Тhе recruitment process is crucial for every organization, regardless of their industry or size. An effective recruitment process can help companies find and retain top talent. On the other hand, the wrong approach to recruitment can end up draining your time, efforts, and finances. 

In this article, we’ll be discussing how you can adopt a powerful recruitment strategy by breaking down it into practical steps, and how partnering with a remote recruitment firm can help you find better talent and close vacant job positions faster. 

‍

Why organizations need a strong recruitment strategy

A strong and well-planned recruitment strategy can help you filter the right candidates in a quicker manner while ensuring that you are able to impress and engage eligible candidates. 

The recruitment strategy that you adopt should be able to reflect your company’s culture and attract the right candidates while allowing you to seamlessly identify, recruit, and retain talent in minimum time and costs.

Without the right recruitment strategy and expertise, you’ll either end up hiring candidates who aren’t a good fit for your organization or you will hire the right candidates but won’t be able to retain them for a long time. 

That is why, a foolproof and strong recruitment strategy needs experienced recruiters who completely understand your company’s culture, hiring expectations, and the current market conditions. 

Steps to a foolproof recruitment process 

1 - Analyze your recruitment needs

Whether the job opening in your organization is for a new position or a recently vacated one, you need to have a clear idea of the recruitment requirements. Get feedback from your employees in order to figure out the talent gaps in your current team. Even if the position is newly vacated, you should still check if there are any new needs in terms of performance, ability, or skills. At the same time be mindful of the employees that are leaving the company. Thorough offboarding can help you figure out why most employees leave, which can in turn, help you retain talent in a better way. 

The factors that will invariably affect your recruitment process, include:
•   Size of the organization 
•   Corporate culture 
•   Growth rate of the organization
•   Current employment rate of the industry or country

2 - Create a thorough job description 

Now that you have a clear idea about the skills, experience, and knowledge required from the ideal candidate, it is time to clearly determine the vacant job position’s responsibilities. By preparing a comprehensive job description, you can help potential candidates understand your expectations. At the same time, it also helps recruiters during the screening, shortlisting, and interviewing process. 

The job description should be comprehensive and include the following: 
•   Job title 
•   Duties and responsibilities
•   Qualifications and skills
•   Location 
•   Benefits, compensation, and other perks.

3 - Select where to advertise your job 

Attracting the right talent and motivating them to apply for the job is one the most important parts of the recruitment process. You can either choose to advertise your job ad internally, externally, or both. 

Internal recruitment means filling the vacancy with an existing employee of the company. This can be in the form of a promotion or transfer. Hiring internally cuts down on the overall recruitment time and costs. Moreover, it also improves the morale of the employees and motivates them to perform better which in turn increases the talent retention rate of the company.

External recruitment refers to recruiting candidates through external sources. Companies usually go for external recruitment when they don’t have the required expertise or skills present internally. 

To get maximum number of applications through external sources, you can post your job advertisements on various platforms, including: 
•   Job portals 
•   Social networking platforms 
•   Career page on the company's official website
•   Job fairs

4 - Screen candidates

Now you need to compile the list of all the candidates that have applied for the job position, review their resumes, and shortlist them carefully. You can filter out the candidates based on their qualifications, previous work experience, certifications, skills, and personality, among other things.  

Finding and screening candidates is one of the biggest struggles you will face. If this process isn’t done carefully, good candidates might end up slipping through the cracks. 

According to a survey, over 46 percent of recruiters struggle to attract top talent and 52 percent of them think that the most challenging part of the hiring process is shortlisting candidates from a large pool of applicants.

Seek support from experienced recruiters

If your team does not have the expertise or the time to find the right candidates, it is better to outsource your recruitment requirements. 

Recruitment agencies can help you connect with the right candidates through remote hiring which can in turn speed up the entire hiring process, decrease the overall hiring costs, and allow you to focus on your core work responsibilities. 

It is also beneficial to work with a recruitment firm if your HR team is already busy handling internal matters of the company or you are planning to ramp up hiring. Working with a recruitment agency gives you access to all of their expertise and resources which directly leads to more qualified candidates for every job position. More importantly, you stay in control of all the important hiring decisions. 

5 - Interview shortlisted candidates

Depending on the availability and size of the hiring team, you can schedule telephonic or video interviews, since it is the quickest and most convenient way to screen candidates. 

Interviews are a great opportunity to leave lasting impressions on potential employees. While you assess the skills, knowledge, and experience of the candidates, you should also remember that interviews are a two-way process. During the interviews, candidates will also be assessing your company to see if it is the right fit for them or not. It is also important to show that you respect the candidates -- make sure that all the interviews are conducted in a prompt and professional manner.

6 - Evaluation and offer management

At the final stage of the recruitment process, you need to identify the right candidate for the job based on the interview stage and discuss salary details with them. It is always best to send an informal offer letter to the selected candidate while you prepare a formal offer letter since the process can take some time and you wouldn’t want to leave the candidate hanging. 

Once the candidate accepts the offer, make sure to send rejection letters to other candidates along with your honest feedback. The rejected candidates might not be the right fit for the current job position, but they may want to apply for other positions in the future and you want to make sure that you leave a good impression on them.

Best practices to improve recruitment

1 - Make the application process seamless to decrease abandonment rates 

One of the biggest undetected leaks in the recruitment process is application abandonment and yet, not many organizations pay attention to it. In fact, according to a report, abandonment rates can be as high as 95 percent in some cases. 

That is why, recruiters need to ensure that the entire application process is as seamless as possible for interested candidates. At the same time, it shouldn’t take more than 5-10 minutes for the candidates to review the job profile and apply for it.

2 - Monitor the job ads posted on different websites

Just posting your job description on different websites and hoping for all the qualified candidates to apply for the job will never work. You need to optimize your job ads to ensure it appears on the top of all the search results for maximum engagement. After all, if your job post isn’t showing up in front of qualified candidates, then they won’t ever know there was a job opening perfect for their profile and skills. 

You should constantly monitor job ads on different websites and optimize the ads by using relevant keywords that the candidates often use to search for similar job positions. If a job ad has considerably lower views than the others, then make sure you analyze and check for any issues.

3 - Encourage candidates to ask questions about the company

Candidates aren’t the only ones being tested during the interview process. Top candidates also use this opportunity to ask important company questions in order to determine if it is a place that they would even want to work at. 

That is why, hiring managers should encourage candidates to ask questions and be ready to answer any doubts or queries that they may have about the company or its work culture as a whole.

4 - Outsourcing your remote hiring needs 

Outsourcing your hiring needs to a recruitment firm directly leads to better quality of hires. The recruiters spend all of their time, energy, and resources into finding the right talent for your organization. They also have an active talent pool and shortlisted candidates which leads to reduced time to hire. 

The biggest advantage of outsourcing recruitment is scalability. If your company is opening a new department or expanding, it is more cost efficient to hire a recruitment firm for your temporary hiring needs instead of expanding your HR department as that would be more expensive and time-consuming. Recruitment firms are flexible and they can accommodate your seasonal hiring needs in a more cost effective manner. 

Final words 

A streamlined and effective recruitment process is only possible when your HR team is able to handle the workload and collaborate with other departments seamlessly. If your HR team is already too busy handling employee management, it is best to seek the help of experts and outsource your hiring needs to a recruitment firm that knows what they are doing.

Make it in Ukraine helps you find top creative and technical teams in Ukraine by matching your unique needs with the skills of the candidates. The company has an incredible talent pool of pre-vetted teams and it takes them less than 3 days to help you find the right team for your organization. Reach out to Make it in Ukraine today to know how they can help with your talent needs.