Recruitment Process Steps: How to Hire Staff Quickly and Easily
You need to hire the right people to achieve your organisation’s goals and increase your revenue. In that regard, a recruitment process is necessary to source and include the right people in your workforce.
Finding qualified candidates for your organisation requires considerable time and resources to stay competitive.
From the moment you source the candidate to successfully onboard them to your workforce, you must carefully look after each stage in the recruitment process to give the candidate a positive experience.
Understanding each stage in the recruitment process can help you handle and optimise them based on your organisation’s needs.
What Is a Recruitment Process?
Recruitment is the main task of the human resource department. They are tasked with finding top talent to accommodate the organisation’s growing needs.
Their tasks involve everything related to recruitment, such as sourcing candidates, identifying potential candidates, attracting candidates, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing them, as well as checking references, extending job offers, and onboarding the employees.
Companies use different methods to enhance their hiring process. They sometimes outsource the task, employ in-house recruiters, and rely on various channels to find the right talent for their company.
Most companies use an applicant tracking system to ensure that they offer the best candidate experience and build a strong reputation for their company.
Why Do You Need a Strong Recruitment Process?
For the growth of your business, you need suitable candidates to work towards your goals. The recruitment process comes with challenges, and you need to work on your recruitment planning to overcome them.
A well-planned recruitment process can make it easier for recruiters to find the top talent and engage the candidate while providing them with a good candidate experience.
It should also save time and hire candidates without unnecessary delays. Quick hiring not only helps reduce your hire’s cost, but it ensures that the candidate does not have to wait for a long time.
Additionally to having a well-planned recruitment process, you also need recruiters with the necessary skill sets to help them expand your workforce.
The recruitment process also acts as a window for the candidate to experience your company. This plays a massive role in the candidates’ opinion of the company. This can further affect how everyone perceives your brand.
The 7 Recruitment Process Steps
The following are the 7 stages of the recruitment process. This might differ based on the company and its requirements.
1. Identifying Hiring Needs
The first stage in the recruitment process is finding which department you need to focus on. You cannot begin sourcing candidates without first understanding what type of candidates you require.
First, analyse the requirements of each department in your company and get help from the manager to list all the employee requirements.
Understand the roles that need to be fulfilled, the candidates you require, their skill set, and the necessary knowledge.
Looking for the gaps in the current employees can help you find the job vacancy requirements. Perform a skill gap analysis, and if the result is too large to bridge, that is where you need to focus your hiring.
Check if any team or department in your company is understaffed. The best way to overcome an understaffed team is to look for top talent and hire more qualified employees.
Keep track of the employee turnover rate. When too many employees leave your organisation, you need to look into why and hire new employees.
Check the skills of the current team, and if there are any hints of underperformance, there are many ways to overcome that. Still, have a plan in place for hiring new employees in that job role.
If you find that a job role needs a new hire, you must build an ideal candidate profile to help you with the candidate screening stages.
2. Crafting Job Description
After analysing the job requirements, you will now understand where to focus your recruitment efforts to bring in potential candidates.
The next stage in the recruitment process is crafting a job description that highlights the necessary skills for the job role.
A job description can help the candidate decide whether they are the right fit for the organisation. The more clear and concise your job descriptions, the more likely you will attract suitable candidates.
Every job description should ideally contain the following details:
- Job title
- Company name
- Description of your company
- Necessary skills
- Nice to have skills
- Location
- Working model
- Salary band
- Roles and responsibilities
While the mentioned details are good to have in a job posting, you can customise them according to your job needs.
To make it easier for your job seekers to find your job, try adding the right keywords, and avoid using alternative names for your job title. Make it easier for the job opening to appear on any channel.
Personalise the job posting for every job board and keep the tone conversational. It is best to use bullet points so job seekers can read the job posting easily.
Ensure you are clear about the necessary and “nice to have” skills. Make it easy for the job seeker to understand the difference.
Including the salary band in your job description can help attract more candidates and give them an idea of what they can expect when an offer is extended.
You need to start with the job description to bring in more diverse candidates. This is where the candidate’s journey begins.
3. Searching for the Talent
Searching for the right talent is the next step in the recruitment process. It is a necessary step in sourcing the right candidates.
Try generating an internal job posting when looking for candidates for a specific job role. This can help you generate more referrals.
Sometimes, your employees might have access to the most qualified candidates and a good employee referral program to reduce the time to hire.
When you look for external candidates, try posting your jobs on various job boards and leverage social media accounts to cover all grounds.
The candidates for a new job role can be obtained from internal and external recruitment.
When it comes to internal recruitment, you pick existing employees from your workforce, provide them with training, and have them take the new responsibilities.
The employee’s training is done through the process of upskilling and reskilling.
Although internal recruitment helps you quickly hire and find the candidate with the proper organisation fit, it does come with certain drawbacks. For instance, it limits your scope and can make your culture stagnant.
To overcome this, you could choose external recruitment practices. This can bring qualified candidates into your hiring process when carefully executed.
If you are a business actively involved in recruitment, you need a recruitment team that actively looks for ways to improve the recruitment process.
When it comes to external recruitment, there are multiple ways in which you can source candidates.
For instance, boomerang employees are those candidates who were once a part of your organisation. While they are not exactly your employees, they are easy to train and would already understand the knowledge of your company.
You must look out for such employees and encourage boomerang employees to apply. Try to always stay in touch with your ex-employees.
The same goes for passive candidates. They are not looking for any job and are usually happy with their current job. Reach out to passive candidates through a personalised message and keep them engaged with your company and any new careers.
To ensure that your job postings reach the candidates, you need to understand the candidate’s persona, which can help you make the right hire.
Consider previous applicants for your recruitment, especially those rejected at the later stage of the recruitment funnel.
To maintain a list of previous applicants. Build a talent pool to help you hire candidates and fill immediate requirements.
To promote the job opportunities in your company, you need to use various methods. Job adverts, company careers pages, social media platforms, and job fairs are only a few examples of the ways you can obtain more qualified candidates.
4. Screening Candidates
Most of the time, for your job opening, not all the candidates who apply for your job are qualified for your recruitment process.
You are responsible for shortlisting candidates and choosing suitable candidates for your recruitment process.
This is the recruitment stage where you must carefully consider your applicants and select only the candidates who meet the minimum requirements for the job role.
You can also do this with the help of a resume parser that helps you sort the resumes and CVs of the applicants to shortlist candidates.
Once that is completed, check for the candidates who stand out in the talent pool, such as candidates with relevant skills, certifications, and previous job experience.
You can further shortlist the candidates based on the necessary skills and the “nice to have” skills in your job descriptions.
Ensure that you properly pre-screen your candidates and do not let any bias come in while you review the applications of the candidates.
To ensure that the hiring team does not display unconscious bias during the recruitment process, it is better to choose the blind recruitment process during this stage.
5. Interviewing the Candidates
This is the later stage of the recruitment process for candidates you have shortlisted and assessed for a job role.
Based on the role’s requirements, you might conduct multiple interview rounds. The interview process might take place through a telephone, a video interview, or an in-person interview.
This is the stage where you can thoroughly check the candidate if they are a perfect match for your job specifications.
You can provide a positive candidate experience in the interview process if done correctly. The candidate can also see if the company is the right fit for them at this stage. Treating them well in the interviews is crucial for both the candidate and the interviewer.
You can also try a structured interview method to keep your interview uniform and not give any space for bias.
Before scheduling the interview, keep track of the candidate’s information and try to prepare the questions beforehand.
To ensure that you are fair in your treatment, try to conduct a panel interview and bring in more interviewers. Bringing in hiring managers could be perfect for the panel interview.
Encourage the candidates to ask more questions about the job role, responsibilities, and the company.
Collect feedback from the candidate about the recruitment process, and pass this on to the hr team to improve it for future recruitment.
6. Evaluating and Extending Job Offer
Here comes the final stage of the recruitment process, where the candidate is rejected or extended a job offer.
It is essential to inform the candidate about their rejection without any delay. It would also help if the hiring manager could provide the rejected candidate with some feedback.
This can help provide a positive candidate experience. You could also encourage them to apply for any job openings in the future.
Once you find the ideal candidate for your job, you need to initiate the process of pre-screening. This is the step in the recruitment process where you check the candidate’s references and extend them a job offer.
When extending the job offer, you need to keep in mind that the candidate could have other job offers as well. Make quick offers to not keep the candidate waiting.
Before making an offer, look into the background verification process for the candidate. Check for their references and contact them through a phone call or email.
Contact the reference beforehand and schedule a meeting when they are free. Once everything checks out,
When you extend a job offer, include all the necessary information about the job, the responsibilities, company policies, work hours, and the job’s start date.
If the candidate hesitates to accept the job offer, talk with them and understand their concerns. Address these concerns and speak to them about how the company can help them in their career goals.
The candidate is most likely to accept the offer, but there are situations where the candidate might take the offer or go with a different one.
To face such instances, always ensure that you are prepared to extend the job offer to the second best or the third best candidate.
7. The New Employee Onboarding Process
Once the candidate accepts the job offer, they become an employee of your company. You must provide them with the best onboarding process.
The first few days of employment will likely help them form an opinion of the company and the work culture.
Ensure that the new employee understands your organisational values during the onboarding process.
Provide training resources for the new employees and help them understand the responsibilities of their job role.
Offer them an office space tour and introduce them to the workforce. Provide the employee with a good experience during their onboarding process.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How can the recruitment process outsourcing help your organisation?
Recruitment process outsourcing is when an external agency helps your company by taking over the entire recruitment responsibilities. They help by removing the burden of the HR team and sourcing qualified candidates for your job.
2. What are the 7 steps of the recruitment process?
The following are the 7 steps of the recruitment process:
- Identifying hiring needs.
- Crafting job description.
- Searching the talent.
- Screening candidates.
- Interviewing candidates.
- Evaluating and extending a job offer.
- The new employee onboarding process.
3. What are the different types of recruitment?
Based on the sourcing medium of the recruiter, we can classify it as internal and external recruitment. Internal recruitment is when the candidate is from inside the organisation, and external recruitment is when the candidate does not belong to the same organisation.
Final Thoughts
Understanding the stages of the above-mentioned recruitment process can help you find the weak spots of your existing recruitment strategy and develop ways to indulge candidates throughout the recruitment funnel. To build an effective recruitment process, ensure that you keep the candidate engaged throughout the hiring process. Remember that even if rejected, they will try again for future job roles when you build an excellent employee brand through a positive candidate experience.
LogicMelon
Award-winning recruitment software that will find, attract, hire and analyse the way you want to work. At LogicMelon, we have experienced software recruitment marketing specialists to help you build effective recruitment solutions supported by the best customer service you’ll find anywhere!
Email: sales@logicmelon.com or call LogicMelon (UK) +44 (0) 203 553 3667 (USA) +1 860 269 3089
Best Practices for Creating Career Pages
Career page is a section of your website showcasing your employer brand and presenting job openings. Read this article to know more.
Best Practices for High Volume Hiring
High volume hiring is hiring a large number of people to fill positions within a short time frame.
How to Perform Boolean Search on LinkedIn
Understanding about boolean search on LinkedIn will help you in finding potential candidates faster and efficiently.