Recruitment Process | 8 Steps for Effective Recruitment

Do you remember the rolodex? It’s a desktop accessory which looks like a circular file of cards on which people’s names and addresses were maintained. Well, believe it or not, recruiters used to use them during the recruitment process. This is also back when filing cabinets were a thing. However, that was a long time ago. Today, technology, analytics, and employee-centricity has changed the game for recruitment.

This quick recruitment process guide aims to dig into what makes it effective, how AI is leading the charge in recruitment automation, and how even you can get started at choosing a Recruitment Management System.

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What is the recruitment process in HR?

Human Resources is the function of people management in an organization. They are responsible for facilitating the primary goals of an organization, and they perform that function by administering their role effectively - by focusing on the growth of the employees as the company’s most critical asset.

The first step towards building an organization’s human capital? Recruitment. The ultimate goal for the recruitment process in HR is to hire the best candidates and reduce time to hire with a minimal budget.

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What makes for an effective recruitment and selection process?

The recruitment process is unique to each organization. It includes all the steps that are required to attract, select and hire a new employee. A refined recruitment and selection process enables you to find qualified candidates quickly and efficiently, and ensures a pleasant experience for both candidates and recruitment teams.

In order to establish an effective recruitment and selection process, it needs to be executed with care and dedication. Ensuring a streamlined process requires constant evaluation.

Let this recruitment process guide take you through the key elements that makes the whole thing a systematic affair:

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1. Automation

Automating the recruitment process does a world of favour in saving administrative time. The ROI of ATS enables recruitment teams to effectively manage the various stages in the recruitment process.

By using automation to streamline the process from recruiting to onboarding, recruiters save a significant amount of time and energy from completing repetitive tasks, and instead direct the energy towards nurturing their relationships with the potential hires.

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Also Read: The Truth About Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS)

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2. Decisions driven by data

Data analytics majorly drives business decisions, and the same goes for hiring. Recruitment decisions, powered by intelligent, AI-driven analytics can enable recruiter to see how effective their recruiter sourcing channels are, how many people were interviewed, what stage of the interview cycle they will be at, and avoid hiring biases.

Gleaning insights from each recruitment cycle helps recruiters to improve their processes in the next cycle.

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3. The power of employee referrals

Recruiting the most qualified candidates becomes an organisation-wide affair when employees make an effort to contribute. By creating an employee referral program, organizations can involve employees in the recruitment process.

Establishing a system of reward for successful referrals will motivate employees to spread the word about job openings, and will likely lead to more qualified pool of job applicants.

How is artificial intelligence changing the recruitment process?

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Artificial intelligence in recruitment allows recruiters to adopt a candidate-first approach in the hiring process. With AI-powered recruitment tools, recruiters can reduce bias in hire, analyse large sets of talent data, communicate with applicants consistently, give recruiters deep insights to help them make hiring decisions. The next topic of discussion in this recruitment process guide is how AI is transforming it into a hassle-free venture:

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1. Resume and candidate screening

AI in recruitment offers intelligent candidate screening to parse candidate resumes, thus helping recruiters to save time by finding suitable talent quickly. Additionally, more advances AI software can not only screen resumes, but also analyse candidate’s online presence to give a wider scope of the candidate’s history and capabilities. This information helps ensure the quality of hire.

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2. Candidate engagement

AI-driven recruitment processes can also help to foster candidate engagement. With integrated chatbots, interviewers can provide immediate updates to candidate enquiries and assistance int he application process, schedule interviews, and provide feedback on the hiring status or even if a candidate is not selected for the open role.

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3. Targeting and outreach

Recruitment through AI can help companies refine their candidate searches. They enable recruiters to target their desired talent attributes and narrow down to specific titles. Using AI in the recruitment and selection process can help to discover, reach, and engage with a focus on finding the best talent. For example, top recruiters are using email outreach software to reach out to targeted candidates.

By eliminating well-known recruitment pain points, AI brings the human back into recruitment.

Also Read: Top recruiting resources to help you hire better in 2023

Types of Recruitment Process

1. Internal Recruitment: Hiring from within the organization. This includes promotions, transfers, and reassignments.

2. External Recruitment: Hiring candidates from outside the organization. Methods include job advertisements, employment agencies, campus recruitment, and job fairs.

3.Online Recruitment: Using internet-based tools like job boards, company websites, and social media to attract candidates.

4. Employee Referrals: Encouraging current employees to refer potential candidates.

5. Outsourcing Recruitment: Hiring third-party recruitment agencies to handle the recruitment process.

8 Steps in an effective recruitment process:

Now that you understand the role of automation and AI in the grand scheme of recruiting, it's time to get familiar with the steps in an effective recruitment cycle that are key to its success:

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1. Identifying the hiring need

The first step is understanding your hiring need. The requirements can depend upon whether the job opening is newly formed or recently vacated. After identifying the type of vacancy, you can go on to create an ideal candidate persona based on your hiring needs.

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2. Creating a recruitment plan

The next step is to craft a recruitment plan according to the new job posting. Set up a strong recruitment team, strategize ways to propagate the job opening, and determine who will be reviewing, scheduling and deciding on the right candidate.

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3. Sourcing candidates

It is essential that the sourcing strategy includes both active and passive candidates. You can source active candidates by posting the opening on job boards, and social media channels. Using an ATS, recruiters can use keywords and filters to locate qualified passive candidates and reach out to them.

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4. Screening

ATS-integrated resume parsers can quickly scan through all the resumes and shortlist the most qualified candidates. You can then conduct a phone screening of the shortlisted candidates to make sure they're worth interviewing in person.

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5. Interviewing

Interviews should be conducted soon after a phone screening. If the process stretches too long, the candidate might lose interest. Along with the interviews, you may also administer a series of skill-based assessments to determine a candidate's aptitude for the role.

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6. Selecting the right fit

When it comes to selecting the right fit during the recruitment process, it is important to keep the prospect in the loop about where they are in the stages of the recruitment process and how long it will take to get back with a decision. Once the right candidate has been chosen, the next step is to conduct background and reference checks.

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7. Extending an offer

At this stage of the recruitment process steps, the recruiter reaches out to the selected candidate and extend an offer employment.

This is a step which needs a lot of care, since an offer of employment doesn’t guarantee an acceptance. The offer letter should be well structured, should define the contract length, working hours, compensation, benefits, notice period and other important details of employment.

Apart from that, the hiring manager or prospective manager can make the job offer even more desirable by reaching out to the candidate, because doing so may encourage them to accept the offer faster.

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8. Onboarding the new employee

The candidate has signed the contract and is officially an employee of the company! Now is when the work begins. The onboarding process for the new hire has to be strategically laid out to ensure a positive experience. The new hire needs to easily dive into their new role and become productive.

The recruiter or manager must also ensure the completion of all necessary paperwork, equip the new hire with the tools they need for the new role, acquaint them to the company’s culture, and overall guarantee a good start and the successful completion of the recruitment process, even during virtual hiring.

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4 Benefits of an effective hiring process

As we have discussed earlier in this recruitment process guide, an effective process helps organizations reduce hiring costs, the biases associated with hiring, and overcome top recruiting challenges. Beyond cost and speed, the benefits of an effective hiring process can be witnessed in these crucial ways:

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1. The ability to analyse current hiring processes

Companies need to practice how to optimize the recruitment process for efficiency religiously. With a tech-driven recruitment system, the organization can leverage the power of recruitment metrics to track the company’s hiring patterns, time to hire, and detect obstacles within the process in real time especially in hybrid recruiting; and consequently drive improvements.

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2. Improve quality of candidates

By integrating an employee referral system, effectively optimizing sourcing channels, or pre-screening resumes with an integrated resume parser, tech-enabled recruitment processes can enable hiring managers to get a 360-view of the candidate. It’s time-saving, cost-effective, and helps get to the right hire quickly.

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3. Create employer brand awareness

The power of the employer brand is never to be underestimated when attempting to attract top talent. An ATS not only offers a consistent recruit-to-hire solution, but also provides feedback to candidates which further helps in bolstering the employer brand among new hires and a potential pool of employees. In addition, it can also provide insights into how to improve the organisation’s employer brand.

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4. Make the recruitment process scalable

Without a shadow of doubt, the recruitment process can be the most tiresome process of human resource management. Tech-driven practices focuses on how to optimize the recruitment methods to make them flexible, scalable, and proactive to fulfil the company’s hiring needs. A flexible solution is especially valuable for rapidly growing organizations, for the scalability provided by these processes are critical to help them meet growth targets.

Also Read: Top 10 recruitment thought leaders to follow in 2023

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Liked this recruitment process guide and can't wait to build one?

Organizations have come a long way from rolodexes, filing cabinets and using gut feeling in hiring. And as evidenced from the information above, a lot of effort goes into creating a successful and effective recruitment methods. Would you like a hand in creating one?

peopleHum's recruitment management system helps growing organizations in building effective recruitment processes. Our platform is built to streamline the lengthy recruitment processes, enhance your employer brand awareness, and help you find the best hires in record time.

We hope you gained a lot of relevant information from this recruitment process guide. Do you want a hand in building an effective one??

Then book a free demo today!

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FAQ's

What is the first step in the recruitment and selection process?

‍ The first step is identifying the need for a new employee. This means figuring out which job role needs to be filled and what specific skills and qualifications are required.

What are the methods of the recruitment process?

‍The recruitment process can involve internal recruitment, where current employees are moved to new roles, or external recruitment, where new candidates are found through job ads, recruitment agencies, and online job sites.

What is the recruitment cycle?

‍The recruitment cycle is the full process of hiring new employees. It starts with identifying the need for a new hire, then includes steps like advertising the job, screening applicants, interviewing candidates, selecting the best one, and onboarding the new employee.

What are the three most important recruitment principles?

‍The three key principles are fairness, transparency, and efficiency. Fairness means treating all candidates equally, transparency involves being open and clear about the process, and efficiency is about hiring the best candidates quickly.

What are the main steps in the system selection process?

‍The main steps are identifying the need for a new system, defining what the system must do, researching and comparing options, choosing the best system, and then implementing and testing it to ensure it works as expected.

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