Finding and keeping skilled employees are the foundations that all businesses are built on. It’s cheaper to keep a current client happy rather than try to find a new one, and the same goes for your staff. But when the time does come to recruit a new team member, ensuring your recruitment processes are streamlined and working effectively will help you find the best talent and save money on the recruitment process.
So what exactly does an effective recruitment process look like? It’ll that help you find good candidates quickly and efficiently. It needs to be streamlined so each team member involved knows what they’re doing. And as the business owner, it’s your responsibility to ensure your team has all the resources, documents and information they need.
Here is the recruitment process pipeline I recommend:
1. Identify your needs
Before you even start searching for candidates and putting ads up, ensure you and your team fully understand what the purpose of this new team member’s role is. Did your team express they are at full capacity and need more hands on deck? Or is it because you are opening a new department or offering new services, and you need new skills in the team?
2. Create a recruitment plan
Determine where you will be advertising, who will be reviewing the resumes, scheduling interviews and deciding on the right candidate. Create a plan that is sent round to everyone involved. Include information about any trial tasks or assignments you will want your prospective candidates to complete and what these will involve.
3. Prepare the job description
This is where point 1 is especially important. You want your description to appeal to exactly who you’re looking for, and your team needs to know exactly who you’re looking for before you write the job description.
Job descriptions help communicate your organisations needs and expectations, as well as explain why your company is somewhere they might want to work. It’s essential to be as specific as possible.
4. Finding the best candidates
Top-tier candidates will likely have multiple options, so ensure you maintain timely communication and keep them updated on the process. Give them dates by which you’ll get back to them and promptly answer any questions they’ve sent through.
5. Conduct a phone screening
Once you have your eye on certain applicants, conduct an initial phone screening to narrow down the selection rather than jumping straight into offering interviews. This will save you a lot of time. Having a brief 15 minute call with a candidate before moving to the interview stage means you can clarify details about the role, nature, location and their availability before offering them a 1 hour interview.
6. The interview
After your phone screening, you’re ready to offer candidates an interview, either in person or online. The ideal time is to offer an interview within a week of phone screening, otherwise candidates may lose interest and move on their search to other applications they’ve made. As mentioned, it’s essential to keep the candidate informed about where in the recruitment process you are.
For the interview, be sure to allocate enough time so both parties can ask all their questions. You want to use this time as efficiently as possible.
7. Offering the job
Just because you offer a candidate the job doesn’t mean they’re going to accept. So ensure you’ve liked up your first and second choices. Also, as mentioned before, top-tier candidates are likely to have multiple choices to choose from, so be ready to negotiate salary and benefits.
8. Onboarding a new employee
Now that you’ve found your ideal candidate and they’ve accepted your offer, the real work begins. An effective onboarding process means your new employee will be ready to get stuck in more quickly.
The onboarding process shouldn’t simply focus on the new hire’s paperwork. It should also focus on explaining how your business works, the processes you follow, how your projects are managed, who their contacts are in different departments for different questions, and also making introductions with clients they’ll be communicating with. It’s good for new staff to have 1 main person they can go to for support, direction or questions when they’re starting. This is usually a team leader or manager, but it could be someone in HR, a buddy/mentor, or a colleague they’ll be working closely with in their new role.
