Recruitment is a mandatory practice every organization adopts to hire new employees. Effective recruitment is highly essential to save time, effort, and money. Moreover, efficacious recruitment along with a good company culture leads to longer retention of employees in a firm.
However, with the entire employment market going digital, making good hires has become relatively difficult. Many new practices and concerns have originated. For instance, candidate experience, earlier unknown to many, is the show-stealer now. Nowadays, candidates have found enormous ways to fool the recruitment team during tests and interviews.
Because of all these issues, it has become more significant to follow all the steps in the recruitment process sincerely to make the best recruitment. But what are the steps in the recruitment process? Before we jump to the steps in the recruitment process, first let's understand what is recruitment process or what an end-to-end process of recruitment is.
What is the recruitment process?
The end-to-end process of recruitment
The core function of an HR department is to make good and reliable recruitment.
"Recruitment process or an end-to-end process of recruitment, as the name suggests, is a selection process that involves everything from job posting to onboarding of a candidate. It is a process of attracting, screening, interviewing, and selecting a new employee for an open position in an organization."
Recruitment Team
The size of recruitment teams for an end-to-end process of recruitment can be both small and big. It depends on:
- The size of the organization
- Position for which recruitment is going on (usually bigger teams are allocated to hire for senior positions)
- Number of recruitments to be made
- The time frame in which the recruitment has to be done
- The urgency of the recruitment etc.
Usually, a recruitment team comprises of HRM department, the recruitment department, and some members of the department for which recruitment is being made.
Advantages of good recruiting
1. Saves cost
Good recruitment can save a lot of money for a firm. Being proactive in making new recruitment can help a firm save multifold amounts of money by reducing the cost-per-hire. The ERE recruiting intelligence states that the total cost of hiring a new employee is around 85% of the base salary of that employee.
Now every newly hired employee needs to undergo some training and according to the 2021 Training Industry Report, US companies spent around $92.3 billion on training in 2020-2021. Hence, effective recruitment is done by following every step in the end-to-end process of recruitment that can save your company huge sums of money.
2. Builds company reputation
Effective recruitment leads to longer retention which in turn builds your company's reputation. When your employees are happy with your organization, they tell their friends and family about it. This mouth-to-mouth publicity of your firm is far better than any other kind of advertisement.
Once your company develops a strong reputation, it starts attracting skilled manpower. And then you get to choose from the top-notch batch of the workforce. Therefore, good recruitment can help your company to build a strong reputation.
3. Saves time and efforts
The Society of Human Resource Management states that the average time to hire a new employee is 41 days. Now imagine the level of productivity all these employees from the hiring team could have produced if they were engaged in their work, rather than hiring. Moreover, an employee working for entire 41 days could have produced sophisticated outcomes.
Hence, good recruitment that leads to longer retention can help your company spend its time and efforts wisely.
4. Better quality of new hires
If you follow the steps in the recruitment process sincerely, then you can hire the most qualitative lot of workforce. During recruiting, you not only check a candidate's qualifications and experience, but also his intellect and creativity.
All these things can be judged correctly only when you follow the steps in the recruitment process properly. Thus, it is advisable to not skip recruitment steps if you want to make the most worthy recruitment.
5. Increase in employee productivity
Companies with a standardized onboarding process have witnessed 50% increased new-hire productivity. Therefore, the more standardized the hiring process will be, the better will be the recruitment and productivity.
How many steps are involved in the standard selection process?
There are 7 steps in the selection process. The first step is to identify and understand your needs. As for the execution, you need a strong team whose duty is to post a job ad and source the best talent. After screening and interviewing candidates, you need to recruit the best of them. The last step is onboarding and introduction to the team Therefore the answer to how many steps are involved in the standard selection process is 7 steps.
Steps in the recruitment process
1. Understanding and identifying your needs
The first step in steps in the recruitment process is to understand and identify your company's needs. If you misunderstand your needs, you will more likely to make a poor recruitment. Therefore it is important that:
- You figure out the gaps or open positions that you need to fill and make a list of them.
- You must check the employee input v/s output data regularly.
- Check whether any of your employees are being overloaded with work. If so, then you need to hire a new candidate. Otherwise, your employee will wear off and leave the job.
- Analyze employee performance to see whether you need a new employee or not.
- Keep track of your employees leaving the firm. Then stay proactive to fill up for that open position so that your productivity does not decrease.
You should be aware of what kind of job you are offering and what compensation you are offering to the candidates. The focal points to think over are:
- Size of your organization
- Salary range
- Your company culture
- Growth percentage you offer
2. Setting up a recruitment team
Once you are done identifying your needs, the next step in the recruitment process is to set up an efficient recruitment team. Your recruitment team will do the following things:
- The recruitment team will track the open job or job vacancies that are required to be filled.
- They will sit together to decide the qualities they expect in an ideal candidate. This is essential as you must know what want before you begin with the selection process.
- The next step is writing a good job description that attracts potential candidates. A good job description includes-
● Name and details of the company
● Job title
● Number of positions
● Salary structure
● Job location
● Roles and responsibilities
● Specific skills and qualities expected
● The benefits the company offers
Based on all the data collected, the recruitment team will create an outline of requirements during all steps in the recruitment process. This requirement list will ensure the smooth play of the entire selection process.
3. Posting job ads and sourcing the best talent
Once the recruitment team is done with writing a job description, the next step is to advertise it properly to source the best talent. You can attract the best talent in numerous ways including:
1. Search the web: Rather than sitting and waiting for the right candidate to come, you should get started by trying to find one. The Internet is full of people searching for jobs. Hunt them and then select those who match your list of expectations.
2. In-house recruiting: In-house recruitment refers to the process of recruiting or promoting existing candidates to a senior position. Such kind of recruiting is done within the firm to save time and effort.
3. Outsource recruiting: Outsource recruiting means you hire someone from outside without any referrals. Outsourcing is an exceptional way to recruit new employees if you don't have prior contacts. You can post your job ads on various websites. AllRemote allows you to post your job ad and recruit the best candidate within days, not weeks. You need to follow these simple steps:
4. Referrals- Another best way of recruiting is through referrals. You can circulate the information that your company needs a new employee for this position. Then the existing employees can refer someone they think will fit the vacant job. 45% of employees who are referred stay with your company for more than 4 years.
5. Social Media- There is hardly anyone who is not present on one or other social media apps. Ask your digital marketing team to market your job ad across social media platforms. This way you can speed up your recruitment process. According to Betterteam, around 94% of recruiters use social media to post their job ads.
6. Company website- Before posting anywhere else, make sure you post your job posting on your official website (possibly on a dedicated ‘Careers’ page). This will attract those candidates who want to work with you and who keep checking your company website often.
Pro tip: Such kinds of people are already impressed with your company. These candidates work out of their will and not because they have to.
7. Placement or job fairs: Another good way to recruit ideal candidates is by going to the placement drives of various universities. There you get the rawest talent who brings with them enthusiasm and new ideas.
4. Application Screening
Application screening is the process of reviewing and evaluating all job applications. It is the most challenging, time-consuming, and critical step as you need to analyze each resume carefully. You need to pay attention to the minutest details on the resume and cover letters of applicants.
After this round is completed, you can phone screen the applicants to weed out the incompatible job applicants.
5. Select and recruit top candidates
The next step in steps in the recruitment process is to select the candidates you want to hire. By now you will have an idea of what exactly you are looking for in an ideal candidate.
Once you have selected and picked your best candidates, then move ahead with the interview round. Make sure you intimate your selected candidates about the interview round in advance. Do inform the candidates about the mode of the interview. Various modes of interviews are:
1. One-way interview: In a one-way interview, the candidate has to answer the questions that flash in front of his screen. Such kinds of interviews are suitable during your initial steps in the recruitment process.
2. Video Interviews: Video interviews are web-based interviews where the interviewer and interviewee connect through a video platform for the interview process.
Also read: List of interview questions to ask a fresher
3. On-site interviews: On-site interviews are the traditional interview practices where the interviewee travels to the interviewer's place for the interview. Most of the time the interview is conducted at the recruiter’s office. But at other times, it can be conducted in a cafe or a workshop too.
6. Hiring the ideal candidate
By now you must have selected the ideal candidate you want to go ahead with. If you have offered a candidate the job, then do not expect they will take it for sure. Make sure you follow up with the candidate if you want to hire faster. 94% of the candidates who were contacted by their manager accepted the job offer faster. This is the time when you get everything out on the table including:
1. Terms of hiring
2. Salary being offered (be ready to negotiate)
3. Scheduled working hours
4. Potential deal breakers
7. Onboarding and introduction
The last step in steps in the recruitment process is the onboarding and introduction of the candidate. Once you have onboarded the candidate, then welcome and introduce him to the team. Remember, the introduction is a small but crucial step. We strongly recommend you to not skip it.
Once you are done with the entire selection process by successfully following all steps in the recruitment process, you will get a good candidate who will stay with you for a longer time.
