Ultimate Guide: Full Recruitment Life Cycle
MyNextHire | May 25, 2020 |
MyNextHire | May 25, 2020 |
Recruitment life cycle, or popularly known as full-cycle recruiting, is a complete process right from initiating a need of talent to getting the desired talent onboard. The entire process goes through multiple logical steps, and each step delivers something to the next step to act on and pass it on the next step until the outcome is achieved, which is onboarding desired talent.
These steps could either be managed and acted upon by the organization who is in need of the talent or by its partners as a recruitment specialist or a recruitment agency who help with the entire process.
Before we get into the recruitment life cycle, let’s understand why to recruit.
The main reason for businesses to recruit talent is to earn profit by serving their customers either through a product or a service. Logically, businesses can earn profit only when they deliver the promise made to their customers using various resources including human resources at a cost lower than what they earn as revenue. In business term, this is the Return On Investment (ROI).
If we think further, if a company cannot fill in a position for some time, it’s actually an opportunity cost for the company. That is why recruitment is considered as a vital part of the business process. The knowledge industry, in fact, considers its talent as assets. So in other words recruiting is also acquiring assets.
In short, recruit to run the business, deliver the promise and earn profit by doing so. It’s quite important, isn’t it?
There are standard steps involved in the recruitment process, those have evolved as the recruitment industry matured.
The first phase of the life cycle is determining the need to recruit. Typically business identifies the need to recruit, and the reason to recruit could be one of these –
The first phase of the life cycle is determining the need to recruit. Typically business identifies the need to recruit, and the reason to recruit could be one of these –
Here comes the first step in the recruitment process which is analyzing the business requirement for a new hire. This is termed as ‘Job Analysis’. This is quite a crucial stage because this is the foundation. If the hiring requirement is not analyzed properly, the business outcome expected through the hiring activity will not be achieved to its desired level. Writing a “Candidate Persona” which is putting all details about an ideal candidate to recruit is a great outcome of the job analysis.
The job analysis seeks to create a complete picture of the new hire with all details including company values, objectives, long term goals as well as the culture within the business and teams. In addition, the analysis covers the details such as skills, qualifications, and experience required.
Once the job analysis is done, the next step is to write a detailed job description. The job description helps sourcing channels to find out appropriate candidates. The sources channels could be internal job listings within the company, job portals, social media channels, and recruitment partners.
Completing the screening process, the recruiter gets a short and sweet list of candidates that she would like to take to the next stage which is face to face interviews. The interview process helps the recruiter to assess the candidate at a much detailed level. Generally, an interview panel is involved to carry out this assessment through a set of questions.
The interviewing process also gives a chance to potential candidates to know more about the position by asking questions to the panel. The process also aims at assessing mutual benefits to both the employer and the employee if the candidate was recruited.
Now that the final choice is made through the interviewing process, it is time to make a formal offer of employment to the chosen candidate. Many times before placing a job offer, the recruiter and the candidate get into a discussion to negotiate what best each can get out of this offer. The discussion could cover more than –
Needless to say, this discussion takes place before agreeing and signing the job offer and the contract for their acceptance.
The last phase is onboarding and training the new employee. The recruitment life cycle carries on until the new hire is officially on-boarded and is ready to undergo required training to deliver duties at her best.
Additionally, onboarding includes –
The recruitment life cycle is a set of process which is well aligned with the business and its human resource needs. Each company has its own set of standards and procedures for recruitment. However, they follow a logical path right from identifying the need to recruit to onboarding the talent.
The steps covered above are very broad and generally include lots of small activities and involvement from multiple stakeholders. Recruitment software can help automate many of the processes that need lesser human intervention such as screening. These software also help streamline the process and achieve higher efficiencies with better quality recruitment.
As a recruiter, it’s quite satisfying to be part of the recruitment life cycle because it ultimately serves the community!
