The 5 Stages of Recruitment You Should Know
It is no secret that having the right employees can make or break a company. From attracting the most skilful applicants to hiring the best-qualified candidate, recruitment is a long and tedious process that should not be left to chance or based solely on gut feel. There should be a clear adherence to best practices and employment law: Alex Gotch is a good example of a recruitment professional focused on the more legalistic end of the hiring process.
It is, therefore, essential to create a flexible and standardized recruitment process built on effective strategies proven by long years of study and experience. Whether you’re aiming for a position in the HR department or seeking a better understanding of the hiring process, it is worth looking into the five stages of recruitment.
- Planning – Identify a Vacancy
Planning, also considered the preparation stage, is the first step in the recruitment process. It involves identifying job vacancies, determining specific competencies necessary for the available positions and defining the number of applicants to contact.
Planning also includes outlining the salary grade of new hires, setting the type of employment, whether for permanent or temporary and drafting conditions attached to the job. To ensure that the recruitment process unfolds smoothly, recruiters should then think carefully about the description, for example, a role in Human Resources. The job description plays a vital role in the next stage of the process.
- Strategy – Job Analysis
After planning, recruiters can now develop an approach on how to attract applicants by wholly establishing the recruitment method. The strategy focuses on selecting which technology to use and how, finalizing the job requirements, and narrowing down the geographical area to consider in searching for candidates. To sufficiently address the needs of the company, it’s best to choose your recruiter carefully and where possible opt for a niche recruitment agency for example consider bringing in a HR recruitment specialist agency, if you have vacancies within the HR department, as it can save precious time and money bringing in the right people, with the right knowledge and lead to a higher percentage of job retention.
Another essential aspect of this stage is deciding whether the company wants to save on salaries by hiring less-skilled workers and training them or paying more for experienced employees who can start right away.
- Searching – Looking for Candidates
Now the search process begins. Searching is done either by source activation, where a job posting only takes place when recruiters confirm a vacancy or by selling, in which constant communication of the job occurs through the use of marketing. The hiring company must compose the job postings carefully as it could inadvertently violate compliance rules like equal employment opportunity. Marketing is very important in this stage and is commonly overlooked. A job vacancy is redundant if no one knows it’s there. Some recruitment companies, themselves, enlist the help of specialist recruitment marketing agencies like Cartisian, in order to help them get their candidate posts out smoothly and effectively into the world.
Searching is the precursor of the screening process as it allows recruiters to review applications and weed out visibly unqualified candidates at the earliest stage. The shortlisted applicants proceed to more extensive scrutiny in the actual screening process.
- Screening – Managing Process and Selecting Candidate
Probably one of the most definitive stages in recruitment is screening. If done correctly, the screening process can help the company save time and money. Here, distinct job specifications such as a particular skill set, experience, and expertise become grounds for choosing who among the applicants will continue to the selection process.
Recruiters should be careful when screening the pool of applicants so as not to lose potentially valuable candidates by thinking too narrowly. More importantly, recruiters should display no bias towards the candidates and judge them based on their abilities, knowledge, and skills, something you think might be a given but is actually not. It’s important as well to know if the candidate shares the same principles as the company, which statistically will lead to better work ethic, job satisfaction and candidate retention.
- Evaluation and Control – Interview, Appointment, and Induction
After a thorough selection process that involves a series of interviews, the employer can now pick the most qualified candidate. Then follows the appointment, signing of a contract, and induction. However, the recruitment process does not end there. It is crucial to evaluate the methods used and the cost incurred versus the success of the hiring procedure to gauge the effectiveness of the recruitment.
Every company has to keep track of its expenses, and this includes not only money spent during recruitment but also time and effort. Such expenditures include but are not limited to the following: salaries for recruiters; time consumed while creating job descriptions and conducting interviews; the cost of advertising and marketing, including agency fees, and potential overtime fees to fill vacancies. Candidate retention should be a big factor when weighing up costs. Spending more in the short term may save you in the long term from not having to repeat the whole recruitment process.
Continually evaluating the recruitment process will enable the company to come up with standardized methods to improve the hiring procedure.
