How to create a Recruitment Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide
What is a recruitment strategy?
A hiring strategy can help you streamline your efforts from a candidate’s first encounter to a signed contract. It is a scrupulous action plan to recognize, engage, and hire high-quality candidates successfully. The strategy is developed with hiring objectives and company goals in mind.
An in-house HR manager or an outside recruitment agency can execute a recruitment strategy. This plan serves as a blueprint. A clear and actionable process is followed irrespective of who is hiring for your company.
How to develop a recruitment strategy?
A hiring plan is indispensable & it clarifies company needs.
With a hiring plan, you will have a clear sense of whether you need to hire (or not), the candidate you are looking for specifically, and whether the “who” already exists in your organisation. The right profile may already be in your company, don’t skip on looking into your own applicant pool.
So, how does a company formulate a practical, intelligent, impactful recruitment plan?
A detailed 10-step guide to hiring successfully -
Step 1 – Assess existing company strategies
Start by reviewing all existing organisational strategies that influence recruiting, such as your business strategy, current recruiting strategy, and other departmental strategies.
Analyse what is working. Is there room for improvement? Are good candidates slipping through the cracks due to inefficiencies? What is your employee turnover rate? If it’s high, examine why.
Talk to your employees, especially the newly hired ones who have the hiring experience fresh on their minds. What are your KPIs and benchmarks? Do a skill gap analysis. Taking a close look at where you stand will help you build from there.
Step 2 – Define your recruitment needs
A recruit may be necessary if you:
- have faced the temporary or permanent departure of an employee
- plan new objectives for the company
- experience substantial growth of your business
- a sudden increase in the workload
This need must be budgeted, as it involves costs, including mobilising the people involved in the process, the integration and training of the recruit, the new salary to be paid, etc.
Step 3 – Define the role & the candidate profile
Analyse precisely the needs of your department or company to guide your search better.
- What technical skills are essential?
- Consider the soft skills that will make a candidate stand out from the pack
- What competencies are critical & what qualities will make your team stronger?
- What training or other professional experience is ideal for the position?
- The level of experience in the field required
- Is it a long-term contract?
- Is it an internship or a student placement?
- Do you need temporary employment for a short-term project?
Once you know the skills, knowledge, and experience gaps to fill, define the job role, responsibilities, and duties.
A complete job description helps you know what to look for in prospective candidates. It also serves as a checklist for candidates to determine if they are suitable for the role – which means relevant candidates are likely to apply.
Before writing the job description, go the extra mile & create a candidate persona. Like a buyer persona, the job candidate persona portrays an ideal candidate for the position you are hiring.
And it helps you –
- Be more inclusive & diverse
- Write more relevant job descriptions, application forms, emails, training material, etc.
- Identify the best-recruiting channels
- Create high-quality & personalised content to attract suitable candidates
- Understand the candidate requirements of your stakeholders
- Update & reuse in the future
Step 4 – Write & share the job advert
Writing the advert:
Use the profile description as a starting point to write your job posting, and ensure you include all the vital information:
- Job title & company overview
- Roles & responsibilities
- Necessary qualifications, skills, experience
- Compensation, benefits, and perks
- A clear CTA
Ensure you eliminate any discriminatory criteria & make it inclusive. Be mindful of your internal bias when writing your ad. Diverse teams perform better. Give all applicants an equal, unbiased opportunity to showcase themselves. This ensures you get the best talent from all walks of life.
You should:
- think about the tone to adopt
- be clear & provide the necessary information
- insert essential keywords
It is crucial to take care of your image or employer brand to attract talent.
Share the advert:
Either you circulate your ad internally or outside destinations by choosing among multiple possibilities:
- multi-posting on the web, through channels such as job sites, job boards, social networks, etc.
- avail assistance from recruitment agencies or temp agencies.
- employee referrals & peer-to-peer network
Step 5 – Screen & shortlist applicants
Analyse the applications based on the job description, the resumé, cover letter, or other determining material. Check the references, if any.
Determine the criteria for evaluation beforehand. Filter the applications using step 3 as the checklist.
Then choose the most qualified individuals and move them further for the interview process. Use an Application Tracking software for easy candidate data management & tracking of their progress through the recruitment process.
And in case you come across profiles that didn’t make the cut, but you see the potential for a future opportunity, keep them bookmarked in your talent directory. They will be easy to reach next time a role opens up, significantly reducing your search time.
Step 6 – Assessment & Interview
Now is the time to make a good impression as an employer. Interviewing is a skill and assuming someone is capable of interviewing is flawed. Not training your interviewers to conduct effective interviews can be damaging.
Remember that your interviewers represent your company just like a spokesperson. The character they portray and how they treat the candidates during an interview will reflect company culture and affect your employer brand and reputation.
Create the most relevant interview/testing path for the position you want to fill. Leverage the information you gathered about candidates from pre-employment personality screening and prepare compelling interview questions. This way, you will avoid asking template interview questions and get an authentic glimpse of the candidate and whether they’re suitable for your enterprise. This leads to faster and more confident final hiring decisions.
Being flexible and showing a willingness to accommodate their schedule is a great plus point for you.
Step 7 – Candidate selection & onboarding
Now you’re at the pointy end of the process – officially offering your preferred candidate the position & closing the open role. Unsuccessful applicants can appreciate a personalised response & will count as part of the positive candidate experience.
Welcoming and integrating your new employee is an integral part of the recruitment process and must be considered in advance. A thorough onboarding process will transition your hire from candidate to employee. Provide necessary resources & training to help them understand their responsibilities, feel comfortable and gain the tools & knowledge to succeed in their new role.
Step 8 – Review & update your strategy timely
The final stage of the recruitment plan is to analyse the effectiveness of your methods. By closely monitoring the process, you can determine your satisfaction with the candidates you recruited, the cost-effectiveness of the recruiting plan, and ways it can be improved.
Your recruiting plan should be a living document that reflects the advances and growth your company makes. As your company scales, improve your recruitment strategies to meet increased hiring needs. Regularly evaluate the effectiveness and relevancy of your company’s recruiting plan and document all updates.
Step 9 – The extra measures
Some tips to optimise your process, both in terms of quality and speed:
- Work on your employer brand: highlight your company’s culture, values, and mission by building an engaging website & media presence that reflects them.
- Having a well-crafted careers page on the company website is non-negotiable. It’s an essential element of your talent acquisition strategy and acts as your own personal job board without the subscription fee.
- Opt for proactive hiring instead of reactive hiring. Promptly fill your pipeline for rainy days. Establish meaningful connections with passive candidates, and your company will likely be the first they will consider when it’s time to change jobs.
Step 10 – Outside collaboration
Developing & following a recruitment strategy for every hire is a time-consuming endeavour. You can outsource your hiring process to a recruitment agency for they are the experts in this field. Freeing up your time to focus on what you do best, run your company.
The future job market could be different from what it is now; it is their job to keep up with changing industry trends, innovations, and techniques in the recruitment arena.
In addition to having market intelligence, they understand your complete needs, company goals, and culture to attract, identify, and screen talents that contribute to your business success.
Leave the tedious exercise of hiring to the experts. Task your HR managers to find you the best agency today.
Final thoughts
Even if you follow this guide to the T, it still begs whether people even want to work for your company. It’s always about finding the right employee, but what makes you the right employer? A potent recruitment strategy involves various other calculated decisions that you must consider. Read all about it here.
But remember, a recruitment strategy is not one-size-fits-all. Hiring takes time, and quality candidates are scarce. If your time is better spent building your business, contact the experts at Anzy Global to take control of the hiring process and find the talents that work best for your company.
