Recruitment Plan

Recruitment is the lifeblood of any long-term business. After all, without employees, growth is impossible. However, you can’t just hire anyone to fill a position. You need talent that brings the skills to the table to make your organization succeed and grow. And acquiring this talent is easier said than done.

Not only is recruitment essential, but it can also be an incredible challenge. Recruitment requires teams to identify the talent they want to apply for a position, and attract the right candidates to apply. From there, it is a matter of interviewing and selecting candidates to find the right fit for the position. However, for many companies, this can mean screening hundreds of candidates at a time while looking for the perfect talent. As such, it is easy to find yourself overwhelmed quickly with the right approach and even lose recruiters to burnout when you use the wrong tactics.

That’s why every company needs an effective recruitment plan. A recruitment plan will allow you to simplify the complex task of acquiring the needed talent to meet your company's needs. What’s more, you will develop exactly how to attract and select candidates while streamlining the overall process into a fine-tuned recruiting machine.

And that is why today we’re going to take a look at what exactly a recruitment plan is, why you want to use one, and the advantages you can expect from developing your own recruitment plan. What’s more, we will discuss how you can do exactly that, as well as the tools available to make the best recruitment plan that works for you and your company.

What is a Recruitment Plan?

So, let’s start with defining what is a recruitment plan exactly. In essence, a recruitment plan is a document or set of procedures that outline the strategies that your team will use to fill an open position. Simple, right? It’s all about building a road map for your entire hiring process. What’s more, a recruitment plan is an essential tool for larger companies or industries that frequently face high turnover rates and high-volume recruiting demands.

Utilizing a recruitment plan will allow you and your team to focus your efforts and resources on creating an effective recruiting strategy. This is because a plan for recruitment will allow you to create consistency throughout your company and your recruiting team. This gets everyone from the C-suite, to the hiring managers, to the rank-and-file recruiters, on the same page regarding the goals of your recruitment strategy. An effective recruiting strategy establishes a clear plan for everyone to follow. Plus, you can create guidelines for evaluating candidates during the screening process. With the advantages well established, it’s time to look at the necessary recruitment plan steps to build an effective strategy.

1. Research and forecast hiring needs - Before any recruiting strategy can be designed, you will need to research the exact requirements of each position you’re hiring for today and what you will need down the line with a skills gap analysis. This will allow you to consequently know what type of applicant you’re marketing to.
   
   
2. Review job descriptions - Ensure that your current job descriptions align with your established goals and needs. Create new descriptions as needed.
   
   
3. Establish a recruitment budget - The average cost per hire, according to SHRM, is approximately $4,129. As such, it’s best to set a recruitment budget early to help choose the most cost-effective methods.
   
   
4. Use the right tools - Determine what tools you will use during your hiring process.
   
   
5. Collaborate - Team collaboration is key to building an effective hiring strategy. Make sure everyone is aligned from C-suite down.
   
   
6. Set deadlines - It’s one thing to know that you need to fill a position. It’s another entirely to know when you need it filled by. As part of your recruitment plan, determine when you will need to make a hire and the role you need to fill. It takes 36 to 42 days to fill an average position in the US. Make sure you’re ready ahead of time.
   
   
7. Refine candidate sourcing - At this stage in your planning, you should be able to identify the candidate sourcing strategies you will employ during your recruitment efforts. These strategies include everything from posting on popular job boards such as Indeed to an employee referral program.
   
   
8. Establish a selection process - A well-designed selection process will keep your recruitment efforts efficient and help mitigate bias in candidate selection.

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How to Create a Recruitment Plan

Those are the most basic steps to create a recruitment plan. However, how do you know that you have created a successful recruitment plan? One way is to measure the effectiveness of your plan after the fact. However, the best way to ensure you build an effective recruitment plan before the fact is to ensure you cover the basics.

This means ensuring that you’ve identified and created a job description tailored to your ideal candidates including the qualifications and responsibilities expected for the role. Additionally, internally determine how many you intend to hire and the terms of the position, whether they be part-time, full-time, or contract.

Go on to determine if the timeline you’ve created during your planning includes every step of your hiring process, and exactly how each will be performed. An effective plan is more than broad strokes. It’s a complete road map every step of the way.

And possibly most important of all, ensure that your plan includes how you will evaluate candidates, whether this is through a virtual interview screening, live interviews, or another medium of screening.

Tech to Support a Recruitment Plan

Even the best recruitment plan is predicated on the tools available to you. With the wrong tools, no amount of planning will help you beat the competition to the best talent available. That’s why we’re going to take a moment to discuss the importance of finding the right tech to support a recruitment plan.

For the modern recruiter, it’s important to screen large numbers of candidates quickly without sacrificing quality. To this end, consider utilizing an on-demand interview platform. This interview solution gained notable traction during the Covid-19 pandemic and continues to rise in popularity today. This is because on-demand interviews, sometimes known as asynchronous interviews, provide numerous benefits over in-person or live phone interviews.

On-demand interviews allow recruiters to build a single interview that can be delivered to potentially hundreds of candidates at a time. These candidates can then respond at a time of their leisure. This builds consistency and flexibility in your hiring process at the same time, and that means you can factor those benefits into your recruitment plan.