Recruitment process

What is the recruitment process?

Recruitment is the process of identifying, attracting, selecting, interviewing, hiring and engaging candidates for a company. Recruitment includes a broader range of activities and skills beyond the hiring process and talent acquisition and requires a specialist to understand the organization's staffing needs, the hard skills required for various positions, and to understand the company's work process and work environment.

The recruiting system of any organization depends on a number of factors including:

• The size of the company

• The industry it works in

• The company’s growth rate

• The type of employment and job vacancy

• Salary and benefits

• The conditions of employment (in office, remote or hybrid)

What are the stages of the recruitment process?

Understand who the company needs

Recruiters should make a list of the needs of the company or individual department before creating job postings.

Create a job description

Writing a good job description is a vital element in developing an effective hiring strategy. Once you understand the needs of the business and the department, you should identify (or reassign) the duties and responsibilities of the role and write them down.

Create a recruiting plan

Determine who will be reviewing resumes, scheduling interviews and selecting the right candidate and consider which of your colleagues to involve in interviewing the potential employee.

Start the search

At this point, it's wise to use any tools that will save you time in the selection process. Try using browser extensions, which reads information about candidates from resumes and search sites, and transfers it to your company's database. You can also use social media.

Select candidates

Strong candidates always have a few backup options, and if you don't communicate with them in a timely manner, they're likely to choose another company, so move fast.

Schedule and conduct interviews

After talking to several candidates, narrow down your search and make an interview shortlist. Carry the interviews out, and either choose a candidate or schedule more interviews.

Provide a job offer

More than 90% of candidates at the stage of accepting the offer care are able to choose between two options.

Conduct onboarding

Understand that onboarding takes time and you want to maximise retention, so as an employer you should take the long view to achieve success.

Recruitment methods

Companies will often adopt what they think is a unique recruitment system but most processes used by businesses today fall under 10 categories. These are:

1. Direct advertising. Posting job openings on career sites, job search sites, social media, and other job search platforms.
2. Databases. Checking your own candidate databases for matches to current queries, selecting from previously saved candidates.
3. Referral program. A combination of external and internal recruiting, the process of inviting candidates known to employees. This is particularly useful for diversity based positions.
4. Re-hiring. Hiring former employees can be successful as you know exactly what the candidate's capabilities and needs are.
5. Promotions and transfers. One of the best ways to grow successful employees and leaders within the team is to give them opportunities to develop in-house.
6. Employment exchanges. This is a good option if you are limited by your hiring conditions and budget.
7. Recruiting agencies. If urgency is a problem or the vacancy is highly niche you can use an agency for qualified candidates in a specific industry.
8. Searching for professional unions. This also includes communities, online networking groups, etc.
9. Internships and training. Particularly relevant if you need an entry-level employee, whom you train everything you need. A person who has had a comfortable internship with you will also serve as an ambassador for the company.
10. Recruiting events. This includes anything from job search trade shows to professional conferences.

What is the difference between recruitment, hiring and sourcing?

Recruitment, hiring and sourcing are all part of the same ecosystem but it can be said that recruitment actually refers to the entire process, from placing the first job advertisement to the very end of the onboarding process.

The hiring process on the other hand is the method by which a company decides on its final candidates for a specific vacancy and then goes through the process of selecting one of them to fill it.

Sourcing on the other hand is the process of actively looking for and identifying the candidates that you want to interview for your vacancy. This is the first stage of the overall recruitment and comes before the hiring process.

Why is the recruitment process important?

A well-organized recruitment process will not just gain you new employees but will inspire their loyalty and engagement, as well as provide a quality onboarding experience and will boost the trust of your company’s team as a whole. It's not a number game, you're looking for quality not quantity in applicants and diversity.

That is why selecting talent acquisition is no mere resume search for qualified candidates, but a much wider and more complicated process that should be fully engaged in from the very beginning of a company’s life to find and develop employees loyal to the business.

To create a recruitment system that achieves this to the maximum possible degree it’s important to consult with experts, whatever your industry. That’s why at PeopleForce we’re always on hand to help companies set up their own specific system. If you want to learn more get in touch and we’ll get back to you.