From Good to Great—Developing a Stellar Recruitment Strategy Plan

There is general agreement among HR professionals and industry experts that having a strong recruitment strategy plan contributes to a company’s overall success and growth. A well-structured recruitment process ensures that companies attract and retain top talent, resulting in a highly skilled and motivated workforce. However, many organizations struggle to develop a comprehensive recruitment plan and strategy, which can lead to costly mistakes and missed opportunities in the search for the perfect candidate.

When businesses fail to implement a strategic approach to their hiring process, it can result in a mismatch between candidates and roles, lower employee engagement, and ultimately, reduced productivity. Furthermore, a poorly executed recruitment process can tarnish a company’s reputation, making it even harder to attract top talent in the future.

This highlights the importance of investing time and resources in developing a comprehensive recruiting strategy plan that addresses each aspect of the hiring process. From analyzing your organization’s needs and defining its brand, to sourcing and selecting candidates using tools like Workello to streamline the process, onboarding new hires, and assessing your hiring strategy plan’s performance, each step is important for maximum results. In this article, we will show you how to build a recruiting strategy for your company’s long-term success.

Conducting a Workforce Analysis

A workforce analysis is an essential component of effective human resource management. There are 3 steps to optimizing your organization’s talent pool to drive productivity and achieve strategic objectives:

1. Assessing the current workforce and identifying gaps
2. Identifying critical roles and competencies
3. Determining future workforce needs

Assessing the current workforce and identifying gaps involves evaluating employees’ skills, knowledge, and abilities, and comparing them against your organization’s current and future needs. This process allows you to pinpoint areas where the workforce may be lacking or where additional training and development might be necessary. By addressing these gaps, you can ensure you have the right people in the right roles, leading to improved performance and employee satisfaction.

Source: AIHR

Identifying critical roles and competencies helps you determine which positions and skill sets are essential for your organization’s success. By focusing on these critical areas, you can allocate resources more effectively, develop targeted training programs, and prioritize recruitment efforts to attract top talent in key positions.

Determining future workforce needs involves analyzing your organization’s strategic goals, market trends, and emerging technologies to forecast the skills and competencies required for future success. By proactively planning for these needs, you can ensure your organization has the talent necessary to stay ahead of the competition.

Once you’ve collected all the information about the current workforce status and decided on the changes you will need to implement, you can take the next step.

Defining Your Employer Brand

A strong employer brand will help you position yourself as an employer of choice to attract and retain top talent. Crafting an employer value proposition (EVP) is the foundation of a compelling employer brand. An EVP outlines all the benefits and opportunities that your organization offers its employees, such as competitive compensation, career development, and a supportive work environment. By clearly articulating your company’s EVP, you can differentiate yourself in the job market and attract candidates who share your values and goals.

Source: Mercer

Identifying unique selling points of the company (USP) is a crucial step in defining the employer brand. USP is what sets you apart from competitors. USPs can range from innovative products and services to a commitment to sustainability or diversity and inclusion. By showcasing these distinctive features, you will attract jobseekers whose goals align with yours.

Communicating the company culture and values is the final piece of the employer branding puzzle. This communication can take several forms:

• Social media—share photos, videos, and news about your company and employees’ successes.
• Career website—can be a single landing page on your company website, a microsite, or your profile page on a job board.
• Employee testimonials—these are not always under your control, but they help to provide an authentic and engaging glimpse into your company’s culture.

With your employer branding in place, you are ready to enter the arena and go after that perfect candidate.

Sourcing and Attracting Candidates

Building a successful team starts with sourcing and attracting the right candidates. The first step in that process is identifying the most effective sourcing channels. This may include:

• Traditional job boards.
• Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.
• Employee referrals. 

By leveraging a variety of channels, you can cast a wide net and increase your chances of finding the ideal candidate for the role.

Once you decide where to post your vacancy, it’s time to compose the advertisement in a way that attracts positive attention. A well-crafted job description outlines the key responsibilities, qualifications, and expectations for the role. In addition, a compelling job ad showcases the company’s values, culture, and unique selling points.

Developing an employee referral program can be a highly effective strategy for sourcing talent. While job postings attract active jobseekers, employee referrals let you source both active and passive candidates. Hiring talent from your employees’ personal networks often leads to higher retention rates and better cultural fit.

If you navigated this phase successfully, you now have plenty of applications from qualified candidates to choose from, and it’s time to assess them.

Assessing and Selecting Candidates

Selecting the right candidates is a critical aspect of building a strong team. To ensure the best hiring decisions, organizations should develop a standardized selection process to maintain consistency and fairness in candidate evaluation. There are 3 steps in this process:

1. Screening resumes.
2. Conducting interviews.
3. Administering tests. 

A standardized approach minimizes bias and ensures that all candidates are evaluated on the same criteria, leading to better hiring outcomes.

Testing for Success with Workello

Choosing the right assessment tools is crucial for accurately evaluating candidates’ skills, qualifications, and fit for the role. The 4 most common types of tests are:

1. Personality tests.
2. Behavioral tests.
3. Cognitive tests.
4. Technical skills tests. 

Workello is a powerful yet affordable skills assessment platform that is incredibly easy to use. Workello’s pre-employment tests, created by industry experts, directly measure job-related skills and abilities, which has the highest validity among selection methods. Candidates are seamlessly moved through the recruitment funnel for the best candidate experience. With just one click, you can:

• Send assessments.
• Reject candidates.
• Invite candidates to interviews.
• Extend job offers.

Initially designed as a platform for writing skills assessments, Workello now offers skills assessments for any role, including Marketing, Sales, and Customer Support.

Source: Workello

Diversity Hiring and Final Steps in the Selection Process

In order to foster a diverse and inclusive workplace, you should implement practices such as:

• Blind resume screening.
• Using diverse interview panels.
• Providing diversity and inclusion training for hiring managers. 

By prioritizing diversity in the selection process, your company can benefit from a wide range of perspectives, experiences, and skills, ultimately enhancing creativity and innovation within the team.

A background check is typically conducted in the pre-hire phase after the candidate has been interviewed and considered a potential fit for the position. It helps ensure that the candidate is a suitable fit for the company and has met all necessary requirements before beginning their employment.

Onboarding and Retaining New Hires

After putting in all that effort to land that top candidate, it’s important to provide them with great onboarding. Studies show that over 80% of organizations don’t have a structured onboarding process in place, even though new employees who go through one are 58% more likely to stick around for 3 years. So, let’s not overlook the importance of a solid onboarding program! 

If you focus on aligning onboarding with company values and goals, new hires will be introduced to your organization’s mission, vision, and culture while being provided with essential training and resources. This approach helps new hires feel supported, engaged, and motivated from the start.

Building on this foundation, you should also monitor other factors that will help you retain top talent. Dysfunctional turnover occurs when your high-performing employees leave at higher rates than your weaker staff. You can prevent this by identifying factors that contribute to it and implementing practices that minimize those risks.

Source: AIHR

Offering ongoing training and development opportunities, such as workshops, mentorship programs, and e-learning courses, is crucial for employee growth and satisfaction. It helps employees expand their skills and advance in their careers.

In addition to fostering professional growth, attractive salaries, comprehensive health benefits, and other perks make up competitive compensation and benefits packages, which are key in attracting and retaining top talent. These offerings demonstrate your commitment to employee well-being and long-term success.

Lastly, creating a positive and inclusive workplace culture will help you retain new hires. By fostering an environment that promotes diversity, open communication, and collaboration, employees will feel valued and included, leading to increased engagement and retention.

Measuring and Refining Recruitment Strategies—The Key to Continuous Improvement

Effective recruitment is an ongoing process that requires constant evaluation and refinement. As the saying goes, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.” That’s why defining key recruitment metrics is essential for understanding the success of your recruitment efforts. These data points help identify areas of strength and weakness and inform future improvements.

Tracking and analyzing recruitment data is crucial for making informed decisions about your talent acquisition strategy. It helps you identify trends and patterns that may influence your recruitment process, either positively or negatively. This analysis will help you improve your overall recruiting process. Continuously refining recruitment strategies based on data and feedback ensures your talent acquisition efforts remain agile and responsive to changing needs. By regularly reviewing and updating your recruitment processes, you can stay ahead of industry trends and maintain a competitive edge in the talent market.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we have explored the importance of developing a recruitment strategy for your company’s success. By analyzing your organization’s needs and defining its brand, you can create a strong employer value proposition that attracts top talent. Sourcing candidates through social networks, job boards, and employee referral programs, and selecting them with the help of the right talent assessment platform ensures that you find the right fit for your team. An effective onboarding plan, coupled with ongoing training and development opportunities, helps retain new hires and foster a positive workplace culture. To measure the success of your recruitment efforts, you should define key metrics, track and analyze data, and refine your strategies based on feedback. Implementing these steps contributes to your company’s overall growth.

By incorporating Workello into your talent acquisition efforts, you can ensure a more efficient and effective approach to recruiting, ultimately leading to a stronger workforce and a more successful business. We already briefly mentioned that it offers templated pre-employment tests designed by industry experts, but it also streamlines your hiring efforts by managing candidate data, filtering applicants, and tracking candidates from various platforms and job boards. In addition, it offers a fully automated hiring funnel, ensuring you don’t miss out on the perfect candidate or accidentally send the wrong communication. At a bargain price, Workello provides the essential tools you need to develop recruitment strategy. Click here to try it for free.