“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

Time and again, recruitment gurus have stressed the need to have a hiring process that is inclusive, unbiased, and that focuses on ensuring a potential candidate fits right within the company’s culture.

But how do you measure the effectiveness of a process like this? Well, two factors determine its success or failure—one is a new hire’s progress at a company while the other is their retention rate. To be more elementary about it, recruitment is all about finding good talent and building good teams.

A company’s growth relies heavily on its employees. Thus, having a strong recruitment process is a must. Though access to the best technology is not a limitation anymore, working your way through the competition and changing candidate demands requires some necessary tweaks. The journey of an applicant to hire consists of several critical stages, including — awareness, application, assessment, analysis, and finally acquisition.

Awareness – Creating the right channels for recruitment marketing 

Most modern recruiters follow the mantra mentioned above. But, sometimes attracting the right hires relies heavily upon the awareness stage. It is key to ensuring that candidates, who are interested in applying for your jobs, learn enough about your company and its culture and then, hopefully, apply for the job.

But how do you create awareness? Well, start by exploring media that candidates heavily rely upon, and then publish your job openings where they matter the most—niche job boards, social media networks, professional networks, mobile applications, communities, and passive talent pools, among others.

Application process – Building a diverse and inclusive talent pipeline

Switch to an applicant tracking software (ATS) that helps manage multiple job postings from a single interface. Make sure there are web forms across job boards and aggregators for candidates to find a job and apply or even just send a query.

Recruiters must also bank on a centralized vendor portal where third-party recruitment agencies or vendors can contribute candidate profiles for certain job openings. This creates a talent ecosystem where the right candidates find the right jobs, which ultimately creates a win-win for all stakeholders.

Analysis – Candidate relationship management (CRM)

Having a hiring process that can ace CRM is a definite winner in today’s market. Recruiters must ensure that candidates are kept engaged and informed throughout the interview process. They must be able to Interact with them directly on their social profiles and schedule automated emails to engage them and continuously communicate any valuable information going further, whether they are a prospect or not.

Assess – Evaluate both skills and personality

Experts from the recruitment industry have insisted that modern recruiters should evolve into “skill hunters” rather than simply job board dependents. But is it enough? Well, longer employee retention can be guaranteed only when a candidate resonates with the company’s vision and identifies their career growth within the organization. No, analysis limited to only skillsets is no more enough.

Acquisition – Provide value, not just money

While making a switch in their jobs, candidates expect more from a company. They expect more from their recruiters as well. It has become important that recruiters dedicate time to research a company’s work atmosphere, employee benefits, ongoing education, provision for parallel work, study opportunities, and travel potential.

Sure, it takes time to adapt to the constantly changing talent needs and the influence of technology on it, but if your strategy is futuristic and your fundamentals are on point, you know that the right candidates will make their way to you.

Recruiting is hard and involves mastering the art of placing the right candidates with the right company. But you know what makes the whole process worthwhile? The satisfaction of building a great team. 

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This is the second post in our special series focusing on hiring lessons essential for every recruiter. In the first post, we broke down the basics of effective recruitment. Stay tuned for our third post, which will elaborate on the secret ingredient of recruitment. We have a huge announcement coming up, and we would love to keep you notified. Learn more.