If someone asked you to describe and diagram, in detail, your company’s recruitment process, could you do it?
This doesn’t mean simply creating a job requisition, posting a job, reading resumes, interviewing and making offers. I’m talking about the entire process, including a comprehensive work force plan, understanding true costs per hire from different sources, planning a budget and expenditures, building the right recruiting team (internal and external), formulating corporate marketing and branding, creating a targeted recruiting strategy using the Internet, getting referrals, using print and third party recruiters, managing or implementing technologies, narrowing candidates quantitatively and qualitatively, and utilizing testing and assessment tools.
If you are not examining how you work with each of these items in your current process, you should be. Here are a few easy steps to get you started in creating your own personalized recruitment roadmap.
Self-evaluation
Ask yourself if your company is hiring and retaining the best people to ensure the growth and strength that the executive team, the stockholders and you expect.
Be honest. If you hesitate and answer maybe or no, then you need to understand why you are not hiring and retaining the best and the brightest.
Outline existing processes
Take about 30 minutes to write down the entire recruiting process for your company. Have everyone in your corporation who has a part in the recruiting effort go through this process as well. This should not be just for the human resources group but for hiring managers, legal, procurement, IT, marketing and the executive team.
Recruitment is paramount for the success of your organization, and too many companies take the process for granted. Decisions are made in other parts of the organization that can directly impact your recruiting process, allowing it to be award-winning or not worth doing at all. Companies that can truly say they have a team focused on recruiting will be successful regardless of what the economy and market throws at them.
Getting those different mindsets together to make an informed decision on the process, costs, technology and vendors will ensure a quality recruiting process.
Develop an extensive plan
Creating a work force plan, and updating it annually, with input from across the company, will help you budget and spend wisely. Do not skip this step. This is the foundation of improving your ROI when it comes to recruitment dollars spent.
As you begin to create your recruiting process, think about what you do today and look at how it flows (remember that process that you quickly wrote down in step two). Would a new recruiter to your company be able to look at the process as it stands and understand how it functions?
Fill in any holes or steps that might seem ambiguous or missing to an outside person. The process should include the person responsible for each phase and a timeline, from creating a job requisition to the acceptance of an offer.
Even with a well-thought-out and implemented recruitment process, there is always room for enhancement and often a need for justification for budget expenditures. This means knowing your true cost-per-hire and where you can afford to spend additional dollars on technology that will decrease your cost-per-hire. Jeff Dahltorp is director of marketing and business development for TruStar Solutions, which creates exceptional hiring strategies. He is a regular contributor to human resource industry publications such as HR.com, Electronic Recruiting Exchange and Online Recruiting Magazine. He has spoken at industry specific trade shows such as SHRM, IMRA, NACE and IHRIM on the topic of Internet recruiting practices. Reach him at [email protected] or (317) 813-0346.
