10 Critical Steps to an Effective Recruitment Process

Bringing someone new into your company’s team can be both exciting and daunting.

Finding the right fit can help your organization thrive in ways you never expected. Settling for the wrong fit, on the other hand, can have disastrous results that can be costly and leave both you and the new employee dissatisfied.

However, there are ways to minimize this risk. An effective recruitment process ensures you control everything from beginning to end, from job posting to interviewing and onboarding. The result could have a substantial impact on your hiring outcomes.

Read on for our suggested ten-step process to help you through the recruitment process and onto the task of successful team building on the other side.

1. Identify the Company’s Needs

Before you can begin searching for candidates, you first have to determine the company’s needs.

Perhaps someone with critical job duties got promoted or left for personal reasons. Or maybe your company is going through a period of well-deserved growth that requires some shifting of responsibilities.

Regardless of why you are in a position to bring someone new onto your team, the fact of the matter is there’s a role that you need to fill. It’s up to your company leadership and HR team to define what that is.

Only when your hiring team has fully defined these needs can the search for the right candidate begin.

2. Prepare the Job Description

Once there’s a clear organizational sense of what duties are necessary for the role, you can begin the process of crafting a job description.

This stage will require reflection on not only what the role entails but who you envision doing it. In other words, how do the needs identified translate into realistic expectations from your future applicant pool?

In addition to the role’s specific duties, you’ll also need to type up a candidate profile. You’ll need to prepare a list of the desired experience and skill set that would make a new hire successful.

Do some brainstorming on what you want from an ideal candidate. Ask your HR team questions such as what skills and talents would be desirable for the office environment.

3. Cultivate the Company Pitch

The recruitment process is just as much about future candidates feeling comfortable with choosing your company as your company feeling comfortable with them.

You’ll want to do some work to make your company sound as appealing as possible so that you can attract the best applicant pool and make people want to work for you.

To do so, you should define your company’s brand and its mission and value statements. If you have these available on a website, review them carefully. You might find they need some updating, and you wouldn’t want to lose an exciting prospective hire based on outdated website pages.

Additionally, you should review all of your internal policies and HR practices and audit for anything you think might need improvement. For instance, assess the grievance if the previous employee brought up in the exit interview that they left because of conflict with paid-time-off policies.

4. Create a Recruitment Plan

Finally, you’re at the stage when you can create your recruitment plan. Here, you’ll want to consider your sources for hiring, how much recruitment you actually need, and what your system will be for ranking candidates.

Hiring sources can include both filtering out the candidate pool and where you post job openings. Are you trying to hire from any specific demographic or group? Will you post this only on the company career page or make it available through third-party job listing directories?

The extent to which you need recruitment should also be a consideration. Are you looking to bring someone new in from the outside or open to recruiting internally?

Finally, a candidate ranking system is vital to save time and money. This step reduces the likelihood of turnover, which depending on the industry could be costly. A standardized vetting process also reduces implicit biases that could prevent you from recruiting a superb candidate.

5. Craft Your Job Posting Materials

To reach the most expansive applicant pool possible, you’ll want to make sure the job posting is attractive to potential candidates.

Use clear, concise, professional language and, if relevant, graphics that represent your organization’s brand and expectations for the job position. If you’ve used templates in the past, review them to ensure they are up-to-date and relevant for the specific role.

Finally, edit these materials carefully. Descriptions with excessive typos or unclear language may reflect on the company’s professionalism and be a turnoff to prospective applicants.

6. Start Searching and Sorting

Once the posts are out there, you’ll have the task of managing and sorting all the incoming applications.
If the number of applications coming in is more than you think your HR team can handle, consider investing in a tracking system that can assist. You don’t want to waste time sorting through hundreds of resumes from unqualified candidates.

There are plenty of technological solutions that make the whole application filtering process much more manageable. They let you use metrics like keyword filters on online job search engines to streamline this process.

7. Screening Process

This step might come before interviewing or after, depending on your process.

Screening entails cutting down the pool of applicants to those who are qualified.

There are a few ways to go about your screening process, and you can choose to do as many of them as you like. Some options available for screening are conducting brief phone interviews, calling references, and conducting background and employment verification checks.

Throughout all of these non-mutually exclusive steps, refer back to your original recruitment plan to ensure that you stay on track with what your company needs most from a candidate.

8. Interview Candidates

Now for the big part — getting to know the candidates beyond their resumes.

Some organizations opt for a panel interview or task assessment, while others choose to keep it conversational. How you want to go about your interviews is really up to preference, as long as it is consistent with company expectations and any legal requirements involved.

Having a list of interview questions your HR team drafts ahead of time and commits to asking everyone will help keep the meeting on track, professional and productive.

Taking thorough notes throughout the interview is also a good idea so that the team has something concrete to refer back to when making their decisions.

9. Job Offer Negotiation

You’ve identified a preferred candidate at this stage in the recruitment process and are ready to extend an offer. Now, you have to make sure they accept.

Once again, it’s important to reiterate that recruitment is actually about making a good match between employer and future employee. A huge factor in the labor force match-making process is the offer on the table.

To make your company attractive to the candidate you’ve chosen, you’ll want to offer competitive wages and benefits for the position you’re filling.

Approach the offer stage of recruitment with flexibility and openness to negotiation. As long as your team and the candidate communicate about your respective expectations, everyone should come out on the other side pleased.

10. Onboarding and Training

The recruitment process doesn’t stop just because you’ve hired the right candidate. Now, you’ll need to make a concerted effort to retain them.

Ensuring that your company culture is hospitable and non-discriminatory should be one of HR’s ongoing responsibilities, not just when bringing in new hires.

However, you can take steps in the early stages of their employment to ease the transition significantly.

First, you can develop clearcut onboarding procedures and expectations—brief your managers ahead of time on how they should handle all aspects of training. Also, you can make sure that the recruit has a clear understanding of the onboarding process, including the adjustment period and various expectations, so that there are no big, unpleasant surprises.

Keep it in mind that your new hire will feel like staying with the company if they receive all the tools they need to feel like they can comfortably succeed.

Conclusion

The job recruitment process is extensive, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Having a solid plan in place and well-defined company needs and values will help keep your HR team on track while sifting through applicants.

When it comes to screening applicants from a large pool, ScoutLogic can help. We offer employment background checks, education and pre-employment verification, and much more. We know that an extra set of hands can mean the difference between finding the perfect candidate and settling for the wrong fit instead.

Get in touch with ScoutLogic for all your background check and screening needs. Take the extra step to find a recruit who will help your company grow.

David Garcia

David Garcia, co-founder and CEO of Scout Logic, is an industry leader in the bulk background check world. With his strategic acumen and expertise in the HR sphere, specifically in hiring, recruiting, legal compliance, background checks, and resume screening, he’s an invaluable asset and consultant.

David's counsel extends across the boards of ScoutLogic, YipitData, and Supplier.io, drawing from his impactful stints on the boards of Infutor and Avetta. With an extensive 25-year journey, he champions unparalleled B2B commercial leadership within data & analytics, significantly shaping the HR landscape.