How to Master the Recruiting Life Cycle

Hiring a new employee isn’t as straightforward as posting a job description and interviewing candidates. It is, in fact, an entire process, known as full cycle recruiting. The full cycle recruitment process begins when an organization needs to fill a position and ends with onboarding the new hire.

According to a report by the Society of Human Resource Management, it takes businesses, on average, 36 days to hire a new employee. And in some cases, the entire process can take months.

In addition, a rising attrition rate has made the job market tougher than ever, hitting small- and medium-sized businesses particularly hard. However, with a strategic approach to full cycle recruiting, companies can get a better return on investment when it comes to managing talent.

In the full life cycle recruiting — also known as end-to-end recruiting or 360 recruitment — a single (HR) person oversees the entire process, has complete control over it and is ultimately responsible for its success or failure. This benefits the candidates as well, because they have a single point of contact throughout the hiring process, which simplifies communication and optimizes relationships. Therefore, end-to-end recruiting results in an improved experience for the candidates, faster and better hires, cost savings, increased retention and heightened job satisfaction.

Following are five key benefits of full cycle recruiting:

A Streamlined Strategy: End-to-end recruiting allows for a more streamlined approach. The recruiter is better set up for the success of the recruiting process, as they have a much greater sense of control throughout the process and can move at their own pace with each role that they are filling. Greater flexibility also increases the probability of faster and more qualified recruits.

Increased Accountability: The recruiting cycle can be a long and complicated process, and can cause confusion when different steps of the hiring process are handled by different people. However, when only one person is in charge of the entire process, it eliminates the confusion over who is responsible for which part, as well as the need to wait for others to move ahead with a position. It also provides clarity on the plan of action from start to finish.

Improved Candidate Experience: A good candidate experience not only makes recruiting easier and faster, it also enhances employer branding, which can lead to business growth. Because the applicant has a single point of contact throughout the recruiting process, communication becomes easier and smoother.

Faster Hiring: Vacant jobs can cost businesses money. In fact, they can cost an organization as much as $23,000 per vacant position — this number can be higher depending on the level of a role. Hence, lowering the time to fill a vacant position is critical, especially for small- and medium-sized businesses. And with only one person taking care of the entire hiring process, many tasks such as creating a compelling job post containing creative and specific job descriptions, reaching out to candidates, conducting interviews and making offers can happen a lot more smoothly.

Improved Quality of Hires: Finding qualified candidates is one of the toughest challenges recruiting managers face. With full cycle recruiting, they can make the process more thorough and personalized by testing the candidates’ skills, which can help them land qualified candidates who will, most likely, end up being the right cultural fit for the company.

The Entire Recruiting Life Cycle in Six Steps

To ensure that hired candidates are qualified enough to make effective contributions to an organization in the long run, it’s essential for recruiters to go through all the stages of the recruitment life cycle. By taking the end-to-end approach, they are more likely to place the right people in the right jobs.

Here are the steps to create an effective, total-solution recruitment process:

Step 1: Workforce Planning and Preparation: The full cycle recruiting process begins with workforce planning, evaluating the needs of the company and identifying the right skills, tasks and the type of people required to meet them.

Tips for Recruiters:

• Roles evolve, as do the people doing them; so always create new job descriptions for new openings.
• Sit down with hiring managers and department heads to define the job in detail. Ask them to break down the requirements and responsibilities.
• Don’t forget to discuss any budgetary constraints with them.
• Include salary range, benefits, perks, corporate culture and values in the job listing.
• Before posting the job description, make sure that all stakeholders sign off on it.
• Use employment analytics (a system of tracking and measuring employee performance) to evaluate how well you’re leveraging talent, including such data as turnover rates, employee retention and productivity levels.

Step 2: Sourcing: The second step includes finding interested and qualified candidates for a particular position — these can either be active candidates (those actively looking a job) or passive candidates (those not actively seeking a job, but who may be interested in an open position).

There are two standard ways of sourcing candidates: internal and external. Internal candidates can come through employee referrals or they can be existing employees who could fill the current position. However, external candidates can come from job boards, job fairs, company websites and social media platforms (such as LinkedIn), among other sources.

Tips for Recruiters:

• Ask for referrals. According to Recruiter.com, employee referral programs can save businesses $3,000 or more per hire. Encourage current employees to share job postings within their networks and refer candidates.
• Develop a talent pipeline all year round.
• Social media platforms can be great sources of finding passive candidates. Use sites like LinkedIn, Meetup.com, Facebook and Twitter to identify and get in touch with potential candidates. However, it’s important to understand which platforms the type of candidates you are looking for are more likely to use.
• In addition to writing a new job description for every role, every time, come up with a description that will make people want to respond. It should neither be too detailed and serious, nor should it be too casual.

Step 3: Screening: Now is the time to narrow applicants down to a short list of qualified contenders. Recruiters typically review job applications and use selection techniques, including phone screening, face-to-face interviews and reference-checking, to assess candidates.

Tips for Recruiters:

• Choose online interviews (using platforms like Google Hangouts or Zoom) over in-person ones to save time.
• Hiring managers and recruiters typically spend 23 hours screening resumes each time they have to hire someone, according to Ideal.com. One possible solution to save time is to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) software for screening resumes. When combined with an applicant tracking system, the AI system can detect patterns in past hiring decisions, integrate that with information from the job description and use this knowledge to rank, grade and screen applicants. The system can also be used to ignore such demographic information as age, gender and race to reduce human biases.
• Use an application tracking system to handle, track and respond to applications.
• Use pre-employment selection tools such as screening questions and skills assessment tasks.
• Use chatbots to take care of primary screening.

Step 4: Interviewing and Selecting: This is the most important stage in the full cycle recruiting process. Recruiters usually apply tests, conduct in-depth interviews and assign tasks to zero in on the best candidates. This is the time to learn more about the candidates’ qualifications and professional background.

This stage also includes discussions about salary and any contract requirements with the candidates. 

Tips for Recruiters:

• Ask the candidates to work on a paid project and walk you through their thought process. This way they won’t feel exploited if they don’t get the job.
• Keep telephonic interviews short (about 15 to 20 minutes in length). Longer interviews should be done in person if possible.
• Keep the interviews focused on past achievements and future goals to understand how the candidate addressed problems and overcame challenges.
• Use chatbots to help set up interviews with short-listed candidates.
• Video interviewing can be employed in place of face-to-face interviews to save time.
• Avoid revealing confidential details about the company and clients.
• Once the ideal candidate for the role has been selected, check the candidate's references and/or order a background check.

Step 5: Hiring: A smooth hiring process plays an important part in getting the relationship off to a good start. After identifying the best candidate, it’s time for negotiations (about salary and other benefits) and making an offer. The entire hiring team must agree on what the offer should be.

Tips for Recruiters:

• Send the selected candidate a detailed job offer letter mentioning clear hiring terms. This should include detailed information about salary, other benefits, working hours, start date, job location and length of the contract (if applicable).
• Use benchmarks such as compensation surveys to ensure that you’re making a fair and competitive offer.
• Stay in touch with candidates throughout the recruitment process. This is particularly important when a short-listed candidate falls out of the interview process; let them know right away.

Keep in mind that the candidate may reject your offer as they might have accepted an offer from another company. Also, you may have to rescind your offer if you find irregularities in the background checks.

Step 6: Onboarding: This step is critical when it comes to reducing turnover. Sesil Pir, founder and principal consultant with Whirling Chief, says, “Effective onboarding can make or break a new hire."

Onboarding provides the necessary conditions for the new employee to do their best at their new job. Apart from the paperwork, it includes introducing the new hire to the rest of the team, helping them understand how things work and how to navigate their surroundings, and training them on the specific tools and processes they’ll need to do their job well.

Tips for Recruiters:

• Mervyn Dinnen, talent acquisition analyst and co-author of Exceptional Talent, says, “The number one rule for onboarding is to make sure that every new hire knows exactly what is expected of them, how they can be productive and that they are already connected to their new colleagues.”
• Help the new hire understand the company culture. This includes the values, norms and the unwritten rules that create the organization’s identity.
• Make sure that the new employee’s workspace is ready and fully equipped from the first day, with easy access to all the necessary systems and technologies.
• Check in with them regularly to see how they’re doing.
• Connect them with an onboarding partner or buddy who works solely with the new hire for at least the first few weeks.
• Provide continuous learning and development opportunities to employees at all levels.