression on your candidates, persuade more people to apply and provide your team with the means to spot top talent.

What are the strengths and weaknesses of your current recruitment process? Let us know in the comments!