Steps to ideal recruitment
Today, recruiting is a problem for many recruiters, and that's where you come in.
The wrong recruitment can cause multiple for your customer's company, in terms of missed opportunities in terms of missed opportunities, tension between employees, and, more broadly, wasted time and money due to an imprecise strategy.
But what exactly is recruitment? The Society for Human Resource Management defines recruitment and talent acquisition as "the process of attracting and recruiting the best talent available who occupy the appropriate position and work tospecific requirements".
The best headhunters develop a clear-cut strategy to attract new candidates, find word-of-mouth find word-of-mouth referrals and reach the best talent.
As you'll see, the recruitment process involves much more than advertising vacancies and conducting interviews. In this article, you'll find a good way tooptimize your strategy and gain a tactical advantage over your competitors.
Step 1: Clearly define your recruitment needs before embarking on the selection process
Before filling a position, ask yourself a few questions: why does this position need to be filled ? What are you trying to achieve? What kind of mindset do you want in a candidate?
You need to know what you want from a position, not let the candidate decide for you. Flexibility is always an asset to be valued - but defining job parameters will help your search and reduce the number of candidates you'll consider.
During this first stage, you need to prioritize between essential and optional skills. It's also a good time to ask yourself what professional experience you would like the person to have.
To help you understand these needs, it's obviously advisable to consult your customer's recruitment manager and other members of your team to see what type of profile would best fit in and match the company's values.
Step 2: Writing an effective job ad that reflects the position you're looking for
There are several key elements to integrate into a job ad to attract the best candidates. As is the case, your requirement is likely to correspond to a job for which candidates have common expectations, so it's essential to understand candidates' needs in order to draft the offer that best matches them.
Be descriptive, precise and generate enthusiasm for your employer brand. Highlight the results you expect from the position, not just the skills required. This will pique the candidate's interest and attract highly qualified workers who want to make a difference in their next position.
Eliminate anything superfluous from your job description, as well as any specific requirements that could be quickly acquired on the spot. The list of specific software is one example. It's often better to choose someone who's versatile and a quick learner, rather than a specialist in one particular program with rigid capabilities.
Step 3: Candidate sourcing: a special kind of know-how
Once you've written a powerful and precise ad, it's up to you to communicate it using effective vectors to avoid targeting the wrong people.
However, it's true that this stage can seem very time-consuming, even more so nowadays with the myriad of methods for finding potential candidates: pure Internet research, the use of social networks or job ads, to name but a few.
Using LinkedIn can be a first step towards diversification. To be effective, fine-tune your own company page, make personalized use of the application's internal messaging system, participate in specific groups and mobilize the advanced Linkedin Recruiter tool.
Beyond these tips, keep in mind that maintaining a sorted, easy-to-use database is crucial to a smooth recruitment process. For this, look to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) , which are applicant tracking software programs that automate the hiring process.
These ATS programs, like the one from Marvin Recruitercan, for example, pull up a LinkedIn page to automatically copy candidate data into the ATS, track the history of each candidate across the firm, and even integrate with other tools you use on a daily basis, such as Google Calendar or Slack.
Step 4: Sorting and shortlisting candidates
At this pre-selection stage, the idea is to target the various criteria to be taken into account when evaluating candidates and selecting them for interviews. In other words, the aim here is toidentify candidates who meet predetermined professional qualifications , and to verify the information they provide.
Using a good pre-employment test or assessment before calling a candidate in for an interview can help you consolidate your process and eliminate some interview questions. The type of tests and assessments you use will depend on the position.
You can use a battery of personality, cognitive, aptitude and specialized skills tests to determine the potential employee's abilities. In general, you'll be assessing knowledge, skills and aptitudes here to make sure the person is ideally suited to the job.
It is common practice at this stage of recruitment to use HR project management software specifically for initial screening. Many recruiters use such solutions to identify the use of specific keywords in the CV to quickly identify suitable skills as part of a preliminary screening process prior to an interview.
Step 5: The first direct contact with candidates
It's important to remember that, as headhunters, you often don't have the upper hand on candidates, who are becoming increasingly rare on the market. So it's crucial toapproach candidates intelligently, so that they don't slip through your fingers at the slightest guess.
A first tip would be to take great care with the first messages you send, because first impressions are the most important. It's at this point that preconceptions are built up, and it's with the information you include in your approach message that the candidate will decide whether or not to trust you for the rest of the process.
So you want your first message to be clear, convincing and engaging right from the start. To achieve this, remember to include the employer's value proposition, unique personalization for each person, relevant additional information , an incentive for a prompt response, and your clearly worded contact details.
A second approach that has often proved successful is to contact your next employees via multiple channels, thanks to a TTY or integrations with tools like Waalaxy.
These prospecting tools will enable you to automatically send qualified leads on LinkedIn and by email (automatic mailing campaigns, invitation requests, bulk messages...) to easily find new candidates.
Step 6: Conduct effective interviews
The interview is the centerpiece of your recruitment process. To be effective, it needs to be anticipated and tick certain obligatory boxes. However, it's important to remember that each recruiter must make the interview his or her own, to make it as authentic as possible.
Nevertheless, be sure to take the time to introduce yourself first, before describing in detail the position in question and the corporate context in which the candidate could evolve.
Then take stock of the technical skills acquired by the candidate in the course of his or her personal life, as well as his or her behavioral skills during group role-play exercises that will show you how the candidate behaves as part of a team.
Taking stock of the candidate's extra-professional activities can also be a very interesting way of revealing the personality and values held by your interviewer.
Once you've got all your questions answered, let your candidate ask his or her own questions , and conclude the meeting with an "on-the-spot" assessment of your exchange.
Finally, on the subject of form, be careful not to make your interviews last too long, as you run the risk of losing your candidate's attention . Many experts agree that the ideal length of an interview is between 45 minutes and 1 hour.
Step 7: The recruitment decision
Once the interview phase is over, you should expect to have only two or three candidates who stand out from the crowd. At this stage, it may be a good idea to consult the teams with whom you organized the interviews , if you didn't do them on your own. A collective decision is always fairer than an individual one.
If one candidate in particular stands out because he or she has met the most hiring criteria, or because there's a particularly good rapport, it's time to make your choice .
Once you've done this, make sure you get back to them as soon as possible, so that they don't choose one of your competitors in the meantime. Don't forget to send a personalized reply to unsuccessful candidates, as this will be greatly appreciated.
If negotiations do get underway with your first choice, this is the time to lay down your final cards . Every convincing advantage, no matter how trivial, needs to be presented, such as a company car, gym membership, flexible hours for family life, the possibility of telecommuting, and so on.
As you can see, recruitment is an art in its own right, and it's crucial to master all its ins and outs. The general recruitment market is currently very closed and requires you to adopt a strategic posture to achieve your goals.
Fromdefining the needs of the company commissioning you, to writing the official job advert, to sourcing and sorting candidates, not forgetting the interview method and the final decision , the adoption of a structured recruitment process is essential to find the ideal candidate.
And Marvin has understood this problem very well, offering you his ATS Marvin Recruitersoftware, which is particularly effective in the sourcing thanks to LinkedIn integration and AI.
Would you like to optimize your recruitment process? To save time and hire more qualified profiles tailored to your needs, adopt Marvin! Get a free quote here.
