Recruitment is the first step in building an organization’s human capital. Finding people to fill job openings at an organization involves job requirements, sourcing qualified candidates, screening and selecting finalists and negotiating the terms of employment.

“Recruitment is the process of searching the candidates for employment and stimulating them to apply for jobs in the organization.” – Edwin B. Flippo

The recruitment process not only reflects the company’s professionalism but also helps attract the right candidate while saving them time and money spent on identifying, attracting, engaging, recruiting and retaining talent.

The recruitment life cycle consists of 4 interrelated steps which are:

1.) Identifying the Hiring Needs

Every time you recognize that there is indeed a hiring need, act before it becomes a pressing matter. Whether a job opening is newly formed or just vacant, the recruitment process should start with identifying the vacancies that exist followed by analyzing the job specifications including the knowledge, skills, and experience needed for the role.

Here’s how you can determine your hiring needs:

• Figure out where the gaps are in your current team. Check if you have new needs in terms of ability, performance or personality.
• Keep a track of input versus output when it comes to your team.
• Regularly analyze performance and make a list of missing qualities, qualifications, skills and proficiencies that you need to add to your team.
• Be mindful of existing employees leaving. This is definitely when you will have a hiring need.

2.) Preparing the Job Description

After determining what you need in terms of knowledge, skills, and experience, it is time to determine the duties and responsibilities of the job. Preparing a comprehensive job description (JD) will help you know what your potential employees must have in order to meet the demands of the role.

3.) Talent Search

Advertising job listing internally to generate referrals and externally on social networking sites and preferred job boards. Recruiters can also conduct job fairs and promote openings in leading industry publications to cast wider networking.

There are 2 sources of recruitment for a talent search:

Internal Sources of Recruitment

When recruiters use internal sources for recruitment, it works to motivate the existing employees to be more productive and maximize their job satisfaction and sense of security. Recruitment from internal sources is done to fill up vacancies through promotion, re-hiring and transferring employees within the company. However, there is a potential drawback to the internal recruitment process. It can lead to a stagnation in the company’s workforce.

External Sources of Recruitment

External sources of recruitment refer to the sources that lie outside or exist external to the organization. Encouraging existing employees to recommend suitable candidates can thus lead to hiring the right individuals for the right jobs. A higher level of teamwork and synchronization among employees would be achieved. External sources offer a much wider scope for selection from a large number of qualified candidates. The process moves much faster even or bulk requirements while eliminating the chances of partiality or biases. It has proven to be a successful recruitment process when hiring for managerial and technical positions.

4.) Screening and Shortlisting

In order to move forward with the recruitment process, you need to screen and shortlist applicants efficiently and accurately. Shortlisting is often the most challenging and time-consuming step in the recruitment process. When it comes to shortlisting, your criteria are the foundation for your success. By establishing well-defined criteria, you’ll be able to shortlist candidates quickly and efficiently. The process of screening may be used first to filter out those applicants who do not meet the basic criteria for the job. Shortlist criteria should be based on the qualities and traits of top-performing employees currently in the role. Screening candidates is a key part of a startup’s recruitment process, it involves reviewing resumes and cover letters, conducting video or phone interviews and then identifying the top candidates.

A well-planned and thoughtfully crafted recruitment process helps the hiring team filter the right candidates faster while staying focused on engaging the eligible candidates or maximum conversations.

Here are the following best practices for recruiting the best top talent.

Process

The process is one of the best indicators of recruitment success. Having the best process in business will be an effective resource in recruiting your top talents. Recruiting is a process like any other business process, and should be customized for the size and needs of your organization.

Invest

Invest in highly-skilled recruiters, and keep training them. Growing and developing recruiters will make them more productive with their positions and provide profits in the quality of the talent they recruit.

Sales Function

Recruiting is like a sales function because they are trying to sell the idea of a position or candidate. Recruiters need to see what the candidate’s needs and what the client’s needs to fit together to make the case for a particular candidate or a position. 

Hiring Managers

Hiring managers are under pressure to fill the position as well and quickly as possible. Therefore, they are likely to give recruiters basic information and a short timeframe and expect miracles. Recruiters work together with the hiring managers to get them to slow the process down to identify what success looks like for that hire and work to make sure they get the best candidate for the position.

SLAs (Service Level Agreements)

Service Level Agreements are agreements between hiring managers and recruiters outline who is responsible for what, and what timeframes are realistic. These agreements make communication easier, improve results and help to build strong hiring manager relationships.

Referrals

Maintain a strong employee referral program. Your best people are likely to know other high performers, and you want your existing employees to bring those high performers into a fold.

Candidate Pools

Develop and maintain a strong candidate pool. Building relationships ahead of demand ensures that even in a crisis, your recruiters will be able to act quickly to fill pressing positions in the client company.

Assessments

Use assessment tools to evaluate your recruiting effectiveness and function.  While assessments will not tell you who to hire, they do assist in identifying the best candidates in the sourcing and screening process.

Data-Driven

Analyze your best performers and most effective recruiting strategies, and use the resulting data to inform your recruitment practices. This allows you to concentrate your efforts and processes on the practices and candidates proven to be most successful.

Implementing these recruiting practices will make a difference in the effectiveness and success of your recruiting programs. Tailor each practice to your firm or organization will ensure that your recruiting function becomes a smooth, efficient process that is an integral and appreciated core function of your business and HR.