Whenever companies are looking for new personnel, they talk about recruiting. But this involves much more than just the effective search for new employees. The preparations, follow-up and evaluation of the collected data are just as much a part of this department. What exactly is involved is covered in this article.
Area of responsibility Recruiting
In short, the main task of a recruiter is to find and hire the perfect employees. Easier said than done, because this involves much more than simply hiring. Once recruiting receives the planning with the staffing needs, the first task is to write a suitable job posting and then publish it. Before publishing, however, it is necessary to consider where the job posting should be published. The company's homepage is always a very good choice. In addition, online job portals, social media and, depending on the target group, print media are also suitable.
If the job posting is appealing, recruiters will receive numerous applications in the days and weeks that follow. In order to make a good impression on the applicants, it is advisable to review the documents promptly and, above all, to provide feedback to the candidate. If there is an interesting application, it is also part of the recruiting task to arrange an interview, prepare it, conduct it and evaluate it at the end. Once the perfect employee has been found, another recruiting task is to negotiate the salary and, if successful, to issue the employment contract.
However, once the contract has been completed, the work is not over. Now it's time to evaluate the right data, draw conclusions from it, and implement it in the next run. You can find out which data you should collect and how to evaluate it correctly afterwards in our blog article "1×1 for recruiters". As a company, it doesn't hurt to make a name for yourself as an attractive employer even before you start looking for new staff. Since this is also part of recruiting, recruiters can organize and participate in job fairs. Employer branding is carried out on site and contact is made with interested parties. Networking is a key element. Especially when a recruiter chooses direct contact via social media to make interesting professionals aware of open positions.
Choosing the right employee
As a recruiter, you naturally want to hire the perfect employees. But what exactly is the procedure?
Preselection: The first step is pre-selection. Here, the recruiting department reviews all applications received and compares them with the requirements from the job posting. The suitable candidates are invited to the next round of applications. All others should now receive a rejection (preferably with reasons).
Selection: This is where all the interviews, tests and assessments take place. Exactly what this process looks like and how long it takes depends on the complexity of your application process. However, you should only make it as long as necessary to ensure a good candidate experience (all the experiences applicants have with the company during the application process). So the communication, the impression the company makes and also the speed of the answers). The selection step lasts until recruiting has made a choice and the new employee wants to accept the job.
Employment contract: The suitable applicant has been found and is ready to sign the contract. After the contract has been drawn up and signed by both parties, it is time to hire.
Setting: From now on, the onboarding process starts. So all the preparations for the first day of work and the introduction on the first day itself.
Tips and tricks
The search for employees is always associated with a (large) cost factor. Another reason why it would be a pity to find out after a few weeks that the newest employee does not fit to the company after all. The complete search would have to start all over again. To prevent this from happening, we have some tips for your recruiting department:
- Soft skills are just as important as hard skills: Professional competencies can be quickly determined thanks to job references and diplomas. But a person's personality is enormously important, especially for later collaboration. Include these aspects just as much in the choice.
- Know the exact requirements for the new employee: To know what exactly the team with the open position is looking for, it pays to create a requirements profile. This makes it much easier for the recruiter to filter out the right profiles.
- Prepare for the interview: The profile of requirements for the candidates can be helpful in thinking about the interview questions. It is also easier to compare applicants later on if they have all answered the same key questions. In addition, it is advisable to practice application interviews in advance.
- Practice-oriented tasks: When applicants undergo an assessment with you, the assignments should be as close as possible to their later tasks. The specialists involved at your company can thus directly determine whether the applicant has the right mindset for your company.
- Do not conduct job interviews alone: This has two advantages. On the one hand, the second person can pay attention to the non-verbal statements and take notes. Secondly, it makes sense if the future supervisor is present. This is because he knows exactly what he is looking for in a new team member and also how the current team is made up.
Closing words
Recruiting involves many small steps, which can be very time-consuming depending on the workload. It is therefore not uncommon for individual tasks to be outsourced - to headhunters, for example. We are headhunting specialists in the fields of construction and real estate, engineering and manufacturing or digitalization and are therefore very familiar with the task area of recruiting. We are happy to support you and your company in these tasks. We look forward to your inquiry!
Do you still need a few arguments why it is worthwhile to work with headhunters? You can find the advantages for your company in our article "Working withheadhunters".