6 Steps Every Business Should Follow for Full-Cycle Recruiting
Publié le 6 February 2024
Find the right person for any job by following the 6 steps every business should follow for full-cycle recruiting.
The perfect candidate doesn’t just fall on your lap. Worse still, the Great Resignation of 2021 exposed a shortage of critical talent, with employers still struggling to fill open positions despite strong demand for labor.
Add the different values and work attitudes of Gen Z job seekers to this mix, and businesses are realizing they must revamp their hiring process to attract and retain top talent.
No wonder 45% of HR departments will increase their recruitment budget to meet hiring needs.
Nowadays, you need to find ways to stand out to get top talent. One of the best ways to acquire quality candidates is via full-cycle recruiting.
What Is Full-Cycle Recruiting?
Full-cycle recruiting (also known as 360 or end-to-end recruiting) is a holistic recruitment process that sees HR specialists manage talent acquisition, from sourcing to onboarding.
The end-to-end recruiting process looks different depending on the size of your company. Small businesses usually have a single person to oversee the entire recruitment process. A medium-sized organization will have a team of HR professionals do this. Larger companies might have a hiring team dedicated to each recruitment stage, with oversight from the full-cycle recruiter.
The goal is a coordinated approach to sourcing and acquiring potential employees. That way, you fill open positions quickly and efficiently with the most qualified person for the job.
The benefits of end-to-end recruiting are:
- Increased accountability. Having one person in charge of the entire hiring process means no gray area. You know who is responsible, keeping them accountable.
- Decreased time-to-hire. The sooner you fill job postings, the better. It’s hard enough to find quality candidates. You can’t afford to make them wait months before they hear back from you. The 360 recruiting process reduces delays and unnecessary bottlenecks, improving recruiting efficiency.
- Improved candidate experience. A faster time-to-hire isn’t just good for business; it provides a positive candidate experience. Furthermore, a single point of contact helps you develop meaningful relationships with potential employees.
- Quality candidate pool. Improving the overall quality of candidates is the number one priority for 61% of HR decision-makers. Decreased hiring time and better recruitment experiences mean businesses have a higher chance of landing qualified candidates.
- Cost-effective. Companies with limited budgets can lower costs by eliminating specialized HR roles.
Naturally, there are challenges to end-to-end recruiting. A single recruiter may make decisions faster, but what happens when they fall sick, go on vacation, or leave the company? This person must also master different skill sets to source, vet, and onboard new hires successfully.
As the business scales up, it becomes challenging for one person to handle all these responsibilities.
We recommend having at least a backup full-cycle recruiter to mitigate these disadvantages. Larger organizations will, of course, have a team to ensure no delays.
There are also HR tools that can accelerate the 360 recruitment cycle. For instance, a time schedule template can help recruiters organize candidate interviews. Other recruitment software you can leverage are sourcing tools, an applicant tracking system (ATS), talent branding websites, and a Human Resource Information System (HRIS).
6 Steps of Full-Cycle Recruiting for Your Business
The full-cycle recruiting approach involves six stages that work together to ensure you acquire qualified candidates for your business.
1. Pre-Recruitment Planning
Full life cycle recruiters work with key stakeholders to outline the ideal candidate’s qualifications. But before that, talent acquisition specialists must analyze current human resources and identify a hiring need. For example, do you need additional personnel, or is there technology that can fill the gap?
If you’ve identified a need to hire, you should create a recruitment plan to streamline your efforts. Your plan should outline timelines, costs, and specific activities. Your recruitment goals should be included, as well. They determine whether you hire a full-time employee or work with a freelancer.
Specify your hiring budget as well. In addition to in-house HR salaries, it should cover sourcing, screening, and onboarding costs. Sourcing costs include employer branding, job advertising, and recruitment tools. Screening costs include travel reimbursement for potential candidates and background checks. Onboarding costs include new equipment and welcome packets.
A bad hire can cost up to 30% of the employee’s potential first-year earnings. So, spend time crafting the ideal candidate persona as well. Work with the hiring manager to outline the position status, qualifications, responsibilities, desired skills (hard and soft), and compensation.
In addition to duties and required competencies, this job description outlines several benefits of the position, including equity.
Early alignment with hiring managers ensures the full-cycle recruitment process is successful, saving the business time and money.
2. Sourcing Candidates
With a job description laid out, you can source potential employees that match your candidate profile. Various methods for finding qualified candidates include career fairs, job boards, sourcing platforms, social media, or employee referral programs.
There are two types of job seekers: active and passive.
Active job applicants are looking for a job. They come to you through job postings on employment boards, social media websites, or referrals from current employees. You sift through resumes until you find candidates that match your needs.
Passive applicants aren’t looking for work but may be open to opportunity if it comes up.
Cast a wide net to ensure your talent pool gets enough qualified candidates from active job seekers. However, 73% of job seekers are passive applicants. So, focusing on active applicants alone limits your talent pool to 27%.
Therefore, implement a full-cycle recruiting strategy for passive job seekers as well. Research candidates with the skills you’re looking for and invite them to apply. Sometimes, this means revisiting past applications or hiring internally. Existing employees understand your company’s values and culture and simplify the onboarding process.
3. Screening and Interviewing
The next of the 6 steps every business should follow for full-cycle recruiting is screening. The goal is to reduce interested candidates to a shortlist of five to ten people.
Candidate screening occurs in different ways. The most common method is CV/resume screening. Here, the full-cycle recruiter reviews CVs and other relevant materials to see if applicants meet the criteria outlined in the job description. It can be a long and tedious task. So, to accelerate the process, screening tools scan resumes for targeted keywords and select qualified candidates.
Here’s another common screening technique: pre-employment assessment tests. These include job knowledge, cognitive, emotional intelligence, and personality testing. The goal is to ensure quality hires by aligning expectations between candidates and the company.
Below is an example of a job knowledge test for bank teller position:
The questions are role-specific so recruiting specialists can screen out candidates who copy/paste job descriptions onto their resumes. It also allows applicants to visualize various scenarios in their day-to-day work life.
Other screening methods are chatbot or phone screens and on-demand interviews. Whatever pre-employment test you give, should you decide to give one, make sure you give all applicants a copy of their test results. You should find their email addresses in their resumes or CVs. If you don’t, don’t worry. There are tools you can use to find email addresses easily.
Once you have a final list of suitable candidates, move on to job interviews. There’s a greater focus on the candidate’s skills here. Hiring managers participate at this stage. To ensure the interview process is productive and consistent, create an interview guide and share it with the panel.
The interview guide organizes how you conduct interviews, from the welcome to the wrap-up. Most importantly, standardized interviews allow interviewers to compare candidates accurately and fairly. Encourage each interviewer to score candidates during or just after the interview.
Asking the right question is pivotal to extracting pertinent information from job seekers. That’s where the STAR method comes in. STAR stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result. It allows the interviewee to provide contextual answers.
Assume you’re interviewing a candidate for an in-store customer service role. If you want to know how they would handle a demanding customer, do the following:
- Describe an incident – Situation
- Describe their responsibility in that situation – Task
- Ask them what they’d do to manage the incident – Action
- Share the outcomes of that action – Result
With this strategy, you can get a good idea of their competencies.
4. Background Assessment and Final Selection
The interview guide mentioned in the previous section helps at this point of the 360 recruitment cycle. Simply select the top three choices to forward for reference and background checks.
Reference checks verify that the information candidates share is factual. It involves contacting previous employers or schools to learn more about the applicant’s background. It also gives employers another perspective.
Background checks help identify potential employees who may be legal or financial threats to the organization. Industries like banking, education, government, and healthcare require these checks.
Tools like Checkmate automate checks on candidates’ employment history, criminal records, credit scores, and more.
Check out the referee report below.
The software verifies referee information and highlights critical responses.
At this stage, the hiring manager makes the final decision. The talent specialist then communicates that decision with candidates.
Rejection letters are unpleasant to write and receive. However, giving feedback shows candidates you value their interest and time. It also improves the candidate experience and your employer brand.
5. Offer and Negotiation
This stage is straightforward when hiring for entry-level positions or if the salary is stated in the job description or discussed during the interview. You essentially offer a formal job offer. The candidate accepts.
However, it becomes complicated when dealing with managerial positions or passive candidates. These candidates are more likely to be vocal about what they want. Mind you, you’re bound to come across these types of applicants. Just look at the stats. A Fidelity study showed that 58% of young professionals accept job offers without negotiating. That means there’s that remaining 42% who don’t.
Hopefully, you’ve conducted market and competitor research to ensure your offer is fair. Candidates who negotiate their salaries often cite research from sites like PayScale in their counteroffer. If your pay scale falls below market value, make up the shortfall with employee benefits such as work flexibility, equity, or performance bonuses.
Note that some prospective employees value salary less than factors such as company culture or growth opportunities. For instance, a candidate may choose to work for Google over an unknown company even if they receive less money. In this case, you can leverage your brand value and highlight professional development opportunities in the negotiations.
6. Onboarding
The full-life recruiting cycle doesn’t end when applicants sign their employee contracts. The full-cycle recruiter leads in orienting the new hire to the company.
Onboarding activities may include a tour of the facilities, introductions to key staff members, welcome videos, and training programs. New hires also need access to relevant business software or security points.
Videos discussing core values, like this one from Netflix, give new hires valuable insight into company culture that will help them assimilate and thrive within the organization.
It’s crucial to start onboarding before the new hire’s first day. Engaging them earlier minimizes the risk of them joining another company. You can share the employee handbook or welcome video and get them excited about working for you. Use onboarding software as well. It streamlines the process, ensuring every new employee receives the same great experience.
As a final tip, make sure you sustain this employee engagement throughout their stay. So, hold team-building activities, check up on them whenever you can, and use employee recognition platforms to reward them for their hard work. The goal is to make them feel like they belong. So when the company becomes a part of who they are, it becomes harder for them to leave.
In Closing
Good workers are hard to find. By leveraging 360 recruiting, you can ensure you’re hiring the best candidates. Each phase enables you to make informed staffing decisions, resulting in increased employee satisfaction, improved brand reputation, and cost savings.
The benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and while full-cycle recruiting can be time-consuming, several tools can accelerate the process.
After each recruitment life cycle, conduct a post-hiring assessment. It allows you to evaluate and recalibrate each step so you hire more outstanding employees. By using the 6 steps every business should follow for full-cycle recruiting, organizations can meet their hiring goals and find the right people for the job.
