Recruitment: The Background

Recruitment - it’s something that we’ve all heard a lot about lately. With high turnover, HR professionals are looked to continuously to “fill positions”. Ask any HR professional about how much more depth there is to “filling a position” and you’ll get an earful! It’s much more than copying and pasting a job description, posting it online, and then waiting for the flood of candidates to come pouring in. Effective recruitment is an intentional process of consistency, diligence, and follow through. Here are just a few components to consider.

Initial Steps

There are several preparatory steps required prior to ever posting your job opportunity. It’s important that your organization is clear on the need and expectation of this role. To start the process, Human Resources will hold a conversation with the hiring manager. First and foremost, the hiring manager and HR should be clear that the opportunity aligns with organizational strategy and departmental objectives. Once alignment has been confirmed, HR will ask fielding questions to understand the basis of the need. In this case, it’s not uncommon that the hiring manager has an idea of what they want, while HR hears something slightly (or completely) different. For example, the hiring manager may feel as though they simply need a new hire to replace the person who just left the organization. It is the responsibility of HR to work collaboratively with the hiring manager to determine departmental needs to date. In doing so, it could possibly be discovered that today’s departmental needs no longer require yesterday’s focus. Thus, a new scope of accountabilities will need to be outlined.

Once there is clarity on the actual need, it’s time to move on to the next step: ensuring the competitive advantage. When an opportunity becomes available in an organization, HR is responsible for ensuring competitiveness of salary. This will require an assessment of two kinds: internal and external markets. When posting an opportunity, it’s best to include as much detail as possible, being respectful of both your and the candidate’s time. You will want to be sure to benchmark comparable roles in the external market, while confirming the appropriate range internally (within budget and in alignment with whatever salary bands your organization may have in place). When benchmarking, it’s important that you’re not only looking at the position’s title but at the actual scope of the role.

Human Resources professionals are notorious for being ridged. However, it’s our role to ensure compliance, fairness, and consistency. Based on the determined position, HR should work with the hiring team to determine behavior interview questions that will best position the team to objectively assess viable candidates and determine the right fit for the role, team, organization, and your clients. In addition to developing role-specific interviewing questions, HR should also provide interview coaching. It may seem a bit out of place to include this step here, but it will all make sense later in the process. One of the main reasons why an HR profession would want to coach the hiring team on proper interviewing techniques is so the team will be ready (and confident) to rock and roll once the interviewing process begins. You will want to be sure to answer any questions and clarify any gray areas prior to starting the recruitment process. Of course, additional questions will surely come up later but it’s best to make every attempt to prepare your hiring team as early as possible in the process.

Job Description vs. Job Posting

Now that the need is clear and the team is ready to start conversations, we move on to the actual job posting. Before we delve into that, let’s level set. While these two terms are used interchangeably, it’s important to know the difference between a job posting and a job description. While a job description serves as the basis of the actual job posting, its use is slightly different. As an internal document, a job description will outline the accountabilities of a given position.

As an external document, a job posting will include components of a job description but will have an objective of marketing the position and organization. The job posting will include details that will engage viewers to want to join your dynamic team. Your job posting will list: accountabilities of the role, requirements for the role (experience level, degree, etc.), and your selling points. One debatable topic is whether salary details should be included within the job posting. From my experience, I’ve found it better to be transparent with viable candidates. Nothing is worse than investing time, energy, and excitement into a possibility only to find out that it doesn’t meet one party’s needs (in this case, the candidate’s needs). What do you have to lose by being transparent in this way? In addition to accountabilities of the role, requirements, salary range, etc., you want to be sure to include other pertinent details. Illustrate what it looks like to work in your organization. What makes your organization the best? Why should high performers seek to join your team? What sets you apart? You see, selection is a two-way street; you’re not the only party making a selection.

The Actual Posting

When you’re now in the place where you’re all set up and ready to post your position, you want to be sure to include any DEI programs, plans, and initiatives your organization may have in place. Side note: while recruitment may not be the most opportune time, you will (at some point) want to be sure that your company’s Careers page highlights DEI. Perhaps you can collaborate with your Marketing & Communications team to include images captured during staffing recognition events, holiday parties, birthday celebrations, etc. The bottom line: create a space that highlights your company’s impressive culture!

Proper placement of your job postings can greatly contribute to the time to fill (the time that passes between posting a role and filling it). Failing to place your opportunity in the proper place could cost you a lot of time and quality talent. You may be wondering what I mean when I say proper job placement. You think, “why not place it on Indeed and wait to see what we get?”. Well, it’s not that easy, especially in today’s market. When you’re looking for niche talent (i.e., Executive professionals, Administrative professionals, Fiscal professionals, Marketing & Communications professionals, IT professionals, HR professionals, etc.), then you want to be sure to go to those niche sites first. What if you’re only looking for a part-time or seasonal role? Did you know there are niche job boards for those, too? You want to stay clear of those sites that make it all too easy for genuinely uninterested and/or uncommitted talent to apply for your opportunity, as the volume of responses are unending and it takes up much more time that you have to spare. Looking to fill an entry-level role? Why not connect with your local colleges and universities?

Ok so proper job posting placement is important but so is networking! Networking is so much more effective than words on a screen. Because of this, network is a process that should come natural to all HR professionals. However, episodic networking isn’t sufficient. Through consistent networking, HR professionals maintain a close pulse on what’s going on in their field and in organizations around them. Having this knowledge allows us to maintain contact with countless professionals who know someone who knows someone who could be a possible fit for whatever role we’re attempting to fill. Not sure where to start networking? Give LinkedIn and other local and national HR roundtables a try!