Effective 7 Step Recruitment Strategy Plan To Hire Crème De La Crème

While some organisations are trapped in the repercussions of The Great Resignation, others are preparing for opportunities of The Great Revival.

After unforeseen challenges of the pandemic, most organisations are trying to attract and acquire talents with a creative recruitment strategy plan.

Be it posting attractive job descriptions, offering virtual office tours in interviews, or building interactive communication channels, recruiters are trying everything.

In case you are aiming for better talent acquisition and less candidate ghosting, this blog will brief you:

• What is Recruitment Strategy Plan
1. Components of Recruitment Strategy Plan
2. Benefits of Recruitment Strategies
• Types of Recruitment Methodst
• Step-by-Step Process for Creating a Recruitment Strategy
• How to Make Recruitment Strategies Effective
• Final Words

What is a Recruitment Strategy Plan?

A recruitment strategy is What, Why, When and How of the hiring plan, i.e.

• On ‘What’ position or roles hiring will be done
• ‘Why’ candidates are hired, or the goals need to be fulfilled by them
• ‘When’ will hiring start and end or dedicated duration
• ‘How’ defines the descriptive process of hiring plan

Components of Creative Recruitment Strategy Plan

For preparing a creative recruitment strategy Plan, following components must be considered-

• Growth Plans: Job seekers must be screened and selected as per the growth plans of the organisation. Goals could be anything from increasing sales to improving support
• Employer Brand: Glassdoor reports that 70% of people look at reviews before they make career decisions. Thus, positioning the brand digitally by requesting employees to share reviews to recruit the best fit for your company is necessary
• Timeline: For measurable TAT, timelines must be pre-decided. Additionally, time dedicated to each process of recruitment must be mentioned at earlier stage
• Budget: From advertising to final offer letter, every cost incurred must be calculated and decided to avoid any budget-related conflict 
• Target Audience: Be it creating job descriptions or sending JDs for captivating potential candidates, everything must be aligned as per behaviour of TGs
• Marketing Plan: Candidates sourcing to welcoming the new joinee, every step is included in marketing plan related to recruitment that could position your rand positively
• Selection Process: Be it about the number of rounds, dedicating recruiter or template of the final offer letter, the selection process must be discussed and structured

Types of Recruitment Methods

Different organisations prefer different recruitment methods depending upon their growth plans, budget, timeline and other components.

Let us brief you on some commonly used recruitment methods: 

1. Direct Advertising: Career sites, social media portals and related industrial publications are used for job advertisements and captivating the interests of potential candidates
2. Employee Referrals: Offering a referral bonus to employees after their recommended candidate is hired is one internal recruitment method
3. Boomerang Employees: Methods to bring back employees who have left the company for any xyz reasons by offering them additional benefits
4. Recruitment Agencies: Hire third-party recruitment agencies, consultancy firms, or job boards to source candidates and screen them at the initial stage
5. Internships and Apprenticeships: Offer internships to freshers, and people, seeking to reshuffle career backgrounds and summer programs to fill gaps.

There are other recruitment methods categorised under external and internal. However, the strategies mentioned above are majorly deployed by industries.

7 Easy Steps For Creating a Creative Recruitment Strategy Plan

Writing a recruitment strategy plan is not an easy task. 

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail. –  Benjamin Franklin

Being an HR professional, you need to research, discover challenges, list your priorities, analyse your competitors’ teams and then create your creative recruitment strategy.

Here, we will provide you with a step-by-step guide to recruiting a creative talent:

Step 1: Define GOALS before starting the recruitment process

The trouble with not having a goal is that you can spend your life running up and down the field and never score.

Bill Copeland

Defining goals beforehand won’t only save your time but make your recruitment process more smooth and streamlined too. It would also help you manage resources, energy, and cost optimally.  

Here are a few quick tips that can assist in creating goals for an improved recruitment process-

• Create goals to accommodate enough screening time for understanding candidates and reduce new hire failure rates
• Stay organised and keep up the speed of the recruitment process as per defined goals
• Discuss case studies of competitors and top leaders to inspire and make each stage work successfully
• Consider employer branding for steady positioning of your brand as one of your goals

Step 2: Discuss Each Step in Detail for SELECTION Process 

Every process requires a step-by-step approach to be effective. So do the recruiting process.

Here are a few tips you should consider while discussing selection methods:

• Roadmap every step and create checklists to improve effectiveness
• Share resources, drive links or any other document related to the selection process with concerned persons
• Communication channel, tone, and frequency involved in the selection process must be clarified in the initial stages

Step 3: Clarify Candidate SOURCING Strategies for both Active and Passive Candidates

Candidate sourcing refers to identify top talents who best matches the relevant skills, competency and other qualifications required for opened positions.

Here are a few tips to carefully identify candidates or sourcing candidates:

• Organise candidate details along with work samples to compare relevant skills and work experience carefully
• Create a document clarifying networks to be exploited for posting ads, ways to approach active and passive candidates, content or pitch required for sourcing
• Keep yourself coordinated with hiring managers to leave no space for the discrepancy and hiring best talent

Step 4: Create Job ADVERTISEMENTS to Invite Candidates

Job advertisements are for leaving the best first impression in potential candidates’ minds. It is an opportunity in the form of an invitation to introduce company culture to them and set up the right expectations.

Job ads basically contain the information related to roles and responsibilities required, skills relevant to the job, expectations and offerings by the organisation. It is a well-crafted informational and creative piece meant for recruiting candidates.

Here are a few tips you must consider while preparing creative job ads: 

• Make them as attractive as you can without losing the clarity of your expectations
• Clearly define your work culture, additional benefits offered in the company, and a little bit about team members
• Any format can suit your JD- be it video, infographic, excel sheet, video game- so don’t restrict yourself to traditional formats
• Leave eye-catchy pointers or images or anything that can attract potential candidates

Step 5: Consider SCREENING Process to Select Relevant Candidates

Candidate screening is nothing but the process to filter candidates at each stage and finalise few to onboard based on defined criteria.

Making mistakes in shortlisting resumes, skill assessment tests, interviewing and other rounds of the process is quite common.

To reduce the rate of those mistakes, let’s offer you a few tips:

• Have an eye for detail at each stage, starting from shortlisting candidates on the basis of their resumes and work samples (Don’t even let unintentional biasness intrude)
• Create checklists, test questions, rounds to analyse the competency of candidates and even the questions for SWOT analysis for better screening
• Optimisation of each stage is necessary for which you have to pre-define parameters to consider candidates for further process
• Implement intelligent tools to your system to automate regular workflows so that you can spare maximum time in strategic decision making 

Step 6: Structure Interview Process to Reduce Turnaround Time

Interview process varies from in-process to panel discussion to video interview depending upon the convenience of both candidates and recruiters.

The interview process must be structured, pre-planned, and flexible, and every question or test must be attached with some goal or quality to explore.

Here are a few quicks tips to make the most of your interview process-

• Maintain your tone, pitch and language, no matter how blunt candidates get with their opinions
• Avoid making candidates nervous; rather, make them feel comfortable with initial questions related to their interests or achievements
• “Magic” questions in interviews might add thrill or spice up the process, but they won’t lead you anywhere, so try asking relevant questions
• Leave the space for candidates to ask questions, share feedback and take their own time to open up formally

Linkedin post: How can Recruiter Plan Interviews Better?

Step 7: Finalise CLOSING Stage for both Selected and Non-Selected Candidates

The closing of the recruitment process can be either in the form- if you finalise the candidate, you will end up negotiating and rolling out the offer letter. 

And if candidates are not selected, then their information will be stored in your database, and you will further end up requesting feedback.

In both cases, you need to take care of the following points for closing recruitment:

• If you really want to hire any candidate, make every effort and support them with evidence like employee testimonial videos, offerings and more
• Unreasonable objections and negotiations while discussing final offer must be avoided in any case. You could use the hedgehog method to do the same
• FOMO must not affect the quality of candidates, budget and other resources of the organisation
• Even if candidates reject your offer, handle them gracefully, know their pain points and re-evaluate your process

For further assist you, we have created a creative recruitment strategy plan sample for you:

How To Make Recruitment Strategies Effective

“Since the start of this year, the country’s hiring activity has shown an upward growth trajectory, which observed a +22% y-o-y growth in June 2022.”Naukri JobSpeak Index

To be the impactful part of countrywide hiring activity and make your recruitment strategies effective, you can abide by the following tips:

1. Job advertisements (emails, Linkedin posts, recruitment video, etc.) which are meant for potential candidates must truly reflect the brand’s message. Willing candidates, in any case, must not reflect back after analysing the language, job descriptions or anything else in ad

2. Utilise automated systems to reduce manual intervention and turnaround time. Be it publishing about job openings, screening candidates, sending emails for status updates or reminding candidates at each stage of the process, deploy complete HCM in your system to automate most processes

3. Prioritize your company’s culture, values, mission and vision while formulating a recruitment strategy plan. This practice would help you recruit candidates who can best cater for your needs and adapt to the culture of your organisation

4. Keep evaluating and redefining your recruitment plans as per the feedback of candidates, turnaround time and your recruiters’ experiences. Additionally, learn from your competitors’ mistakes

Final Words

The hiring rate in India is at an all-time high. HR technology-based intelligent tools are coming to the rescue for making recruitment timely and effective. Either an organisation must create a recruitment strategy for bulk hiring or a few candidates; these intelligent tools won’t be less than a magical wand.

Leaders have agreed that the future of recruitment will be full of surprises and innovative applications. These applications won’t only automate your routine tasks and simplify your interactions.

Keep visiting to learn more about creative recruitment strategy plans and other HR processes!