If your business is serious about building a high-performing employee base, the first step is to develop a recruitment plan that spans everything from optimised job descriptions to an enhanced selection process.
Nowadays, cyclical recruitment is the norm for many industries, and the complexity of modern recruitment processes means that most businesses invest in Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) to help them manage every element of the hiring process. Let’s take a closer look.
What is a recruitment plan?
When a company has defined its overarching recruitment strategy, the next step is to create the recruitment plan with accompanying budget, targets and deliverables. This plan takes the strategy and breaks it down into a clear delivery plan, defining tasks, owners, timescales and accompanying costs to get everything done. Once the plan is in place, it can be managed and monitored to check everything is being achieved to defined quality standards.
Why is it important to have a recruitment plan?
A strong hiring strategy is only the first step to your recruitment success. If you’re serious about talent sourcing and great-fit future hires with a long-term future at your firm, then you need a hiring plan to translate your vision into deliverables. From assessing the existing recruitment process to investing in a new applicant tracking system, your plan defines how you’ll organise your company resources to achieve your intended talent goals.
How to create a recruitment plan?
Your hiring process may already be fit for purpose – but for many businesses, there will be value in analysing the existing processes, seeking to optimise them for better outcomes and measuring and automating the hiring workflow as much as possible with technology. Whatever the business and industry in which it operates, these are typical steps to follow in devising an effective recruitment plan. We present you with a 7-step guide:
1. Identify your goals
The first step is to understand what is driving your new recruitment plan. To determine the drivers, ask yourself the following questions:
- Do you have a new strategy?
- Do you need to improve your time to hire or quality outputs or other recruitment KPIs?
- Are you seeking to improve the candidate experience as part of a drive to build your employer brand?
- Or are you seeking to strip out unnecessary costs and waste from inefficient offline processes that no longer serve your business and the markets in which it recruits?
For most firms, a combination of these drivers will be present. These objectives will help to guide the focus of the recruitment plan itself.
2. Create a skill gap analysis
Skills gap analysis allows you to see where your organisation currently has collective strengths, knowledge pools and abilities and where it has competency gaps. These skills gaps can then be filled via recruitment or training (or, commonly, both in a blended approach.) This is a company-wide task that will take time, energy and a structured approach to get right, but it’s well worth the time investment.
3. Define the position to hire
Your hiring managers will be able to identify the roles that they expect to come on board in the coming year. Organisational ATS data can flag existing open positions within the firm and cyclical hiring patterns. Managers will have succession plans, expected new roles and typical attrition rates that will provide baseline recruitment needs data. This data is vital to feed into your recruitment success measures and metrics.
4. Establish a budget
Your hiring team will be able to work together to establish existing baseline recruitment budgets using internal and industry benchmark data and then understand what kind of budget will be needed for the period ahead. Recruiting budgets can be greatly affected by the use of agencies, the level of automation involved (and whether an ATS is already in use), existing employee turnover and the speed and efficiency of the business recruitment process.
A slick and effective recruitment process will cost less because it minimises waste and maximises successful hires. A good ATS implementation can greatly help on both fronts whilst providing valuable recruitment data for better management decision-making.
5. Look at recruitment channels
For many modern businesses, recruitment no longer happens on job boards. Today, hiring managers will regularly post jobs on social media platforms and company websites, engage with candidate pools of potential applicants who are nurtured until the right role comes online, and interact with individuals flagged as potential choices for forthcoming roles (especially at higher levels.)
Today’s channels may be heavily online, but they often also involve proactive networking, engagement and communication, especially where more senior and specialist roles are concerned.
6. Assess training needs
Hiring managers need training too! Remember to assign some of your recruitment budget to the training and development needed to help your internal hiring managers follow processes, write effective job posts, use your ATS, interview candidates and make successful job offers.
Offer training on candidate onboarding and employer branding so that everyone in your business knows how to be compliant, work with HR processes, understand recruitment law and see how vital your employer brand and experience are to nurture your external talent pools for future successful hires. The key is to drive knowledge, understanding and consistency within your business – training is a key part of this.
7. Streamline and automate the recruitment process
A fit-for-purpose recruitment strategy and delivery plan must be underpinned by data in today’s business world. So the right Applicant Tracking System is essential to automate and better manage every stage of the recruitment process, from job descriptions and sifting to communications and background checking. A good ATS will vastly speed up your processes by removing waste and manual administration, improve your access to management data, save your business money, and improve your hires’ quality.
Conclusion
In the ever-evolving business landscape, a high-performing workforce is essential for success. Developing a comprehensive recruitment plan spanning optimised job descriptions to a refined selection process is crucial for this. Such a plan is essential to translate hiring strategies into tangible results, and it organises company resources towards achieving talent acquisition goals.
Creating an effective recruitment plan involves several stages. Identifying goals is the initial step, understanding the driving forces behind the recruitment effort, whether it’s enhancing the employer brand, reducing costs, or improving candidate experiences. A skills gap analysis follows to identify organisational competencies and deficiencies. Subsequently, defining the roles to fill, establishing a budget, and considering various recruitment channels are integral parts of the planning process.
Considering the training needs of hiring managers is another crucial aspect of the plan, ensuring that they are equipped with necessary knowledge and skills. Finally, streamlining and automating the recruitment process with technologies like Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) can greatly enhance the efficiency and outcomes of the process. This approach reduces waste, provides valuable management data, saves costs, and improves hire quality. In conclusion, a well-designed recruitment plan can significantly impact an organisation’s capacity to attract, recruit, and retain high-performing employees.
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