Article
Every Company Needs a Specific Detailed Recruitment Strategy
Many years ago I was an internal recruiter for the largest bank in New Hampshire. I spent nearly 100% of my time filling vacant positions throughout a designated region of the state. More than half of my time was spent hiring tellers for their 80 branches.
The recruitment process appeared to be a never ending process of recruiting, hiring, orienting, training, terminating and then starting the whole process all over again. It seemed as though as soon as I filled a vacant position, the position would shortly be vacated.
The recruitment process can be very frustrating for many companies. In order for it to be less frustrating and to add more value to your organization, perhaps we need to rethink – or re-engineer -- the entire recruitment process.
First, it would likely help any organization to develop a clear set of goals and objectives. These might include:
- Recruit qualified, knowledgeable, motivated, engaged and flexible employees.
- Recruit employees who are likely to be able to fill various parallel and vertical positions within the organization.
- Retain employees longer, reduce employee turnover rates, and limit the need for recruitment activities.
- Reduce the cost per hire and total cost of recruitment activities in your organization.
Although most organizations will likely have additional goals and objectives (G&O), these four G&O will likely be found to a certain degree in most companies.
Success in achieving your G&O will not happen overnight. It will take the execution of a detailed strategy in order to eventually achieve success towards accomplishing these G&O.
The organization will need to establish measurable strategic objectives. An example might be to reduce the expenditure on external recruiters by 30%. The company can likely measure this objective easily. They will need to gather data (likely an accounting line item) on the total external recruitment costs for the past few years and perhaps the current year to date.
From this point the company will need to establish strategies that support the achievement of these objectives as they relate to the improved recruitment process. One example of a strategy might be to consolidate the number of external recruiters being used and hire the recruiters that have lower per hire costs. Another example might be to create a policy in which external recruiters are only used to fill “difficult to find” employees.
If the strategies are successful, what key results will be identified? Will employee morale be improved? Will the company have more internal opportunities for promotions available because of successful recruitment strategy? Will the company make fewer mistakes in its operations because the company has longer tenured and experienced employees? The company needs to design plans and strategies that are flexible with changes to expected outcomes. It is rare that a strategy can be set without modifications because no one has a “crystal ball” to see the future.
Like many human resource functions and processes, the successful recruitment strategy will depend on successfully implementing strategies within other human resource functions.
For example, it will be difficult to achieve significant cost reductions in your recruitment process without some success in the company “retention strategy”. If the organization is not retaining employees, the vicious cycle of recruitment, hiring, termination, recruitment again, will just continue and cost reductions will be difficult to attain.
The retention of employees is dependent on other human resource functions such as successful strategies in the company orientation, training, and motivation strategies and processes. For example, conducting complete Exit Interviews is likely to be part of a strategy for the company recruitment, retention and motivation strategies. Therefore, implementing a successful recruitment strategy (no matter what the specific G&O of the organization is) will depend on successful strategies in other segments of the human resource function.
So what should your company do now if it seriously wants to improve its recruitment processes?
- Have a discussion about the past and present recruitment cultures in your organization. What seems to work well? What does not appear to work well? If you have an actual recruitment strategy, does it support specific strategic objectives of the organization?
- Develop some strategic options the company would like to pursue in improving the overall recruitment function in your organization.
- Determine through measurements and other evaluation techniques, which options should be developed into the actual recruitment strategic objectives.
- Determine what specific strategies and individual action items will support the achievement of these recruitment strategic objectives.
- Are you achieving your specified strategic objectives? Are these objectives affecting key results of your organization? Measure and re-evaluate your strategy and modify wherever necessary.
A comprehensive recruitment strategy does not just happen. If the company truly wants to improve their recruitment processes, it will have to make the time to understand where they have been in the past - - where they are now - - and where they want to be in the future in terms of what they are trying to achieve in its recruitment of new employees.
