The recruitment process involves identifying, describing and recruiting which of the following?

When you think of the recruitment process, it seems like it should be pretty linear and straightforward. It should typically involve identifying a hiring need, figuring out what the job description entails, developing a recruitment strategy, advertising the job on various platforms, receiving and reviewing applications, and finally choosing a candidate.

However, more often than not, it’s not that simple for many companies. There are a number of reasons for this; ranging from creating efficient recruiting processes and attracting suitable candidates to hiring on time and recruiting justly.

No matter how daunting it may be though, there are always handy solutions. Here’s what you need to do and how to move forward with the recruitment process. First, let’s cover what the recruitment process itself entails.

What is the recruitment process?

The recruitment process is simply the summation of steps involving the hiring of a new employee for a role in an organization. This covers every step from identifying the role itself, to advertising it on job boards and relevant platforms, to building a talent pool of candidates, assessing them through various stages, and finally making a decision to hire one of them.

Typically handled by human resource managers/ management, managers, or independent recruiters; the recruitment process involves relevant departments within the company, such as ones where the role directly operates, and affiliated teams. Sometimes, an organization may opt to employ a combination of the in-house human resource management team, managers, and recruiters in its recruitment process. 

In a nutshell, the recruitment process involves attracting suitable candidates for a role (usually determined by experience, cultural fit, and skills) and making a selection of one or more for the intended role. It ends with the onboarding process, which involves getting the new employee familiar with the role and the company as a whole.

Building a great recruitment process borders on its efficiency and effectiveness. With the right process, you are not only able to find a pool of suitable candidates for your role but can also do it quickly and without causing a burden to the teams involved. This last factor is highly important as recruitment processes involve a lot of planning and evaluation. 

That’s not all. An effective recruitment process should also help an organization:

• Build a reputable employer brand
• Make decisions based on available and relevant data

Benefits of an effective recruitment process

No doubt creating and implementing a recruitment process on the principles of effectiveness and efficiency. What are the most evident benefits though?

For one, a great recruitment process lowers the cost of hiring. When your hiring process gets ahead of your company needs in a proactive manner, it brings profitability to your organization. You don’t have to suffer lapses in performance, and departments can benefit greatly from the availability of manpower and resources to meet their responsibilities. 

An effective recruitment process also means quality candidates who go on to become quality employees. It’s not only limited to the selection process though, as a fast-tracked process means you can retain candidates’ interests, and not risk losing them to other potential employers.  It also helps you fill roles faster.

Additionally, employee productivity benefits a great deal from great recruitment processes. As less time is spent on recruitment, more HR focus can be placed on onboarding for new employees and continuous development for existing employees. This in turn engages all employees at all levels and encourages better performance.

Having covered its’ organizational benefits, let’s look at what makes a recruitment process.

Steps to the recruitment process

Understanding what a good recruitment process is can be great, but how do you create one with your organization in mind? Here are the steps you must take in building an effective recruitment process:

Identifying the role

Before a job ad can be put out, a role needs to be decided on. This is easily achieved when you conduct a full assessment of your organization and take note of what areas gaps exist. In identifying your needs, you can create a perfect image of what the ideal candidate will be like and what they will bring into the company.

In some instances, identifying your needs is cut and clear; such as replacing an employee that is resigning or retiring. However, in creating or modifying roles, the bar is set higher. You have to take all possibilities into account.

Creating the job description

A job description (or JD) is an outline of all the requirements, responsibilities and duties attached to a role. You could call it one of the backbones of a great recruitment process, as preparing one shows that you fully understand what your business needs. No hiring strategy is complete without a JD.

Job descriptions are also a great way of communicating what your company or business needs to job seekers, and form the basis of an application in the first place. If a potential candidate feels they meet the requirements of a role and can satisfactorily perform their duties, then they are likely to apply. Hence, when it comes to recruitment marketing, the job description is your first approach in attracting ideal candidates. 

This is why you must be as specific as possible with job descriptions. Clarity is crucial, and a lack of it can be costly. For instance, if you operate a physical business that can accommodate remote workers, you may be missing out of a crop of excellent potential candidates who may not apply because you failed to clarify if it was a physical, hybrid or remote position.

With over 255 million projected remote workers in the world by 2030, that’s not a candidate pool you should be comfortable with missing out on, and it is just one example of why job descriptions are important.

Developing a recruitment plan

You may already know that most activities without a plan are likely to fail. Recruiting is no different. 

Coming up with a plan for how you’ll be hiring does your company a whole lot of good. You get to save and optimize your resources (time and energy), and get great results. A great plan/strategy would typically involve making decisions on the best way to advertise the jobs as well as assigning roles in the recruitment process; such as who reviews resumes, who schedules and conducts interviews and who makes the final decision.

Starting your candidate search

With the JD and recruitment plans all in place, the next step would be to start the search for the right candidates. You can choose from a variety of channels to promote this job, such as job boards, recruitment agencies or social media. You may even ask existing employees to help in the search by referring suitable candidates.

The more platforms you promote on, the more applicants are likely to reach out. While an entire horde of applicants is scary to deal with, automating your process is an effective way to ‘separate the wheat from the chaff’. 

Recruitment tools and software can help you thin down the number of applicants by discarding resumes without keywords relevant to the role in question, so you can reduce the time spent on your search. 

You could also make use of direct mail in your search. Direct mail in recruitment involves the mailing of ad materials like letters or recruitment postcards and serves as an alternative to online job advertisements. With  alternative suppliers like TonerBuzz, creating and sending direct mail advertisements for vacant roles is made a lot easier than it may sound.

Direct mail campaigns not only help you pick out and target ideal candidates for your jobs, but also give an advantage as not many other companies will be employing this tactic to attract new employees.

Selecting high quality candidates

The goal of a search is to find something and at this step, you should have a healthy talent pool that could become potential employees. You want quality, but so do other companies, so it is important that at all points in time, you constantly engage them. They have other offers, and keeping them waiting is not a great look for your company’s reputation.

Mobile hiring apps are great for quick reviews of applications, and can ensure you don’t miss a beat. This step is heavy on communication, so it makes sense that your business is presented as a brand that is worthy of these quality candidates. An email signature is one right way to achieve this, and you can create corporate email signature using software like Newoldstamp.

Email signatures are blocks of text that appear at the end of emails, posts or articles. They serve as a means of identification for the sender/poster, containing all vital contact information to recipients (in this case, job seekers). Email signatures also help to create consistency in branding, and establish clarity in communication.

Conducting interviews

Your next step is the interview process where you evaluate each of your selected candidates individually. Their resumes and portfolios may have gotten your attention, but interviews help you gain more insight into who they are beyond words on paper. Interviews also help you thin the number even further. 

A comprehensive list of interview questions helps you determine which candidates are best suited for your company, but beyond that, their demeanors, body language and overall characters can be assessed as well. Some candidates are great at what they do, but could be lacking in personality which can disrupt teams and lead to problems. This is just one example of insights interviews can give you.

You can interview in person, over the phone or via video conferencing, depending on your preferences. For remote jobs, while in-person interviews may not be possible, virtual interviews work just as well.

Be sure not to stretch the interview process, or you may end up with burnt out candidates, and a loss of interest. Remember that this process is supposed to be mutually beneficial for both of you, and no one should be taken for granted.  Let candidates know when you are likely to come to a decision, and stick to it, so that they have something to look forward to. 

Most importantly, follow up with candidates at the end of the process, whether or not you choose to proceed with them. It speaks well of your organization. You could also offer constructive feedback on why candidates were not selected, but that’s based on your discretion.

Sending a job offer

You’ve finally picked a suitable candidate for the job after evaluating all possible options. Now, you can send an offer letter. However, bear in mind that they are under no strict obligation to accept your offer, especially if they do not agree with the terms of employment (salary, benefits, working hours, etc.)

Hence, if you really want them for this job, try to offer desirable terms that are hard to say no to, all within your company’s limits, that is. Sometimes, the person sending the offer plays a big part in whether it’s accepted or not, so it could come from the potential manager. Either way, always be ready to negotiate.

Onboarding the new employee

Your final milestone in the recruitment process is onboarding. It’s where your chosen candidate agrees to terms and now you start to integrate them into the organization. The success of your new hire can depend strongly on how the onboarding process goes, so it’s important that you make sure they settle in nicely.

To ensure that they have a positive experience in their new role, your onboarding process should cover all the bases; such as introducing new employees to company procedures and making available necessary resources to ease their transition. Open a line of communication for any and all questions, and keep them abreast of any new or ongoing developments.

A great way to ensure that new hires do not feel isolated is to set up a buddy system, where existing employees can serve as mentors. Regular one-on-one meetings with team leads and managers also help to supervise the transition process, identify problem areas and provide solutions that can improve proficiency.

Conclusion

Coming up with an effective recruiting process can be the difference maker for your organization when it comes to new intakes. With these steps, finding a candidate that not only matches your requirements for roles but also is a culture fit can stop being so much of a daunting task for your recruiting team.

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