Recruitment is a critical factor in ensuring the success of a business as it helps employ the right people at all levels in the organization. Hence, having a robust recruitment process in HRM is essential for companies looking to hire the right personnel, as they can make or break a company.
To ensure that you hire the right employees, you need to follow a structured recruitment process, which should be developed considering all aspects of the business and the organization’s culture. While hiring the right talent may seem like a straightforward process from the outside, even experienced recruiters face multiple challenges in hiring using their advanced recruitment software.
Hence, let us understand the 7 essential recruitment process steps and how it benefits your organization.
What is Recruitment Process?
The recruitment process is a structured approach to finding, attracting, and hiring the right candidates for vacant positions. Hence, it is undertaken systematically with well-defined stages, such as identifying hiring requirements, creating job descriptions for the positions identified, searching for the right candidates, screening the applicants, conducting evaluations and assessments, hiring the right ones, and onboarding them effectively.
While the exact recruitment process can vary from one company to the other, the overall stages of the recruitment process remain the same across companies and industries. Having this structured approach ensures quality candidates and reduced time-to-hire, resulting in an efficient and effective hiring process.
7 Essential Stages of the Recruitment Process
Recruitment is undertaken in stages as a more streamlined and nuanced approach to hiring the right candidates. While the actual number of stages involved can vary from one organization to the next, the general steps or stages of the recruitment process remain the same. The different stages of the recruitment process depend on the organization, its departments, and the complexity of its workflows.
The 7 essential stages of the recruitment process are:
1. Identifying Hiring Requirements
The first step of the recruitment process is identifying the various hiring needs within the organization. You need to figure out the various vacancies that exist within the company, as well as check whether new positions need to be created.
You can identify your hiring needs by:
- Tracking Input vs Output: You need to track your employees’ workload and understand whether they can keep up with it. If the output is lower than expected, you may need to upskill them or hire new employees.
- Analysing Employee Performance: Similarly, you need to analyze your employees’ performance and understand where they are lacking. You need to curate their skills, experience, tenure, and credentials to understand whether their performance is up to mark.
- Understanding the Talent Gaps: Additionally, you need to identify the talent gaps within your organization and upskill your staff to minimize your hiring costs.
2. Developing the Job Descriptions
The next step is to create in-depth Job Descriptions for each position identified in the previous stage. Since you already know the exact skills, experience, and qualifications required to undertake the daily responsibilities associated with each job role, you should list out these responsibilities.
According to the job description, you can also create a list of qualifications and skills required by the candidates applying for that position. It provides the candidates with a complete list of credentials, enabling them to understand whether they are the right individual for a specific role.
Hence, the job description should have:
- Company Name and Introduction
- Company’s Core Values
- The Exact Job Title
- Precise List of Responsibilities
- Qualifications and Credentials
- Tenure Limit required
- Age Limit Details if required
- Location of the Job
- Compensation and Benefits offered
- Additional optional Qualifications.
3. Sourcing Candidates
The next step in the recruitment process is to attract and find candidates from different hiring sources. To attract the right personnel, you need to tailor the job description to be attractive to them. By using the right keywords and industry jargon, you can ensure that your job vacancies reach the right candidates.
Similarly, you should leverage the numerous recruitment channels available at your disposal, such as:
- Internal transfers and promotions
- Job advertisements
- Job portals
- Company’s career website
- Social media platforms
- Placement agencies
- Career fairs
- Campus placement drives, and more.
4. Screening Applicants
The last stage should attract a good quantity of applicants, which leads you to the next stage, screening and shortlisting them. To ensure that you hire only the right personnel, you need to shortlist the resumes and screen the candidates effectively. To screen candidates efficiently, you need to chart a step-by-step process, ensuring that you are left with the best ones among the pile of resumes you receive.
For example, you can start by creating a set of minimum qualifications required by the candidate. Next, you can also set a minimum tenure for the role, as well as decide whether an optional qualification can be made a must-have, based on the number of candidates with that qualification. You can also flag candidates based on any negative aspects of their resume, such as unexplained career breaks.
5. Conducting Interviews
Once you have screened the candidates, you will have removed a huge number of people who would have applied for the position. Hence, the next step is to conduct interviews to finalize the ones who are worthy of being a part of your company. You can also share assignments to assess their skill sets during this phase.
Interviews can be conducted either face-to-face or via online tools such as video conferencing or online meetings. Similarly, depending on the position being offered, there can be multiple rounds of interviews, which should be made clear to the candidate at the beginning of this phase of the recruitment process. It will set clear expectations for the candidate, and they can opt out of the interviews if they are not happy with multiple interview rounds.
6. Evaluation and Job Offers
The next stage is to hire the candidates who have been shortlisted after the interviews and assessments, and offer them the job via a formal offer letter. However, there are some caveats to this stage, as it requires your strict scrutiny.
You need to check the authenticity of the candidates by verifying the relevant details shared in their resumes by checking with their references. If everything is in place, you can also begin the background verification process and finally, make an offer to the candidate by drafting a formal offer letter. Additionally, you should also evaluate the recruitment process to gather insights into optimizing it for the future.
7. Induction
Once the candidates are hired, the next step is to onboard them effectively. It begins with the candidate accepting the offer and the terms and conditions of the employment. You can convey their joining date and time, and share with them all the relevant information related to your organization.
During the induction, the recruiter or trainer can share the company’s vision and mission, as well as other relevant details such as their working hours, daily responsibilities, annual holidays, shift details, leave policies, and more. Having a robust idea of their employment with the organization helps avoid any ambiguity and sets clear expectations for the recruits to follow. It also helps them ease into their new role within the organization.
Also Read:
Importance of a Robust Recruitment Process
Having a strong recruitment process enables companies to hire the ‘right’ candidates for the job roles within the organization. The main factor to consider here is that ‘right’ doesn’t simply mean having the best technical skills or being the smartest candidate in the room. It also requires them to have the right soft skills, which are aligned with the organizational culture.
Here is why a robust recruitment process is important for all organizations:
- Attracts Top Talent: A well-structured recruitment process helps organizations attract skilled candidates faster, reducing the risk of losing them to competitors.
- Enhances Candidate Experience: Smooth and transparent hiring helps create a positive employer brand and encourages referrals from candidates.
- Reduces Hiring Costs: Efficient recruitment minimizes the cost per hire by reducing the time-to-hire and lowering turnover rates.
- Improves Employee Retention: By matching the right candidate with the right role, organizations increase job satisfaction, resulting in long-term retention.
- Ensures Compliance & Fairness: A standardized recruitment process reduces bias, ensures compliance, and creates diversity and inclusion within the company.
- Boosts Organizational Productivity: Hiring talented employees quickly ensures teams remain productive and meet business goals without prolonged skill gaps.
- Improves Decision-Making: Data-driven recruitment insights help HRs make better decisions on talent acquisition and workforce planning.
Types of Recruitment
Since recruitment is a major factor for organizations, it is undertaken using various methods. However, the end goal of these numerous recruitment methods is to find the ideal candidate for an open position in the shortest time possible, and within a minimum budget.
Based on how it is undertaken, the following are the major types of recruitment:
1. Direct Ads
Direct ads include advertising on online job boards, social media, career websites, etc., to ensure maximum reach of the vacancy. It helps broaden your search radius, enabling you to reach a wider audience. It also helps you stand out from the rest with your unique employer branding, ensuring that you reach the right candidates.
2. Employee Referrals
Employee referrals allow your staff and refer their friends and family for vacant positions in your organization. Since it doesn’t require you to spend on ads, it is a budget-friendly method of recruitment. you simply need to enable the ’employee’ referral option in their ESS portal. However, you would be required to spend a small amount on ‘employee referrals’. On the other hand, the benefit is that your candidates would already be aware of the company culture.
3. Recruitment Agencies
Another popular method of hiring is through recruitment agencies. These agencies already have a talent pool with candidates that would be perfect for your organization, allowing you to fill positions faster. However, you must ensure that they are aligned with your company culture to ensure retention and engagement.
4. Job Fairs
Job fairs also attract lots of candidates, making them ideal when recruiting for multiple vacant positions. Hence, it is another cost-effective method of recruitment, which enables recruiters to screen and hire multiple candidates. It also helps enhance your employer brand as you get wider exposure.
5. Talent Pools
Talent pools are a set of candidates whose resumes had potential but were not hired at that time. Such incidents may happen due to various reasons, such as hiring a better candidate, or one at a lower salary, training constraints, etc. However, these candidates can be contacted later when a suitable position opens up in the organization.
6. Internships
Internships are also a part of the hiring process, as ‘interns’ can stay back with the organization if they find it appealing enough. On the other hand, the organization should also deem them to be good enough to handle the position being offered. Hence, you should keep an eye on your interns as they are prospective candidates who are already aware of your company culture.
Benefits of having a Structured Recruitment Process
A structured recruitment process has multiple benefits, along with improving the efficiency of hiring. It helps hire the ‘right’ candidates who would be the ideal fit for the vacant position, while also ensuring that they will be happy with the organizational culture. Such employees will be more engaged with the organization and hence, have better performance and remain longer in the organization.
Some of the major benefits of having a structured recruitment process are:
➔ Time and Cost Savings
A structured recruitment process results in attracting the right candidates who are ideal for the vacant positions. They will also be the right fit for the organization, as they are scrutinized under the company’s policies, ensuring productive and engaged employees. It results in reduced hiring costs as you can recruit faster by attracting more relevant candidates in a shorter amount of time.
➔ Reduced Training Requirements
Additionally, hiring talented staff also results in reduced training requirements as they would already be skilled in their job role. Moreover, they will also be able to pick up your company’s workflow quickly and adapt to it. Hence, a structured recruitment process results in reduced training requirements and better productivity.
➔ Culturally Fit Candidates
A robust hiring process also gives you candidates who are culturally aligned with your company’s work environment and work culture. During the recruitment process, you will be able to understand whether they share the same aspirations and values as your business, enabling you to build an engaged and productive workforce.
➔ Enhanced Engagement
An effective hiring process also results in improved engagement among your staff as they understand their purpose in the organization and wish to remain with their company. Engaged employees display increased productivity, take lesser number of leaves, and undertake their tasks with vigour. Hence, having a strategic hiring process enables you to improve your overall profitability and employer brand.
➔ Enhanced Performance
A structured recruitment process will have in-depth strategies for each aspect of hiring. It provides the exact steps to source candidates, screen and evaluate them, as well as conduct interviews and hire them. Additionally, it helps save time and cost by finding the right candidates quickly with minimal effort. Hence, having a robust hiring process results in an overall better-performing recruitment management system within the organization.
What are Recruitment Channels?
Recruitment channels include all forms of tools and resources used by recruiters to source, attract, and connect with candidates. Hence, it includes a variety of tools such as career websites, job portals, social media channels, etc., that help them find the right candidate to fill their vacant positions.
Some of the commonly used recruitment channels are:
1. Job Portal
Job portals are specialized websites like Naukri, Indeed, Monster, etc., that cater to employers and employees alike as they help them connect.
2. Career Website
Career websites are intuitive websites maintained by organizations, where candidates who wish to join the organization can share their resumes. It is one of the easiest options to create a talent pool.
3. Employee Referrals
Companies can also ask their existing employees to refer their friends and family for vacant positions, providing them with a cost-effective method of sourcing talent.
4. Social Media
Social media can also act as a medium to attract the right candidates, as you can utilize its mass reach or leverage the various ad options.
5. Talent Fairs
Talent fairs help in putting your company in front of a huge number of candidates at the same time, while highlighting what you have to offer.
Conclusion
So, those were the 7 steps in recruitment process. If you are a recruiter looking forward to optimizing your recruitment, you should follow build your recruitment process tailored to your organization, by using these stages as a basic blueprint. Having a robust recruitment process helps you optimize your hiring by ensuring that you hire the right individuals within the shortest time.
