Choosing the effective recruitment methods for your company

All HR specialists will probably agree on one thing: there is no universal method of recruitment that would work for every company from scratch. Any method needs to be tested in practice within the realities of your organization, its capabilities, the budget allocated for finding new employees, and... even after all these manipulations, the method may work in one case and not justify itself in another.

What does the success of the recruitment method depend on?

• From the company's needs for specific specialists
• From the timelines allocated for candidate search
• From external factors: time of year, social changes, crisis or upturn in the country
• From changes in the professional field or labor market and a number of other reasons.

So don't rush to choose just one – try several methods for different job openings and recruiting goals. To do this, it's important to know the typology: it will help you navigate if you find yourself facing an urgent task of filling a vacancy.

What is a recruitment method?

This is all good, but let's start from the beginning. What is the recruitment method? Where is it applied?

Staff selection method (recruitment method, recruiting method) – a way to search for specialists that aligns with the current goals and needs of the company.

Recruitment methods are a unique tool of the recruiting process and simultaneously one of its stages. The HR specialist builds a hiring plan, selects a recruitment method, and only after that begins to review candidates.

What typologies of recruitment methods exist?

In terms of the number of required specialists

• Targeted selection

It’s simple here – if you need just one person for a specific vacancy at this stage, you use targeted recruitment upon request.

• Mass recruitment

If you need to close several vacancies for one or more locations, use bulk candidate sourcing, the stages of which are similar to recruitment stages but have their own nuances. We wrote more about it in the glossary.

By the method of contacting the candidate

• Direct contact

This method is also known as the preliminarily method. In this case, you work directly with future candidates, who are either currently studying at universities/specialized colleges or retraining in courses. Direct contact gives you the opportunity to recruit candidates from the very first moment they become acquainted with their future profession. You can monitor their progress and select the best of the best. Direct contact requires partnerships with educational institutions or retraining programs.

• Indirect method

The indirect candidate recruitment method includes posting job vacancies on various online or offline platforms on behalf of the company. This can be any advertisement, ranging from a post on the company's social media pages to a recruitment advertisement in the subway.

Important! This method is used when you have an adequate budget for promoting such posts about job searches, as in almost all cases, advertising will be required to promote your request.

• Third-party method

This includes the use of private employment agencies, hiring consultants, professional recruiters, organizations, associations, departments, unions, databases, contractors, and others to establish contact with candidates.

By search source

• Internal Selection

Sometimes HR specialists get too carried away with recruiting candidates from external resources, while in reality, the required people are already working in the company. That's why internal recruitment is needed. What methods are used to carry it out?

1. Posting a job announcement within the team. Employees often want to try themselves in different positions, but they may be shy to mention it or fear that they might not fit the required abilities. Don’t let them underestimate themselves. It’s always easier to provide additional training to a capable and potentially successful internal candidate than to spend time and resources searching for an external one. Be sure to indicate in the announcement that additional training is provided, and you will be glad to consider any suggestions.
2. Promoting deserving employees. If you notice that an employee has outgrown their position for a long time, don’t let them get bored and burned out. Offer a promotion and a transition to a new career level after the competency assessment, to develop their skills before they consider leaving for a company with a real career ladder.
3. Transferring an employee to another department. If a colleague wants to prove themselves in a new area, let them try sales instead of marketing, for example. This is a great option for “blockers” – difficult types of employees who have burned out or no longer wish to develop in their positions.
4. Referral system. And although this method is a hybrid of internal and external recruitment, it still offers the opportunity to seek candidates among the friends and acquaintances of your colleagues, which is inherently a plus for the company's loyalty karma. Encourage the team to engage good candidates for an appropriate bonus to their compensation.

• External selection

The external selection includes those we are already familiar with:

• Job postings
• Attending events, exhibitions, training sessions, and conferences in search of candidates
• Networking

By the method of posting job vacancies

1. Internal Areas

The internal platforms include the company career site – a platform designed specifically for publishing all job openings, making quick edits to candidate requirements, and for initial contact with candidates. It also includes the company's social media, the company's dashboards for internal recruiting, and company newsletters.

2. External Platforms:

• Job search websites – popular ones include Rabota.ua, Work.ua, HH.ua, Djinni, LinkedIn, etc.
• Free classifieds websites, interest groups on social media, city groups
• Offline placement on paper media in printed publications
• Offline placement on advertising spaces
• Partner mailings

3. Specialized platforms

This includes closed groups of specialists in social networks and messengers, as well as the placement of informational stands at career fairs and other HR events.

By method of search

You can search for job vacancies and post announcements about them manually or with the help of specialized programs. In the first case, it takes much more time to post the job description on all the selected platforms, review candidates, and transfer their information into the system. This is a workable option if you have a very limited budget, you're not saving your time, or you only have a few hired employees.

In any other case, candidates are searched for using HRM systems. Its advantages:

• An internal candidate database that stores all the specialists you have viewed, complete with information for future reference
• The ability to parse information from candidates' resumes directly into the system
• Posting job vacancies on all career sites from the system at once
• Tracking candidate responses to job postings, automatically transferring suitable specialists into the hiring funnel
• The ability to request vacancies from departments so you can automatically track employee needs

The main advantage of such systems, of course, is time savings – an HR manager can conduct the same mass recruitment much faster, avoiding mistakes in recruiting and not overlooking important stages when communicating with a candidate.

Which employee selection method should be chosen?

Our advice: mix methods and try them in practice. However, it is important to understand the scale of sourcing and the necessary speed to close the vacancy. If you are required to recruit quickly and effectively, request additional tools – a recruitment module from the HRM system, a parsing extension, or at least a well-thought-out internal database where you can add the resumes of favored candidates.