Recruitment Strategy

A strategy is always a good starting point for quality work, and recruitment is no exception. But how do you actually get started building a recruitment strategy that fits your business? Which elements should it include, and where should the focus be?

In this article, we walk through the different parts of the recruitment process you can take a position on and build into your strategy.

Build Expertise and Create Transparency

At its core, this is about taking a position on the different parts of the process. Start from your own HR expertise and decide how you want recruitment to work in your organisation.

With a written recruitment strategy in hand, it's much easier to show the rest of the business the decisions you've made on processes, tools, responsibilities, KPIs and more. That professionalises your setup and brings quality and expertise to the decisions overall.

It also makes the work more enjoyable once you've taken a clear position on the recruitment strategy you're working from. When the strategy is transparent, the rest of the business knows what to expect from HR, and what you expect from them in return. That's how you deliver a good experience for the hiring manager and, ultimately, for candidates.

A written strategy is also a competitive parameter, so it's worth asking: how competitive is our recruitment setup compared to our competitors'? Where should we focus and improve, and where are we already ahead of the industry when it comes to attracting and retaining talent?

In this article, we're thinking about recruitment in the broadest sense, covering the full scope.

Candidate Experience and Hiring Manager Experience

Who are HR's target groups, who deserves a good experience, and how do we deliver it? Start from these three questions when building your recruitment strategy.

Many HR departments want to give both hiring managers and candidates a good experience, but the effort it takes to deliver a good experience for each group isn't necessarily the same. So think carefully at the strategic level about what you can do to make sure both get one.

Often, it comes down to giving the right information at the right time. That calls for clear processes, guidelines, and well targeted materials. If managers don't know which test tools to use and when, the process runs on guesswork instead of expertise. If candidates can't get visibility into the recruitment process as a whole, that breeds uncertainty. So when you write the strategy, be explicit about how you'll ensure transparency and clarity throughout recruitment.

It's also worth considering how much of your recruitment process can be self-service, in other words, how much of it can be made self-explanatory enough that, say, the hiring manager can carry the process forward on their own.  

KPIs

To know whether your new strategy is working, you need to decide what to measure, and that's where KPIs come in. KPI stands for "key performance indicator." KPIs help assess how effectively a company is meeting its objectives, and the most important thing about any KPI is that it has to be measurable.

There are plenty of KPIs you could measure in recruitment, so it's important to decide which ones actually fit your strategy and your organisation.

When you measure consistently against chosen KPIs, it becomes much easier to demonstrate HR's value, activity and objectives, and that builds transparency with the rest of the business.

Measuring throughout the recruitment process gives you a concrete picture of what's working and what isn't. That data lets you qualify, streamline and optimise recruitment, all in the service of hiring the right candidate. In other words, HR gets to demonstrate its value in numbers everyone can relate to.

KPIs can also be used to present new recruitment methods as a concrete, measurable business case, and they're essential when it comes time to assess your recruitment strategy.

Exit Interviews

In principle, every recruitment can start with information from the person leaving the role (assuming it isn't a newly created position). So it's worth deciding how you'll work with exit interviews.

Exit interviews are typically part of a data driven preliminary analysis, the thorough preparation you do before recruitment itself begins, and they're fundamental to a good process.

An exit interview is a unique opportunity for the company to learn what's working and what isn't, seen from the employee's own perspective. Departing employees are often more open and reflective, and tend to be willing to share a great deal about the company from their point of view.

You can use exit interview data strategically to real advantage, but keep in mind that the information is subjective. Even so, it's valuable knowledge the company can use to improve going forward. An exit interview is a genuinely good data source that can be put to strategic use.

For your recruitment strategy, it's worth deciding how you'll use exit interviews across the company. Will you hold qualitative conversations with selected departing employees, or send quantitative surveys to everyone who leaves? 

Find more information and inspiration for using exit interviews right here. 

Test Policy

Using tests as a fixed part of your recruitment setup lets you make data driven decisions and minimise hiring mistakes.

A test policy takes your recruitment setup a step further toward professionalisation.

There are plenty of good reasons to develop one: it forces you to take a position on various questions around test tools, it lets you quality assure your setup and back it with real expertise, and once it's written down, the process becomes visible, so everyone in the business understands where things stand on testing.

At its core, it's about taking a position on the various questions around testing so there's alignment across the whole company. That way, you give both hiring managers and candidates the best possible experience when it comes to using tests. 

Job Interviews

The job interview is an important part of the recruitment process, because it's where you gather the valid data you'll use for your final selection. But conversations vary, so it's worth setting a consistent framework across every one, to make sure you get usable data.

In your recruitment strategy, it's worth deciding how you conduct job interviews, how many rounds candidates go through, and who takes part in them.

If you have a defined role structure, it might be the seniority of the position that determines whether a candidate goes through one interview or several, which test tools you use, and who owns the recruitment.

Would you like to read more about the structured interview, and how you can use it to collect good data? Then read on in this article. 

Minimise hiring mistakes

It's fair to say we all want to minimise hiring mistakes. Hiring the wrong person for a role is simply too expensive.

The question is what you can actually do to minimise those mistakes, and how you build a recruitment strategy with that in mind.

Start with a fixed structure for recruitment. It also matters that preparation is thorough, for example through exit interviews or a data driven preliminary analysis. Using test tools already puts you well on the way to avoiding hiring mistakes, and having a test policy in place makes the process visible to the rest of the business.

In your recruitment strategy, decide how your recruitment process is structured, which elements it includes, and whether that differs depending on, say, seniority, so you've chosen the best method for your business when it comes to recruitment. 

Onboarding 

Thorough, good onboarding increases retention. But how do you build onboarding itself into your recruitment strategy?

Successful onboarding fundamentally comes down to making sure the new employee feels secure in the job and faces the right challenges relative to their competencies and development.

If you use test tools as a fixed part of your recruitment setup, you already have data giving you insight into the person's preferences, type and cognitive level, depending on which tests you use.

So it's a good idea, when building your recruitment strategy, to fold tests into the onboarding process. Decide how you'll use the results from your test tools, and make sure you write clear guidelines so the rest of the business understands the approach.

It's also worth thinking at a strategic level about how you run onboarding physically versus digitally. Just remember that employees should have equal opportunities in onboarding, whether they're onboarded in person or online.

The Hybrid Workplace

The way we work has changed a great deal over the past couple of years, and we need to think carefully about how much of our work happens physically versus digitally. That applies to recruitment strategy too.

Reconsider the kinds of roles you're advertising and the profiles you're looking for. If you're hiring for hybrid, or even fully remote, positions, you can shape the recruitment process itself to reflect how that role will actually work.

It's also worth being honest with yourselves: how much are we online, and how do we show off our culture and flexibility without meeting in person?