How to Create an Effective Recruitment Strategy?

Hiring the best talents is a top priority for any organisation, as it aligns a significant portion of its budget for this purpose to achieve the long-term business goals. 

Organisations that successfully hire the most qualified candidates every time have one common factor. Those organisations put in time and effort to develop an effective recruitment strategy and apply it consistently to achieve the best results. 

What is a recruitment strategy plan?

A recruitment strategy is a pre-defined plan for hiring employees. It works as a timeline for organisations to find qualified candidates without causing any downtime.

Simply put, a recruitment strategy identifies the hiring objectives for a specific role. The strategy is a set hiring goal that a company intends to pursue by posting job opportunities and identifying the best talents via screening. 

The hiring strategy is the core framework that HR professionals or third-party recruiters follow to standardise the hiring process within a business.

An organisation’s hiring needs and strategy can vary based on its size, nature of business, and industry. However, one thing that is common in all of them is they want to succeed and grow as a business. To achieve that goal, they need to hire the top talents, which is possible with the right recruitment strategy.

The processes an organisation follows, the places they look for candidates, and the methods they use to attract them depend largely on its business goals and how they operate. 

A business needs to think from a practical point of view when developing a recruitment strategy. Beginning with tried and tested strategies and customising them based on a company’s specific needs can make it work. 

Why is recruitment strategy important?

An effective recruitment strategy proves to be crucial for an organisation as it contributes to developing its unique position in the job market. Companies always want to hire the top talents, and they require the right strategy to do that. 

Candidates often choose one organisation over the others based on several factors, including compensation, benefits, rewards to employees, long-term career growth, employee testimonials, work environment, company culture, etc. 

A smart recruitment strategy gives an organisation edge over its competitors. A unique recruitment approach promotes the creativity of the organisation and builds its USP. 

Such an organisation with an exclusive recruitment strategy is perceived better than others.

• The hiring team analyses the job market and reviews the current resource needs for various positions before starting the recruitment process.

• A company can get qualified candidates without having to spend too much.

• Effective recruitment helps applicants divide into categories of qualified, under-qualified, and over-qualified. This helps in shortlisting people who would be ideal for the position and help the company hire the best applicants.

• Strategic recruitment makes it possible to set up a better-qualified workforce that is aligned with a company’s long-term goals. 

• Hiring people with the right skills and attitudes forms the foundation of an organisation’s workforce, ensuring its success.

What are the main features of an effective recruitment strategy?

Here are the key features of an ideal hiring strategy for the best talent acquisition:

Workforce planning: First, a company needs to assess how many employees it needs to hire for optimal operation. It is also called “workforce planning,” which helps the recruiter create a hiring strategy. 

Recruiter alignment: An organisation needs to align recruiters based on their knowledge, skill sets, and experience, and they should also have well-defined roles in their respective departments. It will increase the chances of hiring the best candidates possible. 

Background check: Not doing reference checks properly can cost a company time, money, and effort. It makes a lot of difference between hiring a qualified, honest, and hardworking candidate and a fraudulent one.

Smart sourcing: The recruiting team should resort to smart sourcing by looking for the best candidates within the company. It is inexpensive and fast to find the right candidates through internal recruitment.  

Employee branding: The brand identity of a company is often more valuable to a candidate than stats or descriptions. Many candidates take personal pride in their employment in a highly reputable organisation. 

Candidate experience: A recruitment strategy should aim to make a candidate’s experience comfortable, clear, and enjoyable during his/her tenure.  

What are the advantages of a recruitment strategy?

The recruitment strategy of an organisation helps it sustain the complex war for talents on the job market. Companies with a defined recruitment strategy have certain advantages.  

A well-organised recruitment process is about having a deep knowledge of competitors in the job market and how to gain a competitive edge. 

Hiring the top available candidates and offering them the best career opportunities is the common strategy. Companies then try to develop a competitive advantage by capitalising on the skills and competencies of those candidates.

Generally, hiring candidates is an expensive process. Many organisations spend a lot of money and effort on hiring talents. Often they do not want to spend time on hiring and use specialised recruitment agencies to find suitable candidates. 

Conversely, organisations with a clear recruitment strategy allocate their recruitment budget to a mix of internal and external hiring to achieve long-term benefits.

An ideal recruitment strategy identifies the missing skills, competencies, and experiences in an organisation. Based on that, in-house HR or a third-party recruitment agency/platform focuses on hiring employees with the desired skill sets. 

A recruitment strategy builds a strong foundation for a business to achieve its hiring goals and long-term company objectives.  

How do you attract talent to a company?

In the post-pandemic era, a company in Malaysia can attract top talents through the following ways:

Provide long-term career opportunities

A company needs to demonstrate to a potential applicant that it genuinely cares about an employee’s career growth and development. There should be a clear commitment to training and development opportunities to cater to career advancement goals.

The company’s EVP should be linked to its purpose 

Candidates look to organisations with a greater purpose beyond making profits. An organisation should ensure its employee value proposition using employee engagement tools, enhancing their experience.

Promoting people internally

Promoting employees within an organisation supports their ongoing career growth. It makes the recruitment process cost-effective through employee retention. 

Creating an inclusive and collaborative work culture

Creating an inclusive work culture by hiring people from diverse communities not only attracts top talents but also develops respect and collaboration among employees. 

Regardless of seniority and rank, employees will feel a sense of ownership of their work and connect themselves to the company’s vision. 

What are the seven steps of recruitment?

Step 1: Preparation for hiring

In the preparation stage, a company defines its ideal candidates and gets ready to search for them. The company needs to consider the skills, education, and experience of potential candidates for an open position.

Step 2: Writing a job posting

Next is writing a detailed job description for an open position, including day-to-day responsibilities. The company should also specify how the job will impact the company’s overall success and helps to fulfil its business goals.  

Step 3: Sourcing candidates 

A company can source if it maintains a database of potential candidates. Besides, the company can also tap into its network, try internal/external job postings, employee referral programs, or hire a recruitment agency. 

Step 4: Screening 

While screening, a company can first drop the candidates who don’t meet basic criteria. For eligible candidates, there could be in-person or phone screening interviews or a work assignment test. 

Step 5: Interviewing

Most recruiters keep a set of tailored interview questions they use based on their industry, nature of business, and department. 

Step 6: Hiring

You can assess factors such as skills, experience, work ethic, punctuality, and poise before hiring a candidate. 

Step 7: Onboarding

After hiring a candidate, it’s important to set expectations on both ends. Discuss salary, benefits, and perks. After finalising those, the formal onboarding process starts.

When to review your recruitment strategy?

Monitoring and analysing the following recruitment KPIs periodically can help recruiters review the existing recruitment strategy.

Time to hire

The time taken to hire is the duration between the start and end of the hiring process. This metric tracks the hiring speed of qualified candidates through the process.

Cost per hire

The cost per hire is a crucial factor for calculating and managing the hiring budget. This metric allows an organisation to figure out the average spending of a company for hiring a new candidate. 

Qualified candidates per opening

A “qualified candidate” is someone who successfully passes the screening process and moves to the next stages of hiring.  

Sourcing channel effectiveness

By using this metric, a recruiter reviews the performance of various sources, such as job portals or social media platforms where they post job openings

Hiring quality

Hiring quality talents is the top consideration on the list performance KPIs for most organisations, as it measures the unique value a candidate brings to them. 

Hiring the best candidates means lower employee turnover, higher productivity, improved work culture, and better success for the company.