What Does the Recruitment Process Really Look Like?
Recruiting talent is one of the most exciting aspects of leadership. But it can also be the most intimidating. Whether you’re an entrepreneur expanding your operation for the first time or a seasoned leader looking to bolster your hiring practices, recruiting is a complex process with impactful results. Hire the right person and everything from your company culture to your bottom line improves. Bringing the wrong person aboard, on the other hand, can lead to disaster.
The Recruitment Process: Step by Step
It’s vital to iron out your recruitment process before you start posting job ads and interviewing talent. If you don’t know where to start, start here! With an organized, intentional hiring process in place, expanding your team becomes an exciting endeavor instead of an uphill battle.
Determine Your Needs
Your very first step — don’t do anything before you do this — is to determine your needs. If you have hazy ideas about what the team is missing, no candidate will fit the bill. Clarity is the key to finding a good employee and ensuring they have a positive experience at your organization. Sit down and do some deep thinking. Even better, involve the team, as they’re the ones with on-the-ground insight about the needs of your company. Do you need a full-time salaried employee? A part-time hourly assistant? Maybe your needs could be fulfilled through a freelancer or a consultant. Consider these choices as well as the potential candidate’s roles and responsibilities before moving on to the next step.
Write a Stellar Job Description
Once you’ve determined your needs, it’s time to craft a stellar job description. Remember that this description is your first impression on potential candidates — they’re assessing your company as much as you’ll be assessing them. Engage them, and speak to your company culture, mission, and values (huge factors for job-seeking millennials. I suggest avoiding overly strict requirements, which can weed out great candidates, and being clear about what you offer, including salary range and benefits.
Consider Your Current Talent
You know what you need and you’ve clarified everything in writing. Now stop for a moment. Instead of heading straight for the job boards, take some time to consider your current talent pool. Promoting from within has many benefits, including reducing turnover at your company, building trust, and saving on recruitment costs. Think long and hard about your team members, and share your job description among the leaders at your company to see if any of their people are a good fit. You can even circulate the description company-wide, though this may attract a lot of outside recommendations.
Post Your Job Ad
If you’ve ruled out your current people, it’s time to post your job description online. This step is pretty straightforward. Just be sure to find the right balance between posting enough and over posting, which can lead to an influx of resumes and tons of wasted time. My solution for this is posting on a select few high-quality boards, such as LinkedIn, WeWorkRemotely, and ZipRecruiter. The upfront costs are a worthy investment for a manageable number of talented candidates.
Initial Assessments and Interviews
The resumes will start pouring in, and it’s time to start narrowing them down for an initial phone interview. Unless you’re a solo entrepreneur just getting started, I recommend delegating this task to someone else — HR, your assistant, or a team lead you trust. Reviewing resumes and conducting phone interviews is usually more about verifying the tangible qualities that make a great candidate. The intangible qualities like culture fit, passion, and values, which are harder to assess and more impactful on your company in the long run, are where it gets tricky. You can step in at that point. Delegating reduces your hiring process timeline, as leaders are often too busy to put in the necessary hours to filter through every candidate.
Official Interviews
Once you (or your delegatee) have narrowed down your initial round of candidates, it’s time to start conducting official interviews. This is the most important step in the hiring process. An interview is your time to assess candidates as human beings, first and foremost. Discuss the ins and outs of the job, by all means. But don’t stop there. Take your discussion deeper — their passions and values, what energizes them, their thoughts on your company’s mission, and beyond. Get to the heart of their capacity for fulfillment to truly understand how they’ll adapt to your team.
Make the Offer — and Negotiate
When you’ve found the ideal candidate, the recruitment process is nearly over. All that’s left is making an offer and working through negotiations. Make sure your entire benefits package, including healthcare, bonuses, and other perks, are clearly outlined. And, remember that top talent is worth investing in, so never lowball or backtrack on your initial budget for a position.
Best Practices for the Recruitment Process
As you follow the above steps, there are a few best practices to keep in mind. Remember, the hiring process can be a huge headache for candidates, and if you’re going to attract the right people, you should keep their needs in mind.
Respect Their Time
As I said before, the system goes both ways. The candidates are interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them, so be sure to respect their time and efforts. Prepare for interviews beforehand. Show up on time, and end on time. Be clear about your needs and offers up front, and never string someone along.
Strive for Diversity
A diverse company is a more innovative and successful company. Therefore, put extra effort into hiring practices that encourage diversity: Blind resume assessments (with no identifying factors), a diverse interview team, neutral language in your job description, and more.
Skip the Assessments
Many companies use pre-employment assessments as their go-to first step in weeding out candidates, and some make the case that these tests prevent unconscious bias from affecting your hiring process. But I never recommend putting your candidates through the wringer with assessments. For one thing, biases can be reflected in test questions (which were written by people, after all). For another, many pre-hiring tests have little to do with the skills and traits a candidate will truly need to succeed. And lastly, they tend to be viewed as a waste of time — or even downright disrespectful. Keep your recruiting human-first and ditch the tests.
Enhance Your Hiring Process Today
Good recruiting is the first step to an excellent team — and to making progress. And that’s why it’s not something to be taken lightly. Don’t wing it. Instead, follow a solidified recruitment process that keeps your candidates’ needs in mind. Dedicate time to getting to know them as people, and don’t be afraid to ask your existing team for input.