Disappointment is an everyday occurrence in the life of a busy recruiter. Whether we’re chasing down candidates who’ve suddenly gone dark on us or posting to job boards without a single reply, frustrations abound for even the most diligent hiring professional. Companies that choose to dive into the labor market under their own steam are perhaps setting themselves up for greater challenges, especially when faced with negligible cost optimization and low rotation. In-house recruitment forsakes the services offered by wholesale recruitment consultancy firms, and can present a steep learning curve: in-house recruiters have to learn from their own mistakes and no one else’s. At the end of the day, though, no one knows your company’s culture like the employees who work there, and that gives you a bigger stake in recruiting the perfect candidate than an HR agent who’s just trying to hit their KPIs for the month. So let’s look at some hacks to help you develop an effective in-house recruitment process that can help attract the best personnel for the job
1. Define Your Recruitment Needs
Before you start looking for a candidate, you need to appraise the position to understand exactly what you need from a new hire. Look at your existing team and try to understand where there are gaps in performance or expertise that need filling, or even if a candidate with a different attitude could complement the work of existing staff. It’s also worth employing the competence matrix to assess desirable skills that could bring benefit.
You should also have a good grasp of current and future workloads to figure out how much extra manpower will be needed. It’s best to have a handle on this as far in advance of the recruitment stage as possible, as waiting till it’s too late will mean diverting already strained resources to the hiring process. You should also be checking in with your current staff for any insight they might have that could inform your hiring strategy.
Once you’ve completed these steps, put together a draft of the qualities and skills that the perfect candidate would have to possess. You should also be considering the first assignments to give to a new hire, which will help during the interview process.
2. Leverage Job Postings
Taking the time to put together a clear and concise job listing is a great way to both market the role and to ensure no parties are wasting each other’s time. Sketch out a personal profile that will help you establish your company’s values and work culture, which won’t always be discernible from a basic job ad. Don’t shy away from the details of the work either, as this helps candidates assess whether or not they meet the responsibilities of the position before you’ve hit the interview stage. To help you create your job posting, make sure it contains the following elements:
- Company name and address
- Company mission statement
- Job title and department
- List of responsibilities
- Qualification and/ or skill requirements
- Contract structure
- Desirable soft skills
- Examples of duties
- Perks and benefits on offer
- Salary amount
- Call to action
- GDPR fine print
- Company contact information
3. Emphasize Company Culture
More and more companies are integrating brand marketing into their recruitment processes, which helps attract fitting prospects and deters less suitable hires at the very start of the process. Perhaps some candidates prefer a looser, more horizontal office culture that affords staff more autonomy. Or maybe they’re happier working under a more rigid management style. Either way, you need to communicate this to candidates. If a candidate arrives for their first day on the job with no idea of your company’s culture, the entire onboarding process could be jeopardized and they may find it difficult to adapt.
Across the board, ethics and values are playing a larger role in the decision-making process for talented hires considering a new position. That’s why you need to be frank about your firm’s mission statement and show transparency over your values. The sooner an employee grasps these intricacies about the workplace, the sooner they can start working at high gear.
4. Utilize Social Media
Social media has proven to be a huge blessing for recruiters, helping them advertise positions more widely while offering unparalleled insights into prospective candidates. Online tools make it easier to find qualified candidates than ever before, and neglecting them will leave you at a disadvantage when trying to mine a large talent pool. It also allows us to proactively recruit and headhunt prime talent with a particular role in mind. However, we need to pay attention to the contextual clues of the platform that we’re posting a job advertisement on.
A social media job ad on Facebook or Instagram can’t just be a verbatim copy of the original job posting, which is likely to read as dry and unengaging. Social media users’ attention is at a premium, and your post will have to be diverting and benefit-driven to stand out on their feeds. Keep the job description succinct and lean into the benefits of the role, rather than the necessary requirements: you’re trying to get users’ attention, and if you succeed they will get all the details when they investigate the role further. End your social media job post with a succinct and enthusiastic call to action, along with a request to share or repost the vacancy.
5. Onboard the Right Way
Onboarding is the process of acclimatizing a new hire into their role and workplace, which helps them get a running start on their work and can also provide a confidence boost before officially starting in the position. Many recruiters gloss over the process once they’ve established that a position has been filled, but this couldn’t be a worse approach. Onboarding is critical for setting the tone for a new employee’s tenure at your firm and neglecting it risks them picking up bad habits at work which could take a very long time to rectify. So use the onboarding process to allow the team to give the new hire a warm welcome, and supply necessary manuals and handbooks before their first day on the job. Additionally, arrange regular feedback sessions for their first few months on the job so that you can help fill in any blanks they have and ensure that they’re properly adapting to the role.
The Bottom Line
In-house recruitment takes a sustained investment of time and manpower to get right and may mean picking up new skills and processes to act as an effective recruiter. But since a company is only as good as its employees, it pays dividends to invest in the recruitment process at an early stage to stand the best chance of securing talented recruits. When you take time to craft the perfect job posting and onboard a promising new talent, your firm could be reaping the benefits for many years to come.