What is recruitment?

Let start by defining the word recruitment.

“Recruitment is the process of finding and hiring the best and most qualified candidate for a job opening, in a timely and cost-effective manner.” Martin Luenendonk, 2019.

“Recruitment can be defined as those practices and activities carried out by the organization with the primary purpose of identifying and attracting potential employees.” Barber 1998:5

“Recruitment is the method of finding and attracting capable applicants for employment.” Werther and K. Davis

When recruiting for a job, you need to identify the job vacancy, analyze the job requirements, review applications, screen, shortlist, and select the right candidate. This is referred to as the recruitment process.

The recruitment process involves the following elements:

• Identifying the job vacancy
• Attracting prospective candidates to apply for the job
• Screening of applicants and selecting among them
• Shortlisting candidates
• Interviewing
• Recruiting the best candidate
• Onboarding employees

There are five stages of recruitment to guide you through the recruitment process:

• Recruitment Planning
• Talent Sourcing
• Screening of Applicants
• Finalization of the job offer
• Introduction and Indexation of new employees.

We will be going through the five stages one after the other.

Stage One: Recruitment Planning

a) Job Analysis
You need to conduct a job analysis. You can conduct job analysis by identifying and describing the vacant positions. After you must have identified the vacancies that exist, then you move on to assess the job specifications.

b) Job Specifications
The job specifications are attributes that are needed for the job. These could be knowledge, skills, and experience needed for the job.

c) Job Description
The job description provides you with information about the scope of the job functions. It also gives you information on the responsibilities and positioning of the job in the organization.

In another word, it helps you to know what your prospective candidates must have to meet the demands of the job.

Here is a checklist to help you in your job description:

• Organization name and description
• Organization core values
• Benefits offered by the organization
• Job location
• Job summary
• Job requirements or basic qualification and skill
• Job title or Job identification
• Description of duties and responsibilities
• Working condition
• Compensation and benefits

In planning your recruitment, you must review your job description. This is to access whether the job is getting paid an amount that is proportional to the skills and qualification required for the job.

d) Job Specification
In writing job specification, you prepare the list of all jobs in the organization and their location. You also generate information for each job.

In preparing your job specification document, the following information is provided:

• Qualification
• Experience
• Training and development
• Skills requirement
• Work responsibilities
• Emotional qualities
• Planning of career

e) Job Evaluation
In job evaluation, you compare the relative value of a job to the other jobs in an organization by analyzing, and evaluating the jobs.

Job evaluation enables your organization to access whether the job is getting paid an amount that is proportionate to the skills and qualifications required for the job. It thus guarantees the competencies for each job in the organization.

Stage Two: Talent Sourcing

After completing the preparation of job descriptions, job specifications and job evaluation, the subsequent action is to decide which technique to adopt for recruiting the prospective candidates for your organization.

You have to be specific in sourcing for your prospective candidate. You should search out places where they are hanging out. There are some techniques that you need to utilize while sourcing for talent.

Recruiting Techniques

• Networking (Word of the mouth)
Your organization representative can attend functions and events where tour prospective candidate is likely to be attending. For instance, college and career fairs. There he/she would let them know about the opening in your organization.

You can encourage your existing employees to actively participate in industry professional associations and conferences, where they are likely to meet the prospective candidate.

You should also invest time in developing relationships with University placement offices. University placement offices will enable you to have firsthand access to prospective candidates for your organization.

• Internal Recruitment
Internal recruitment refers to recruiting employees within the organization. This is usually done through any anything of the following means:

• Promotions
• Transfers
• Employee referrals
• Previous applicants
• Former Employees
• Internal job posting

Promotion can be done within the organization, where competent hands can be promoted to take the vacant position of a superior.

The transfers are suitable for an organization that has branches. A competent hand from another branch of the organization can be transferred to take the vacant position in another branch of the organization.

An employee referral program enables your organization to leverage the existing employees’ friends of a friend. This is done by offering your employees cash incentives, personalized gift and recognition if they recruit a new employee who stays longer than a certain amount of months.

Previous applicants are people who had once submitted a resume to your organization. You can go through their resumes to see if there is a competent candidate to fill in the vacant position.

Former Employee of your organization (who performed well) will always see it as an honour whenever they are called upon to help recommend someone to an opening in the organization.

Internal job posting pertains to posting job vacancy in the organization’s bulletin boards and another visible area within the organization premises where visitors to the organization can see it.

Besides your organization’s bulletin board, you can also make use of your organization’s intranet.

Internal recruitment is cheaper than when you use external recruitment.
Using this technique is great for your employees’ spirit, motivation and retention.

It is also useful for your organization succession planning.

• External Recruitment
External recruitment refers to recruiting employees from outside the organization.

External recruitment pertains to the distribution of flyers, or the display of vacancy notice on organization bulletin boards, and the organization’s website.

This can be done through any one of the following means:

• Organization website

In using your organization’s website for recruiting, ensure that you provide insight into your organization culture and work environment.

Ensure that your website and social media are up to date. And check other warning signs that indicate to prospective candidates that you do not care much.

For instance, misspellings and broken links.

• Print and Media Advertising

This pertains to announcing the job opening in the newspapers and business magazine.

It is a great way for your organization to reach a specific segment of job seekers.

• Web Advertisement

This pertains to advertising on a recruitment website. You can make use of Jobberman, Indeed, etc.

You can also visit online job boards for passive prospective candidates, who may have a resume online.

• Social Media

Social media are great for engaging with young ages and passive prospective candidates.

Twitter and Facebook, allow you to meet prospective candidates through shared connections and shared discussion topics.

Besides Twitter and Facebook, you can try Instagram, LinkedIn, Tinder, Snapchat, and Bumble to find a prospective candidate.

You will have to be active on social media.

• Recruitment Agencies

This pertains to using the service of recruiters. Making use of recruiters help to keep your time free to focus on things you are best at doing.

Recruitment can be affected by various factors. Thus, we are going to look at those factors to guide you in your recruitment techniques.

Factors affecting recruitment are the following:

1. Size of the organization
   Large organizations tend to look for more people. Thus, they have a complicated recruitment process.

In this way, several employees of the organization will have to take part in the recruitment process.

Whereas, small organizations are inclined to look for a few people. Thus, the small organization will have a simpler recruitment process and just one or two employees of the organization will take in the recruitment process.

1. Salary structure of the organization
   Organizations that pay higher salaries and wages to their employees attract the best candidates.

Low paying organizations, on the other hand, have a problem recruiting the best candidates. To attract the best candidates to your organization, ensure that you play better than your competitors and keep your benefits above industry standard.

Attractive salaries, benefits, bonus and incentive packages are key to attracting the best candidates.

1. Organization working conditions
   Your organization must be known to provide good working conditions, health and well-being for its employees to attract prospective candidates.

You must make sure there are proper facilities at your organization. In this way, the key to keep your employees and attract prospective candidates is to maintain your employees’ job satisfaction.

1. Organization Growth Rate
   The growth rate of your organization will determine your need for recruitment. If your organization is growing at a fast rate, you will need new employees from time to time.

But, if your organization do not grow at a fast rate, you are likely to recruit new employees when the old ones retire or resign.

1. Organization Reputation
   The reputation of an organization precedes them. You should let people know that you are a great employer by building your reputation and your organization’s brand.

Aiding your employees’ personal and professional growth and development is key to attracting the best candidates to your job openings.

Stage Three: Screening of Applicants

Screening is the process of filtering out the application of the candidates to remove unqualified candidates and retain the qualified candidates.

This is where you examine and evaluate the applicant’s skills and personalities, to affirm whether or not they are a good fit for the job.

We are going to examine five different phases that are involved in the screening of candidates:

• Preliminary Screening

In a situation where a single vacant position from your organization receives hundreds or more applications from candidates, there will be a need to reduce the list of candidates. This can be done through a preliminary screening.

• Initial Interview

Candidates who are eligible to pass the preliminary screening undergo the initial interview.

• Behavioural Assessment and Skill Test

Using behavioural and personality assessment as one of the tools to screen candidates helps you to see how the candidate regularly behaves in certain situations.

The hiring manager can conduct tests on the skills of the candidates and how they use these skills. This is to enable you to ensure that the candidates have the skills they claim to have.

• Reference Check

Reference check on your prospective candidates helps to ascertain the fact that they work where they claimed to work. It will after all helps to keep you out of trouble.

• Background Check

A background check is used to review candidates’ criminal record, verify their employment history and eligibility and run a credit check.

You can check the candidate’s social media accounts to make sure that they are likely to be a good representative of your organization professionally.

• Final Interview

This is a physical meeting between the candidate and the hiring managers. The final interview is not limited to these two groups of people. It often includes members of the organization and the organization’s senior leadership.

• Selection

“Selection is the process in which candidates for employment are divided into two classes, those who are to be offered employment and those who are not – Dale Yoder.

The selection is done among the candidates who make the final interview.

Stage Four: Finalization of the Job Offer

This is the stage the organization offer the job to the selected candidate. Your organization representative or human resources department will contact the candidate to inform him/her that he/she has been selected for the job.

The selected candidate will have to communicate his/her acceptance of the offer for the recruitment to be completed.

Stage Five: Introduction and Induction of the New Employee

The induction process is marked by the signing of the employment contract. After which a welcome package will be given to the new employee.

The employee’ reference and background would have been verified before the employee is introduced to the organization.

Take note that employing a new employee does not finalize the recruiting process.

Onboarding your new employee in a professional way will help to incorporate him/her into the organization.

Recruitment Techniques Tips:

Finally, we will look at ten (10) recruitment techniques tips:

• You can make use of Google Adwords. Google Adwords is used to place text-based ads. This will enable you to place ads for keywords that your prospective candidates might be searching for.

You can thereafter direct them back to the job posting on your site.

• Seek talents in unobvious and unlikely places.

• Profile your best employees and aim for similar candidates. I.e using their virtues as a guide for assessing other candidates.

• Target niche job boards like BigShoes network. Unlike other general websites like Indeed, Moster, Careerbuilder, etc, the BigShoes network is a marketing website.

• Consider manually reviewing resumes, rather than relying on Applicants tracking software. The tool can automatically remove those who do not fit the specific job requirements, even though they can do the job better than others who fit the specific job requirements.

• Display what makes your culture great. I.e your working hours, unique benefits and staff relationship.

• Create some kind of mentoring program. Since the old employees have a wealth of experience, they can transfer their knowledge to the younger employees.

• Start making your recruitment process data-driven. For instance, identify through which channel your candidates come in and through which channel you get the most successful employees.

• Make the most out of texting by trying mobile recruitment.

• Make use of virtual reality. Organizations are using virtual reality experience in recruitment techniques.

Your organization can use this to show candidates that they are in an exciting and innovative place to work.

It gives your candidates a realistic view of the office and the organization culture.

P. S.

Hope you find the tips useful. If you have other useful tips, do not hesitate to share with us.