Introduction

Recruitment, in human resource management, is the process of finding and hiring not only the most qualified but also the best candidates for a job opening in a cost-effective and timely manner. Recruitment can also be defined as the process of searching for prospective candidates while stimulating and urging them to apply for jobs in a company or organization. 

In general, this is a process with a kind of full life cycle that starts with the identification of company needs with respect to the job vacancy and ends with the employee being introduced to the company or organization. 

In most cases, when you hear the term ‘recruitment process’ activities like specific job requirements, getting the job candidate to apply for the job, screening the applicants, selecting from them, hiring and later eventually integrating them into structure to become new employees in your organizations are the ones that pop up your mind every other time. 

Clearly, the main reason for the recruitment process is to find the positional and organizational fit candidates who are perfectly qualified for the position you are hiring for and who are most likely to help in achieving organizational/company goals. 

In this guide, we are going to look at the entire process, the best practices and strategies you can deploy during the time and tools/software that can streamline the process to make it easy for you as the hiring manager and the candidates applying for the job in your company at large. 

Summary of the things we are going to discuss:

• The importance of a comprehensive and effective recruitment process
• The recruitment process
• Best practices in recruiting
• Factors influencing recruitment

The Importance of a Comprehensive and Effective Recruitment Process

i) Time-Saving – An effective recruitment process will save your time big time. Instead of having to put candidates through a complicated and lengthy application process accompanied by every possible practical test, most hiring managers have now customized the recruitment process using an application Tracking system that has not only personalized but also has had a positive experience.

The system allows hiring managers and recruiters to accomplish daily tasks while at the same time making them stay focused on more crucial things. Aside from that, the tacking application system keeps you on top of bottlenecks that might let bad hires sneak through during recruitment. That means you are able to fix all issues at the source on time and save enough time. 

ii) Engaged Employees -A comprehensive recruitment process aims at hiring job applicants who have a work history that reflects consistency, commitment, and career growth. The kind of employees is engaged motivated enthusiastic and above all committed to their work.

It is only through an in-depth recruitment process that you will be able to evaluate the commitment levels, enthusiasm, and efficiency of potential candidates. 

iii) Improved performance – Most applicants who are proactively seeking new jobs usually are not afraid of losing their current job due to bad performances. Through a thorough and extensive recruitment process, you will be able to shed light on the job applicants’ skills and competence that clearly shows their job performance.

If you have a skillful board of recruiters, you will use the interview process to elicit responses that expose the applicant’s limitations at the same time revealing strengths and areas of improvement. The eventual effect of that is that you will be led to predict the employee’s future potential productivity. 

iv) Proactive Recruiting – a well designed comprehensive recruitment process is able to identify gaps and ensures that the recruitment team stays updated empowering the team to take a proactive approach.

By that, the recruiter is able to review and refine strategies on time for better and quality hires. The point here is that while evaluating the selection and recruitment process it is crucial to pinpoint factors that influence and interest new hires.

All that reveals what is not working during your recruitment and you will be able to know the benefits that make you attractive as an employer.

The Recruitment Process

Every organization has respective special procedures that they integrate into the recruitment process depending on specific needs and structures. For this guide, we are going to focus on the general recruitment process and how the basic approach used by most companies or organizations.

Most people tend to think that recruitment begins when hiring managers begin the process of actually looking for candidates after a job description is in place. That is not the case. Actually, holistically, the process starts way earlier than that. 

Before the recruitment process, the company or organization has to identify the vacancy first and evaluate if there is a need for the position. Questions like: Will the company suffer if the position is not filled up and or is there a need for the vacant position to be filled by someone? If the answers to these questions are affirmative, then it is time to move to the recruitment process. 

a) Plan By Conducting Conducting a Job Analysis

This is a systematic analysis that allows the hiring manager, the human resource manager and other members of management to determine what the new employee will be needed to do in the job position or vacancy to be filled up. 

Most human resource managers will agree that the job description or position is the key to a successful recruitment process. In fact, it is the main step too,  and most hiring managers will use to develop interview questions and assessment tests for applicants. 

During this stage, you will need to:

i) Build a Job Description

Prior to any action, the organization or company should, first of all, know what or who it requires. At some point, an organization may deem the need for a new job that is not included in the current roster of jobs but can fit in the organizational structure, hence the need to create a new role. 

Job analysis is, therefore, a stage in which you identify the activities of the job and at the same time the attributes required for it. The two are the main parts of the job description. Since the job description is used to advertise the vacancies when it is time to source applications it is a crucial stage that requires to be done appropriately.  

In general, the job description includes: 

• i) General information describing the job position and a title
• ii) The purpose of the job position in the company or organization. 
• iii) The roles or basic functions of the job positions
• iv) The basic qualifications of the minimum requirements. 

To craft the perfect job description you will need the following checklist:

• Company name and description
• Benefits offered
• Core values 
• Industry pay
• Duty description
• Department
• Demand
• Qualities that might be an advantage if the job applicants had them
• A conversational CTA

ii) Review the Job Description

Once your job description is created, reviewing it for accuracy will be a good idea. This helps you in the assessment of whether the description is current or outdated. Additionally, in circumstances where the descriptions are already in place, revisiting them to check their applicability and accuracy with respect to the status quo is the best thing you can do at this stage. This is essential because it will reveal if there is a need to update the description of the job. 

Reviewing the job application will:

i) Continuously improve the organization structure – Reviewing the job description is the efficient way that you can use to conduct an organizational audit because you will be able to determine redundant jobs that are no longer needed and the ones that are required. 

ii) Evaluate every position’s competencies – Work conditions and circumstances do change just like job and job positions do evolve. That also explains why the requirements for the job do change.

There are chances that a job could require new competencies from the worker unlike before. This means that reviewing the application will evaluate the competencies which have an ultimate impact on the organizational structure. 

iii) Evaluate wages and or compensations – Sometimes an employee or a worker performing a certain job may be under-compensated without the management knowing. This leads to dissatisfaction. However, when you review the job description you will be able to assess whether the job position is paid an amount of money that corresponds to the competencies and skills needed. 

iii) Set Minimum Qualifications for the Job Candidate to Fill Up the Vacancy

Qualifications are the basic requirements that a job candidate or an applicant are required to have for them to be considered for the job position. And the qualifications are usually required for the employee to be able to do the essential job functions for the position. This means that the qualifications should directly relate and be relevant to the identified responsibilities and duties of the job position. 

Aside from the basic qualification, it is at this stage that a company or organization opts to add other preferred specific qualifications in order to get candidates that are organizational fit. 

iv) Define the Salary Range

Defining a salary range is very crucial. When building a job description you will have to ensure that the job belongs to the salary range that is deemed commensurate to the responsibilities and duties of the job position.

Besides, being able to comply with the legislation such as laws on compensations and minimum wages the company or organization should also base on competitors or prevailing industry rates. 

For instance, if the position is for an accountant, then the range in salary should be within a range that other companies of the same industry offer. 

The Do’s  When Writing A perfect Job description

• Be specific
• Personalize
• Keep the tone conversational
• Use appropriate keywords
• Use bullets to break the monotony
• Provide details when you can
• Don’ts when Writing A perfect Job
• Do not use metaphors or jargons
• Do not use long texts
• Do not sugarcoat aspects that look challenging. Great candidates will always want to make things happen. 

b) Sourcing of Talent

This is the second stage in the recruitment process and this is where the company will let everyone know that there is a vacancy and that they are looking for a candidate to fill the position.

However, before jumping into the field of advertising the vacancy, the company or organization must first be aware of the areas in which they can find potential candidates. With that, they are able to direct their advertising efforts.

Some of the methods used in the sourcing of talent include: 

i) Networking

We can also call it referrals. Word of mouth is one of the best ways you can advertise a job opportunity. In most cases, it is the networking within the company by the members or representatives of the company attending career and college fairs.

The networking through word of mouth is a tactic used by prominent software and tech companies that want to hire not only young and fresh but also brilliant minds into their company. In fact, they visit the colleges personally and they target top students. Aside from that, they also use their networks within the industry to attract the highest potential of talents. 

ii) Posting

 

The application received during recruitment is usually both from candidates outside and within the company. Therefore, in order to attract the best available talents, you should make the posting. Posting can be both externally and internally. 

Internal Postings

For internal posting, the vacancy is announced and displayed on bulletin boards among other areas within the organization where all the employees and also visitors can see. In fact, when recruiters employ this method of sourcing, it has an effect on the current employees.

Actually, it motivates them to be more productive and at the same time maximizes their job satisfaction including a sense of security of their jobs. Additionally, if you are going to recruit through internal sources, you will reduce the attrition rate alongside efforts used in the recruitment process for us the cost. Some of the forms of internal posting include: 

• Transfer – The hiring manager can decide to fill a vacancy in another location without any changes in the job position, status or salary of the employee. This is done by transferring a job fit candidate from within the company or organization. This means that you will not be going to fill the vacant position by sourcing an applicant from outside the company. 
• Promotion – Vacancies can also be filled by offering your employees especially the high performing employees senior roles within the company. These are what we call promotions and the promoted employees will handle additional responsibilities and you will have their salary raised. This is a strategy used by most companies because the current employees understand the operations, work for ethics and culture organizations more than if you employed someone from the outside who might take some time before they fully understand all operations. Promotions are a motivation to the employees and they make them perform their duties better. 
• Demotion – In cases of demotions, the hiring managers usually have the right to lower an employee’s position if they are underperforming. The demoted employees became a source of filling job positions available in the lower positions of the organizations. 
•  Existing Employees – Your current employees in your company can also create a buzz or spread the word on their social media accounts to help to hire managers to fill their vacancies. You can decide to have an employee referral program where they receive an incentive for referring suitable candidates which help in accelerating the recruitment process. 
• Retired Employees – In some cases, as a manager, you might encounter situations when you need a critical project finished quickly. In these kinds of emergencies, you can opt to call in retired employees to feel the position for a short period until you find an appropriate candidate to fill the position.  
•  Previous applicants – Every time you carry out a recruitment process, it is advisable to keep applicants on file even when they did not make the cut for the first time. The files will be a very resourceful database. Sometimes you might conduct an interview during the recruitment and you realize how much talent is on paper and most of the talents are left out because you only need a limited number of employees. The left out talents are the ones to go for when recruiting again especially if it’s the same position. You can reach out to them when new positions open up. 

Advantages of Internal Postings

•  The recruitment form internal sources is quick, easy simple and above all cost-effective
• Develops employee loyalty for the company or organization
• Because the companies already know their responsibilities and positions, there is no need for training and induction
• It increases the motivation among the employees to work hard and thereby increasing work relationships within the company. 

Disadvantages of Internal Postings

• It prevents new hiring of other potential sources who might have new innovative ideas and a better way of task handling
• The scope of the internal postings has a limited scope because all the vacant positions cannot be filled.
•  Sometimes it brings issues between employees who are promoted and those who are not.
• Employees who are not promoted end up unmotivated and unhappy
•  If an internal employee is transferred or promoted the position usually remains vacant

External Postings

For external posting, you can decide to distribute flyers or make vacancy notices outside the organization. Most organizations that have websites usually post vacancy announcements through them. Some have job boards for external announcements. Some of the external sources of recruitment include:

• Advertisements – Advertisements of jobs usually help the company and recruiters build a unique identity that attracts more candidates to apply for a job position when advertised. For advertisements, you use either the digital or the traditional approach. However, digital media is not advisable because of the recent technological advancements especially if you want better results at a reduced cost. 
• Job portals – The use of the internet is growing over the world and that is why job portals have become so crucial when it comes to creating a connection between companies and the candidates. Actually the job portals are preferred platforms that most job seekers use when they are searching for jobs. The portals have therefore become a popular source to attract top talents for recruiters. 
• Company’s career website – A well designed, branded mobile-friendly career website is another asset that you can use to externally post your vacancies. The website which will convey your work culture and integrate the social profiles and ethics of the company will not only attract top talents for your industry but also makes it easier for your candidates to apply for the job. Most of the candidates who apply for jobs through the career website understand your organization quite better. A well-designed website will use a professional theme, attention-grabbing headers/title, compelling content and engaging employee videos. Additionally, a website that is integrated with ATS will eliminate the hassle of having to post the jobs manually and your job applicants will improve the candidate’s experience due to a customizable job application process.
• Social networking Platforms – These are places that you can find the potential recruits who are even more qualified than you would think. As a recruiter, you wouldn’t want to miss on a pool of candidates in the social media channels. With a combined number of users of more than 535 million users, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook offers you the ideal opportunity to link with the most skilled and talented candidates who can make the best future employees for your company. 
• Placement Agencies – If you want to fill those hard to fill kinds of vacancies and job positions that usually demand quite some time and which would take most of your effort, time, and resources, you will need placement agencies to work for you. The agencies usually deploy various techniques and tools that will attract the top talent for your company quicker and at a reduced time. 
• Job Fairs – Ever heard or seen a one-stop public event that does job advertisement? Yes, those are job fairs. They offer easy access to large pools of talent. Aside from that, they bring you an opportunity to build your brand awareness without advertisements. Even so, you get to network with other related organizations and corporations that saves you quite a lot of time and money that you would have used to advertise. 
• Campus Placements – These are the cheapest way that you can use to look for and find the perfect candidates for your job vacancy. The company placements are quick as well and they will find you candidates who are very enthusiastic, energetic, competent and above all interested in working for your organization. If you are looking for entry-level kind of employees, this is the best place to source your job candidates. 
• Professional Bodies– There are a number of professional bodies and institutes that can help you recruit the best talents on the market. These Institutes and bodies have a database full of not only trained and qualified professional but also very experienced in their fields. In fact, they are the best at tapping the highly skilled talents on the market if you are sourcing for candidates. 

Advantages of External Postings

• Encourages new opportunities for job seekers
• Your brand name will be spread to many people
• There will be no partiality or biasness between the employees
• Due to a large number of candidates and applicants, the scope for selecting the right candidates also rises. 

Disadvantages of External postings

• The selection process is lengthy hence consumes a lot of time
• External candidates have a tendency to demand more benefits and remuneration cost incurred when recruiting from external sources ifs higher than that of internal sources

iii) Media advertising

Media includes radio, TV, newspapers and even social media. One good example of how you can advertise a job vacancy is through newspaper. Most companies who want to hire and fill up space make announcements in newspapers and they provide the requirements and qualifications needed for the job. Aside from that, they provide contact details of when and where they should submit their documents for the application. 

iv) Use of proper Techniques 

To attract the best candidates, the organization or the company has to be various offerings. The company might decide to use attractive salaries, additional perks, incentive packages, and opportunities just to give a few examples that usually accompany the job. Some other offerings could be facilities available at the job place and various development programs. 

v) Using Company Reputation

This is usually the best publicity that an organization can use to attract the best candidates during recruitment. That means that if your organization has been known for being among the good employers then it is easy to capitalize on that and advertise open positions even better. Being good employers, it means that you have a reputation that helps your employees both professional and personal growth and development

c) Screening of Applicants

Probably the most involving stage during the recruitment process. The hiring managers usually have a lot to do during this stage. The job applicants’ skills, personalities, emotional intelligence, and integrity are tested and evaluated during the stage.

These are types of pre employment test that you can choose to test your job candidates. The tests are given to job applicants in a bid to ascertain whether they are fit for the job. There are various stages to this as well: preliminary screening, initial interview, testing, and the final interview.

i) Preliminary Testing 

If you are the type of organization that receives hundreds and thousands of applications, then preliminary screening is the stage that you have to use in your recruitment process. 

To get the best candidates, it would be good for the HR manager to be able to interview each of the job applicants. However, for organizations that get many applicants, this can turn out to be very tedious and impractical and in fact not advisable especially if there is the urgency of manpower. 

This is when preliminary testing comes in. It will help you shorten the list of job applicants. Preliminary testing is basically going through all the submitted applications and resumes and after choosing the ones that meet the minimum qualifications. This leaves you with a shorter and manageable list of candidates that can be interviewed one by one.

There has been a rise in the pre-employment testing companies that can check large volumes of resumes for you in a bid to reduce bad hires. For preliminary testing, it is advisable that you try them out especially if you usually receive huge volumes of applications.

ii) Initial Interview 

Candidates who get through the preliminary screening are shortlisted for the initial interview. The initial interview is more often done through the phone. Some even use videos on computers that have an internet connection. During this stage, the hiring manager may ask the candidates questions that can evaluate the basic skills and characters that are relevant to the job position. 

An interview is actually a conversation with one or more people acting as the interviewer, in this case, the Human Resource Manager who asks questions and the person who answers acts as the interview also known as the job candidate. 

The core aim of the interview is to transfer information from the job candidate to the human resource manager. Interviews can be structured, unstructured, formal or informal. We will briefly describe them below: 

• Structured Interview – Structured interview is usually designed and detailed in advance. It is usually pre-planned, accurate and consistent. Mostly it is used in recruiting candidates in entry or junior roles in the company. 
• Unstructured Interview – This is an unplanned interview and the questionnaire for the interview is not designed in advance. It is a kind of flexible interview in which the Human Resource Manager in charge asks questions depending on every response from the candidate. Somehow, the effectiveness of this interview is questionable and there is the tendency of time wastage but it gives the interviewer a clear outlook of the candidate, no wonder it has been used when recruiting for senior roles in the organization. 
• Group Interview – For group interviews, all candidates are interviewed together. Mostly, group interviews are done to save time especially when there are large volumes of applications for few vacancies. The interviewer or the Human Resource Manager usually gives a topic to discuss among the candidates and they then judge the behavior and innovative behaviors of each group. 
• Depth Interview – It can also be referred to as the semi-structured interview. Candidates are usually asked to give details about their special interests, work experience, and educational background. The Human Resource Manager in charge will then take in-depth tries to find the candidate’s expertise. 
• Stress Interviews– These are interviews conducted to learn the behavior of the candidate in stressful conditions. The recruiter in this interview will try to determine whether the candidate will be able to handle complex roles in the organizations. In most cases, candidates who show composure and diligence are usually the right people for the job position.
• Individual Interview – This is a 1 on 1 kind of interview in which there is visual and verbal interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee. The 2-way dialogue helps to find the right candidate for the role in your organization.
• Informal Interview – Informal interviews are done without any formats. They are usually arranged at any place and there is no specific or act procedure when asking questions. Most of this interview is in friendly mode and it helps the hiring managers to know more about the candidate and their personality during recruitment. 
• Formal – A formal interview is kind of official and the candidates in this interview setting are usually told in advance. For these interviews, the recruiter plans and prepares questions to ask during the interview. Sometimes it usually called planned interviews. 
• Panel Interview – Panel interview is the kind of interview that is conducted by a number of people. During the interview, 3-5 members of the hiring group will ask questions on different aspects. The final decision is usually decided by the members of the hiring group collectively. Mostly, this kind of interview is conducted when the organization or company is looking to fill the senior positions that require a competent and very qualified candidate. 
• Exit Interview – These are interviews done for the employees that want to resign or leave or exit the company just like the name suggests. These interviews give the Human Resource Manager a deep insight into the reasons why the resignation happened and would want to curb it in the future.

The 5 P’s to Consider for Effective Interview as a Recruiter

• Prepare – This is the first step when you are conducting an interview. Before the interview, the interviewer, in this case, the Human Resource manager should ensure that they take time to understand the key details of the job. Aside from that, the interview should be able to go through the candidate’s resumes to understand their qualities for an effective recruitment process. 
• Purpose – The purpose of the interview is very crucial. Without that, the interview might not exactly carry out an effective interview. The interviewer, during the interview, should project the company’s reputation as the best place to work out to be employed. This helps in the selection of the right candidate for the job. 
• Performance – The Human Resource manager should be able to identify the skills, knowledge, and attributes of the job applicant who are required for the forward steering of the company. They should be able to hire high performing candidates if the position to be filled needs a candidate with technical skills and special education.
• People Skills -As a Human resource manager, you should be able to unmask the job candidate and discover their hidden or inner skills and qualities during the interview. This is because most job applicants who come to the interview are not always transparent with their personality and behavior. This right practice will steer your organization forward because as the Human Resource manager you will be able to identify candidates with the highest potential. 
• Process – Process is always very important and it is the last P in the considerations. As the Human Resource manager should always follow a structured interview process to get things done quickly and to get better results. The good thing with structured interview process is that it will avoid bias by giving all candidates and applicants a fair chance. In fact, the best way to accomplish that is by using situational and behavioral-based questions. 

iii) Conduct Tests

During this stage, thorough testing of skills and talent is done. You can test a candidate’s behavior, personality, emotional intelligence, integrity among other tests that can screen out job applicants and leave you with the high potential candidates who are most talented. 

This is the most crucial stage during the recruitment process because it is after which you will know the real qualities o your selected candidates. Because of that, there has been a rise in a number of Pre-Employment Testing Companies that provide testing services for you to screen out the unwanted candidates, and provide you with the best talents and at the same time avoiding bad hires.

The steps in Screening and shortlisting Candidates

• i) Use minimum qualifications to screen applications
• ii) Sort resumes that have preferred credential by looking at the elegant experience, technical competencies, domain experience, certifications, among other specific skills needed for the job position. 
• iii) Next, shortlist candidates who have got the minimum requirements and preferred credentials
• iv) At the end before the final interview, flag any concerns or queries in the CV’s so that they are clarified in the final interview. 

No surprise the most difficult task during recruitment is reviewing the resumes. However, there is always a way out on that. You can make the resume reviews through the Application Tracking System at the drop of a hat.

In fact. Using the applicant tracking system will ensure that you have an objective unbiased filter that will smartly and quickly wades through the sea of resumes to screen out the unwanted ones. 

iv) Final Interview 

Once you get the most talented job candidates, you can now take them through one last interview. The interview should be a face to face meeting definitely between the candidates and hiring managers. Sometimes top management might be involved and this depends on the job position to be filled. 

d) Selection 

Once the final interview is done, the human resource representatives, the hiring managers among any other members that were involved in the process meet to make a selection of the job candidates who made the final interview. In most cases, matters considered are usually: 

• The qualifications of the candidates who made it to the final interview
• The assessment analytics from the interviews and tests that the candidates had been administered with. 

In case a unanimous decision has to be made, there is absolutely no problem because, with varied opinions on the panel, the majority will always prevail. However, if a decision is not reached, there would need to restart the process until they are able to find a job candidate that everyone is satisfied with. 

Some of the practices done during this stage are:

i) Employment interview – This is a 1-on-1 session that you will conduct with the applicant to know them better. It lets you as the interviewer or the human Resource Manger to discover the inner qualities of the candidate.

ii) Reference Checks – Verify the applicant’s experiences and qualifications that they provided you with.

iii) Medical Exams – Carry out a physical and mental test to give assurance that the candidate is capable of performing in the job selected for.

iv) Final Selection – This shows that the candidate has qualified from all the rounds of recruitment and is ready for the letter of appointment.

e) Job Offer

 Once a candidate is selected, the organization will now make an offer to him/her. To formalize everything, one of the human resource members should call the candidate to inform him/her about the selection.

Also, during this stage, the applicant is also told about every detail of the compensation package. The job candidate will accept the offer. It is important to note that in cases where the selected job candidate declines the offer, the recruitment process starts all over again. 

Keep in mind these points when making a job offer to your job candidate:

• i) Don’t delay to issue a letter offer as soon as you are done selecting the candidate.
• ii) Give a call to your selected candidate and inform them about the selection and put the offer on the table for them.
• iii) Give them a deadline to think about the offer
• iv) Stay connected with the selected candidate until he or she joins the company.

f) Introduction of the New Employee

Once the job candidate accepts the job offer, he or she has officially graduated from a job applicant to an employee of the company. It is during this stage that you will introduce him/her to the team.

The beginning of the introduction process is, of course, signing the contract and this is accompanied by the welcome package given to the employee. Employees’ first day to report to work is also communicated during this stage. 

At this stage, you will do the following important processes:

• i) Documentation Process – Collect ID proof, educational certificates, address proof and relieving letters among others.
• ii) Employment Verification – Collect details of the former employer of the selected candidate and also their references.
• iii) Contact the Candidate – Use mails, messages, and calls to contact your candidate to build a relationship with him or her.
• iv) Resignation from the previous job – Once you issue your candidate with an offer letter, let them resign on their previous jobs and share a copy of their resignation document or mail.
• v) Follow up on the date to join – Follow up with the candidate about the joining date.

Best Practices During Recruitment

a) Set Up a Well-planned Recruitment Process and Follow It

No matter how well documented and well planned a process seems, it will only be successful when you follow it. In fact, the recruitment process is just like a business only that what is being sold during recruitment is not a product or service but a job position. There are a number of things you can do to ensure that you have planned the recruitment process. They include:

i) Investing in highly skilled recruiters and train them more often – If your company or organization has its own human resource team, then ensure that you choose the best people for recruiting.

The chosen team should have the talents and skills required to carry out a successful recruitment process. The recruiters should also undergo a series of training every time and again to ensure they develop and recruit according to the changes and evolution of the company or organization. 

ii) Establish a concrete relationship between the recruitment specialists and the hiring managers – If your organization is used to acquiring recruitment specialists/consultants and hiring managers, ensure that you build a concrete relationship with them. The outcome of a concrete relationship is to motivate them to do the recruitment process efficiently and effectively to get the best talents. 

b) Develop a Clear Employer Brand

Employer branding is a crucial element of marketing to job applicants. Candidates become aware of your brand long before they become interested in an open position no wonder excellent branding is very essential. If your brand has been identified to be bad in any regard, the job applicant’s mindset will grow a negative attitude even prior to the beginning. 

Research shows that 75% of job applicants research for the employer’s brand before finally deciding to make the job application. That means that your brand reputation plays a key role. Your job listing and career page should be consistent with all other messaging because they are pretty much your brand’s online presence. 

The overall style including the photos, the website design, the fronts and even voice on all applicant facing pages should clearly reflect your brand name. It helps the job candidates to get experience or rather a sense of what it feels to be part of your organization. 

Actually, on the contrary, brands with a bad kind of reputation not only struggle to retain their employees but also struggle to attract new potential job candidates. 

c) Focus on the Candidate’s Experience 

Research shows that many job seekers will share the candidate experience on a number of online channels and venues. In fact, 51% share the positive experience while 35% share the negative experiences they might have gone through. 

Today, it’s easier than ever for job candidates to spread the word in case of ill-treatment, drawn-out recruitment process or even not being called back, which later on, affects the candidate’s pool when you announce for vacancies. The hiring market, on the other hand, has become increasingly competitive and this has led to companies realizing that your candidates experience matters so much. 

For most prominent companies like Zillow, maintaining the candidate experience is old news. In fact, they have made sure that their processes and technology an amazing candidate experience. 

Indeed, candidate experience speaks volumes to potential job candidates about what the experience once employed will be like and most importantly the degree to which your organization values the employees. 

d) Focus On Referrals

Employee referral programs have gained popularity and for good reasons. They have reduced the recruitment process by half compared to candidates sourced from external sources like career websites and other advertising media. 

While the referral programs should not take all your focus during recruitment, they are very beneficial in a number of ways. First, they encourage greater employment brand. But how? We will agree that a company’s greatest advocate is the employee, the more they talk about it the more your brand name will be known out there. 

Aside from that, referrals improve the quality of hire. The chances that an employee will refer people who have the proper qualities and abilities needed by your organization are very high. In fact. By referring someone, they already know what they can offer to the organization. They know their referral’s strengths and the most important weaknesses.

Referrals maintain the culture of the company and most organizations with rich company cultures usually have less percentage turnover of up to 14%. For companies with poor culture, turn over is more than 48%. While lower turnover doesn’t necessarily mean necessarily that it is again for the company, corporate culture is well known for producing more productive workers who are even happier. 

Additionally, referrals build engagement. This is because current employees feel valued and trusted since they participate in the company’s future growth and development. Aside from that, they feel a sense of accomplishment and pride if their referrals get the job. For the referred employees, they feel more engaged from the first day at work. Actually, they get assimilated to the system and culture quite quickly because they have their built-in mentor or buddy to turn to whenever they need guidance. 

e) Make Data a Priority from the Beginning

The truth will set you free and so will data if you are a recruiter. Lack of data during recruitment can make the process very frustrating. However, with the evolution of data collecting and keeping devices, it is all about to change. 

Having the right kind of data can help you manage expectations as a hiring manager. There are times when you are worried as a Human Resource manager, have unrealistic expectations of your job candidates or nervous that it is hard to sell an aspect of the job vacancy because you fear that the job candidates might not fit with day to day realities of your organization. 

Well, with data, there is absolutely no need to worry when selecting certain criteria to include in your job listing because you will have the right choice. With well-analyzed data points, you can find out which behaviors, skills, and values lead to a job candidate who will more likely than not be successful in your company and remain in the role for quite some length. Insights that help you in that situation can be derived department by department or client by client. 

If you have data that can answer questions like: Which talent source is the most effective, which talent source brings in the high performing talents, and which talent sources produce hires whose job retention rate is higher, then making hiring decisions will be very easy due to the powerful insights from your data. 

f) Reconsider Your Focus on Passive Candidates

In most cases, the recruitment process usually starts with experienced people who are not looking forward to moving from their current positions. The idea is based on the perception that something might be wrong with any employee who is willing to leave their current job. 

A survey done on LinkedIn back in 2015 shows that of the more than 20K talent professionals who took part in the survey, 86% claimed that their recruiting companies focused “quite so much” or “for some reason”  on passive candidates. 4 years later, you would purport that the number has even gone higher. 

Recruiters know that with the right price, a vast majority of employers are open for a move. Surveys show that only 15% may NOT be open to moving. Extremely interesting evidence from LinkedIn mentioned above show that even though the self-identified passive job seekers are different from active job seekers it is not in the way that usually perceives. 

Number 1 reason that would encourage a passive candidate to move is just a better offer in terms of money. For active job seekers, the top reason would be better work experience and career opportunities. 

In fact, more active than passive candidates report that they are reasonably satisfied with their current jobs, are engaged in improving their skills and above all, are passionate about their work. They usually are seemingly interested to move because of the ambition they have rather than higher pay

This is to say, from the above findings, that most employers spend a vastly disproportionate amount of time and budgets on recruiters who pursue passive candidates but on average, they fill up to 12% of their positions with individually targeted job candidates. This is from research done by Careerxroads Chris Hoyt and Gerry Crispin. 

However much there might not be evidence that passive job seekers are potentially better employees, you should be careful of what actually gets you when you focusing solely on them. The bottom line here is that, check your data to find out, always!

g) Design and Launch a Career Website

Most business activities and transactions are done through the internet. A career website will, therefore, be very vital because it adds an advantage to the organization as the recruitment process can easily be done through the website. 

Aside from conducting the whole process, it is the perfect place to post job openings and vacancies not forgetting that it is the ideal platform in which the company’s reputation can grow on. 

According to Oracle, the five main benefits of a career website include:
i) Saving time and labor especially in conducting staffing processes

ii) Saving a lot on sourcing because most candidates are the ones who will be approaching the company for inquiries and applications. 

iii) Enhancing the company’s reputation and in the long run, the brand itself

iv) Improving the quality of the candidates that apply for the job position and that means your organization will be in for quality hired employees full of potential.

 v) Streamlining the recruiting process which means you will save a lot of opportunity costs. 

h) Attractive and Innovative Job Postings 

You have to prepare your job postings, make them attractive and innovative in order to attract the best of talented candidates. For the fact that we are living in a world where there are so many job postings, you would fancy standing out from the rest of the crowd. Actually, there are so many internet job boards and job portal sites that are accessible from any device whether laptop, PC, or even mobile. 

If you have ever checked SimplyHired, SplashFind or smartRecruiters, you will realize that they have quite a comprehensive and detailed list of a variety of job boards. You can opt to use them for your postings. Therefore:

• Make catchy attracting descriptions
• If you are able, pull off some humorous satire in the job ad
• You can also post Hollywood themed videos which will help you attract more attention 
• Don’t take it too seriously. Put in some jokes to make people who apply for the jobs smile
• Make the job postings very unique. This sells your brand and markets your company in the most unique ways.

i) Avoid Posting Phantom Jobs

Sometimes, employers usually try fishing for candidates by unsurprisingly advertising job opportunities that seemingly do not exist. They(the employers)  would go with “Let us just post this job and see if someone really good is out there. If we find, we’ll create a role for them”.

Even so, sometimes job ads usually stay up when the positions have already been filed on the ground just to keep collecting more resumes for future jobs or because pulling the ad down seemingly takes more effort than leaving it up.

Additionally, some ads are posted by unscrupulous recruiters who in most cases are just collecting resumes to pitch elsewhere. 

All the above practices usually create phantom jobs which make the labor market seem tighter than it actually is. In fact, they are a problem for frustrated job seekers and economic policymakers as well. 

For that reason, companies should avoid advertising jobs that ideally do not exist. Also, they should take down ads as soon as the job positions are filled.

j) Engage in Collaborative Hiring

Collaborative hiring refers to a method where the team from other departments in an organization works together with the Human resource team to find the best talents from the fields. This kind of hiring, significantly has a positive effect on the quality of new recruits no wonder it is important as well. 

The collaborating teams share roles in the recruitment process and every team performs their roles to the best they can to ensure that at the end of recruitment, you get the best candidates with the highest potential in terms of the performance for your company.

As a result, the turnover rates reduces which means it has a positive impact on the hiring strategy and overall recruitment at large. 

k) Use Social Media 

Social media is still one of the best platforms where you can source the best of talents. For instance, Instagram has really grown in terms of being one of the social media platforms where recruiters find the best of talent. In fact, if you are a recruiter and you are looking forward to building talent pools and increase your brand awareness, Instagram is the channel. 

According to research done by Business.Instagram, more than 75% of accounts that have been created on Instagram follow businesses. This means that there is a possibility to get job seekers who are talented through the channel. 

Facebook, on the other hand, is the largest social media channel boasting of over 1.15 billion mobile daily users. This is quite a significant number you may not want to miss out on sourcing potential job candidates through the channel. In general, when sourcing for prospects on social media, the more diversified and more engaged audience the better for you. 

LinkedIn, being the employment-oriented social media channel is a place you should not miss when sourcing for your job candidates. It is through this platform that you will find more passive job seekers than any other channel. 

Aside from being a referral friendly website, LinkedIn’s database is quality and verified. Additionally, the profiles of potential candidates are easily searchable and comparable. The most fascinating thing about LinkedIn is that it has a job posting capability and that is why as a recruiter it is crucial for you. 

For Twitter, you can use Tweetdeck. A whopping 58% of Job seekers use Twitter when searching for vacancies. And as research shows, Twitter has more active candidates than LinkedIn(the known professional social channel for jobs and networks). This means that as a human resource manager, you will not leave out Twitter when sourcing candidates for your vacancy and that is exactly where Tweetdeck comes in. 

Tweetdeck will help you:

• Discover candidates and spark off conversations because it is easy to get to know candidates and start conversations using Tweetdeck. 
• Highlight the top performers to engage with candidates on Twitter and offer referral bonuses that apply after interactions. 
• Amplify your brand through hashtags, videos, and multiple Twitter handles.

l) Campus Recruiting 

The best place to find young dynamic talents and energetic is in the colleges. In fact, they show full enthusiasm at work and they could very well in entry-level kind of jobs. So to make recruitments from colleges, you will need to tie-up with renowned colleges, institutes, and universities and became part of their placement cells. This is the ideal way to hire students and graduates who have just recently graduated. 

The best way to find these talents are: 

• Make sure you are featured in the campus newspapers
• Conduct seminars and workshops in a number of colleges to show your company and mostly the opportunities that you offer. 
• Sponsor most events especially the festival and cultural events in the colleges
• invite college students to a company tour and then make them interact with the current employers, stakeholders, and all the staff members. Also, let them learn about your structural organization to understand it better. It creates a relationship between you and them even before they apply for the jobs. 
• Offer internship programs. Students who will have an interest in working for your company as interns will be given a chance. 
• Have the team to be in charge of the recruitment be young enough just like the freshers themselves. This will allow interaction and create better engagements.

World’s renowned companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and TSC hire talents fresh from the universities and it has been working magic for them.

m) Organize Competitions for Students 

From reports, digital media is one of the main sources of finding job seekers. Therefore you can organize online hunt programs and competitions for professionals and students to take part in and showcase their skills.

A prominent example is when L’Oreal usually holds a market competition called Brandstrom for students During the competition, students are asked to ask managers throughout the time. These competitions have helped job applicants to know the organization and recognize the company’s brand. 

Aside from making the students know about your company, competitions will leave students living a professional life and they grow up embracing responsibilities before they come proper professions later on. At the end of the competition, you also leave them with the format and style of your company and how it works.

n) Use Smart Sourcing  Technologies and Tools

Most companies have recorded huge expenditure on talent acquisition especially when sourcing and attracting top candidates. By deploying smart sourcing tools and technologies, you will be able to cut down the expenditure. This means that even small businesses can be competitive in the recruitment process regardless of prominent or big companies looming over them. 

Prominent companies tend to have more resources at their disposal and probably tend to have access to more and better tools compared to the small upcoming companies. In fact, they have had greater chances of attracting high potential candidates.

However, smart sourcing tools and technologies that have been invented over time have to some extent leveled the recruitment field a bit and the balance has led to small companies having the opportunities in landing candidates with high talents as well. 

Building a talent pool and creating a job board for recruitment instead of having to rely on 3rd party databases of various specialists and agencies is an example of smart sourcing technology. Additionally, using social networks and social media during recruitment are other smart sourcing tools and technologies that work in the modern era.

Actually, social media has become so popular and many people keep looking for jobs on most social media platforms. From research done by Meisha Rouser back in 2012, there were more than 36.6 million employers and workers who found their jobs through social media channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. 

o) Revamp Your Interviews

Since 2009, the amount of time recruiters spend on interviews has gone up twice. This is according to research done at Glassdoor. It might be hard to tell how much of the increase represents the delay in setting up the interviews but the statistics give a partial explanation of why it takes longer to fill vacancies these days. 

During recruitment, interviews are the most challenging technique to get right, arguably. The reason is that interviewers have to stick to asking questions that predict good hires usually mainly focusing on performance relevant to the job task or past behaviors and the questions are consistent across all the candidates involved. 

Additionally, it is during interviews that most biases show up because the interviewers will decide on what to ask of whom on the fly and decide on how they will interpret the answer. Lauren Rivera,  a well-known sociologist carried out a Survey about ‘Interviews for Elite Positions” like the positions in professional firms and she found out that hobbies which are particularly associated with well off people will feature significantly as a criterion of selection. 

That said, letting someone with little or no experience to do your interviews is the first step on a recipe for bad hires. Before you carry out your interviews, think about the protocols, do they make sense? If so then well, go on.  Additionally, resist the urge to have so many managers involved in the interview process unless it is a position that requires your whole managerial board to do a panel interview. 

Aside from the 5 P’s (Preparation, purpose, performance, people skills, and process) we had mentioned before on this article about the best practices during interview ensure that you:

• i) Set the candidate or the interviewee at ease
• ii) Ask open-ended questions and ask follow-up questions alter
• iii) Beware of questions that you are not allowed to ask
• iv) Keep detailed notes
• v) Be on the lookout for job candidates with red flags. 
• vi) Conclude the interview on a positive note.

p) Implement Proper Candidate Relationship 

Once you announce your vacancy for the job positions and job candidates make applications, a relationship is already created. And as normal relationships in business, you have to respect and manage your relationship as a hiring manager or recruiter with the job candidates properly. 

The objective during pre-employment regardless of being short term is that the job applicants will have a good experience with your organization even when in the end do not qualify for the job position.

Additionally, it is good to note that it will be easy for the candidates to be interested in applying for a job in your organization in the future. Aside from that, your organization will receive a good reputation which means your future recruitment process will attract even better candidates. 

Therefore to achieve a proper candidate relationship:

• You will need to establish a communication process, mode, and media where employees, candidates and the organization at large may interact directly and freely.
• Allow the candidates to create their profiles by themselves and later on, manage them in your own manpower tool or database. 
• Provide updates regularly to the job candidates about the recruitment process. 

q) Practice Compliance Management

Everything done during the recruitment process should be documented and archived properly. Your organization has to comply with regulations, policies, and rules that are set by the regulatory agencies and the government as well regarding human resource management and recruitment. 

To practice compliance management, therefore, you will need to:

i) Automate reporting procedures – for you to be able to comply with reporting requirements of activities involved during recruitment easily, you will need to automate how the information is recorded, analyzed and distributed.

 ii) Practice transparency – Your organization will need to learn on how to transparently advertise its open positions. 

iii) Ensure proper qualifications and certifications– Some positions in your organization will require the job candidates to have basic qualifications that involve possession of given accreditations, licenses and or job specifications. This can be done thorough background checks, hence compliance with the qualifications and requirements will be facilitated. 

Factors that Influence Recruitment

There are a variety of factors that influence recruitment. The factors are can either be external or internal. 

a) Internal Factors

Also called endogenous factors or factors that can be controlled by the organization. These are factors within the organization that affect recruiting personnel in the company or organization. They include:

i) Size of the organization – Large organizations tend to have higher demands for new employees. Most of them require quite more manpower and they tend to look for more people during recruitment. 

While on the other hand, small businesses, like new startups and companies that are beginning their operations require a smaller staff. If you compare the two, you will realize those small companies will have not only simpler but also more straightforward and shorter recruitment process. For big organizations, they usually experience more complex and lengthy recruitment processes in which most members of the organization will participate. 

ii) Salary Structure – Salary structure is one crucial factor that influences recruitment. For instance, if one company is known to provide higher wages and salaries to its employees, it is more likely to get more clients lining up to submit their resumes once it advertises vacancies.

However, for stingy companies who tend to pay fewer wages they might have difficulty attracting top talented candidates. Additionally, such companies usually have problems when retaining employees since most employees would not want to stay for long as they usually feel like they are not being paid enough for the services they offer to the company. 

iii) Working Conditions – Conditions at the workplace is another factor that is crucial in the recruitment process. All the working conditions should be good enough to maintain the employee’s satisfaction and attract new employees. 

Most prospective candidates who are talented will always look for jobs in organizations and companies that are popular in providing good working conditions and most importantly take care of the well being and health of their employees. 

iv) Growth Rate of the Organization – Organizations that grow at a fast rate, usually requires employees from time to time. However, For other organizations, which do not grow as much or do not even grow at all, they are less likely to recruit new employees. They only recruit when the old ones resign or retire. 

v) The Cost Involved in Recruitment – Recruitment is a process that will always incur cost to the employer. That is why companies and organizations always try to employ a recruitment process that will bear a lower cost for each candidate. This also means those huge companies usually incur huge costs during recruitment because of large volumes of applications. 

External Factors

These are factors that happen outside the company and as the Human Resource Manager, you may not have control over them. They include:

i) Supply and Demand – Supply and demand refers to the availability of manpower within and outside the organization and is very vital in the recruitment process. For instance, if the company is seeking for more professionals when there is limited supply in the market than the company needs, then the company will end up depending on internal sources by giving special training and development programs. 

ii) Labour Market – The employment conditions in which the company is located always has an influence on the recruitment efforts of the organization. If there is more manpower during recruitment, most attempts to recruit whether formal or even informal like noticeboard displays of the announcement will attract surplus applicants. 

iii) Competitors  – Sometimes the recruitment policies of the competitors in the market affect the recruitment process in different organizations. To stay on the same line with the competitors sometimes you have to change what you have or what you do during the process to ensure that you match them or you are better than them especially when they are doing better. 

iv) Political Social Legal Environment – Government rules and regulations when hiring have an impact on the recruitment process. Trade unions as well usually lay important roles in recruitment. From that, it restricts management freedom to choose candidates who a company believes are the best performers.

This means that suppose a candidate will not meet the criteria stipulated by the government or the trade unions then they are not eligible to apply for the job. The political and social legal environment plus the rules and regulations are different depending on the country or state. 

v) Image of the Organization/Goodwill – A company’s image out there will have an influence on the recruitment process of the organization. Organizations that have a positive image and goodwill will find it easier to not only attract but also retain their job seekers and employees.

The image of the company is determined by what the organization does, the managerial actions like good public relations like building public parks, schools, and hospitals in the community area.

ii) Current Employment Conditions in the Economy – If you can try to compare employment opportunities in countries that are developed with underdeveloped ones, you will find that companies and organizations in underdeveloped countries may find difficulty when searching for candidates with the skills and talents they need. 

An enterprise’s recruitment process will depend on the availability of prospective talents which is a huge issue depending on the economy in which it belongs. The enterprise will have to design and implement a process that will entirely address the issue. 

Wrapping It Up

As we have seen, there is more good for your company when you carry out an effective and comprehensive recruitment process. We are hoping that having gone through this guide, you will get in-depth insights into a few areas, strategies, and tools/software that can help you align your recruitment process to get the best talent and later on, get the best out of the talent recruited.

Aside from that, if you are looking to reduce bad hires, you can try and incorporate tests provided by the Pre-employment testing companies into your recruitment process. The companies bring the most ideal tests for your candidates’ screening to your table.

If you incorporate the tests in the recruitment process, you will be in for a successful process for the good of your company or organization.