How to Build a Recruitment Strategy

A recruitment strategy is a plan to attract and select the best talent for a company. It outlines the techniques, processes, and approaches an organisation needs to follow to source, attract, assess, and hire potential candidates.

The strategy should align with the organisation's overall business objectives, culture, and values and help achieve its staffing and talent management goals. The main goal of a recruitment strategy may vary depending on the company's needs to execute a workforce for overall development. It includes employer branding, job posting, sourcing and outreach initiatives, assessment methods, and onboarding processes.

Importance of having a recruitment strategy

The everyday challenge of hiring managers and recruiters is to dive into the talent pool to screen and board the right candidate for a particular job role. However, opting for a strategic recruitment plan can provide a framework to effectively plan a roadmap to achieve your business goals.

Following a strategic hiring plan, recruitment agencies can effectively attract and retain the best talent, increase diversity, reduce turnover, and minimize hiring costs.

Here are the benefits of opting for a recruitment strategy in business organisations:

1. Improved efficiency: it can help to streamline the hiring process for HR managers or recruiters to make informed decisions about the candidates based on their skills and qualifications.
2. Reducing cost-per-hire: by implementing an efficient and effective recruitment strategy, organisations can reduce costs and save money on hiring.
3. Better candidate experience: a recruiting strategy can also develop a positive experience for candidates throughout the hiring process, enhancing the organisation's reputation as an employer.
4. Access to the best talent: following a proper hierarchy, you can develop a recruitment plan to attract a large pool of candidates and select the best fit through pre-employment assessment, referral checks, and an interview process.
5. Reduced turnover and improved retention: a recruitment plan can help reduce turnover by attracting and hiring potential candidates and improving the onboarding and integration process.

Defining Your Recruitment Goals

The first step of an effective recruiting strategy is determining the goal or purpose to forecast future hiring needs. Whilst every company is different, some of the common goals of the recruitment team are:

• Increasing headcount
• Improving diversity 
• Reducing the cost to hire
• Reducing the time to hire
• Improving employee retention
• Improving recruitment processes
• Reducing repetitive admin
• Empowering recruiters to get involved in the hiring process
• Creating a stronger talent pipeline

Identifying the type and number of positions needed

The next step of a recruitment plan is to check out hiring needs, i.e., no. of roles or job vacancies your company will have in the coming months.

This practice aims to make a sensible prediction to actively attract and nurture the right talent and plan recruitment costs accordingly.

Determining the required skills and qualifications

What type of characteristics or skills are you looking for? The answer to this query can make your way easier to plan a recruiting strategy.

It can be academic qualification, work experience, specific field, geographic location, and years of service in a particular domain. List out everything for posting jobs on niche job boards to clarify what you are looking for.

Setting realistic timelines

A recruitment plan on applicant tracking systems can put your requirement in a timeframe and help you set realistic timelines for job postings.

It can significantly impact the other aspects of your recruiting process, like ads, interview scheduling, retention rate, cost per hire, and employee value proposition.

Think about which job vacancies you want to fill as soon as possible and which positions you can fill throughout the year.

Next, you can put your analysis into practice and estimate how many people each department will need and approximately when needed.

Understanding Your Target Audience

Job seekers always keep their search hunt on to get the best job roles on the careers site. For that, the job descriptions must have all the required information that a candidate seeks.

Consider the experience or skill you most want in the job candidate. If your position requires knowledge of a particular area, you should focus on advertising in that region to target locals.

Recruiters will better understand the areas of the company that will be growing, or in the plan to develop in the future and the required skills, so it helps build the targeted talent pipeline.

Identifying the target candidates

Opting for an applicant tracking system can significantly help recruitment agencies in today's digital world.

Automating the recruiting strategies can help screen the right candidate to fit the required job role. The top benefits of using an Applicant Tracking System to locate the target candidates are:

• Ability to publish a branded careers website
• An online application process
• Interview scheduling automation
• Candidate communication management
• Ability to create talent pools
• Team collaboration tools
• A recruitment analytics dashboard

Understanding their career goals and motivations

Check out the difference between entry-level and senior position requirements via an applicant tracking system. Also, explore candidates' career goals, like plans and commitment for the long run in the company.

Conduct job fairs within the recruitment budget to determine the futuristic vision of top talent in the industry and motivate the current employees to plan their career development in the same organisation.

Catering to the preferred methods of communication and information

Communication is the key to connecting with job seekers and keeping track of their progress in their job search.

If you are using recruitment software for hiring, it will be easy to chat with the applicant and proceed further with the following action.

However, direct calls or emails can help connect with the employer brand.

Sourcing Candidates

Recruitment strategies are also based on the source of employees and influence where you can post a job opening and discuss the employer brand, existing employees, and work culture. 

Employee Referrals

Some job candidates can also be found within your existing employees' network. For that, you can initiate an employee referral program, which offers a payout to those who refer an applicant that is hired.

It can save recruiting costs and build trust in the employer's brand.

Job Boards

One of the consistent parts of recruitment strategies is to select the best job boards to post job descriptions for the seekers.

ATS systems can help to post on popular job boards and so help create a broad network of potential candidates via job ads. Companies can also list the employer brand on the job board to highlight benefits, flexible work schedules, work culture, and development programs.

You can advertise jobs using ATS Software UK as per the recruitment needs and can give a clear picture to the job candidates.

By scheduling a recruitment calendar on job boards, you can easily track the applicants, screen resumes, and plan interviews, saving time and recruiting effort consumed in manual processes.

Social Media

Social media is always within reach of millions of users. These channels or networks allow HR to develop a recruitment plan for job posts.

Instead of focusing on the marketing company website or departmental strategies, you can attract candidates to job offers by posting them on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Many agencies prefer attracting candidates using social media channels as hiring platforms rather than using older recruitment tools.

Digital recruitment ads can be posted across social media platforms and millions of websites where your ideal candidates spend their time online.

Professional Networks

A recruitment plan outlines the roadmap for future hiring needs. It helps create a professional network of job seekers (active and passive candidates).

Using the best HR software, you can set up a network of diverse candidates, including people who showed interest in and perhaps can be interviewed as they have a suitable mindset for working in your company.

Go through the applications of prospective employees and discuss their thoughts and feelings after the selection process. It can help you uncover their interest in the company and job roles.

University Recruitment

If you want to hire interns, consider approaching universities and attending events such as freshers' week. University recruitment is a viable option for many businesses and can provide several benefits. Talk to academic leaders within these institutions and communicate the requirements of your job applicants.

You can start an application process for diverse talent through your company's career website.

Screening and Selecting Candidates

The most challenging part of recruiting strategies is screening the candidates and conducting their interview process for the final selection.

Establish a candidate selection process

Opt for a recruitment CRM to filter the applications of candidates that apply via ATS software as per the demand of job roles and find out exactly what fits.

Nowadays, HR managers prefer the best recruitment software to screen candidates according to their experience and academic qualifications.

Developing a standardised interview process

With your shortlisted candidates, the next step is to schedule in-person interviews to learn more about their personalities, work approaches, and communication skills.

Plan the interview process, like questions, technical rounds, debates, etc.

Utilising assessment tools

Hiring top tech talent can be easy if you opt for assessment tools for evaluating the performance of candidates, like work experience, qualification, personality, and work ethic.

You can choose the best HR software to plan assessment categories for the candidates.

Making objective hiring decisions

When you choose someone, you need to conduct background checks. This isn't always required depending on company policies and the roles you want to fill. Identify if background checks should occur early to prevent a possible delay in the application process.

You can review references to ensure they match the organisation's requirements and confirm the qualifications. The tests help you to confirm the internal assessments to determine whose qualifications the candidate is suitable for.

Onboarding and Integration

Onboarding is the final stage for hiring managers who have developed different recruiting strategies to allocate the best candidate for the company.

Developing an onboarding process

After the selection process of top candidates, you must have an onboarding plan for the shortlisted candidates.

Prepare their welcome kit, offer letter, and terms and conditions for their onboarding process.

Ensuring a smooth transition in the recruitment process

Before the candidate starts, it is important to provide complete information about the company, policies, procedures, and work culture, which can be done through an orientation program. Assign a buddy or mentor to assist the new hires in a smooth transition.

Integrating new hires into the company culture

Creating an inclusive environment helps new hires feel valued, welcomed, and informed. An effective onboarding process clarifies the company goals, culture, work structure, and exposure to different departments and their functional roles.

Evaluating and Improving the Recruitment Strategy

A recruitment strategy can help you onboard the best candidates for different job roles if planned and executed well.

Measuring the success of the strategy

Review the strategy that you have in place for hiring candidates.

Determine the success of the recruitment plan based on the time taken, recruitment budget, cost, and no. of qualified candidates shortlisted and onboarded after the selection process.

Gathering feedback from employees and candidates

Evaluate the overall experience of qualified candidates and employees during the hiring and boarding process. Talk about how they feel at the time of the interview and selection.

This feedback on new hires and the existing workforce will inform you about your approach towards recruitment strategies. It can give scope for improvement for future hiring needs and recruitment efforts.

Making continuous improvements in the hiring process

By continuously collecting and analysing data and making informed changes to the hiring process, you can achieve the hiring goals, reduce cost-per-hire, and improve the overall efficiency of the hiring process.

To make continuous improvements in the hiring process, you can invest in recruitment software and other technology, streamline selection processes, incorporate pre-employment assessments, and encourage collaboration between HR, recruitment teams, and hiring managers.

Conclusion

Encouragement to implement a recruitment strategy for hiring managers

The hiring process is the first step of starting a company or organisation. It takes lots of effort to attract and select the best talent as qualified candidates to fit in the job roles.

Implementing a recruitment strategy can help hiring managers achieve their hiring goals, reduce time-to-hire, attract top talent, and make informed hiring decisions.

Organisations can emphasise the benefits of a well-planned and executed recruitment process to encourage hiring managers to implement a recruitment strategy.

Finally, tracking and reporting on key metrics, such as time-to-hire, cost-per-hire, and employee satisfaction, can demonstrate the success of the recruitment strategy and provide opportunities for continuous improvement.

By emphasising the benefits, making it easy to implement, and tracking success, organisations can encourage hiring managers to adopt a recruitment strategy and achieve their hiring goals.