The Phases of the Recruitment Process: Attraction, Selection, Onboarding, Analysis
Doing Recruitment and Talent Acquisition isn’t easy. To be successful and regularly find the right candidates it’s important to create an integrated process: single actions or tactics in recruiting don’t lead to an effective Talent Acquisition strategy.
An integrated recruitment process comprises different phases, here we analyse the four key phases of the recruitment funnel.
1. ATTRACTION
The first phase of the recruiting process is aimed at capturing the attention of the candidate and beginning to positively influence their perception of your company (Employer Branding), so as to encourage a spontaneous application or an application in response to a job ad.
Using recruiting software (its technical name is “Applicant Tracking Software – ATS”) you can automate many elements of the Attraction phase: you can easily create an integrated, centralised CV database on a Career page, you can automatically publish job ads on several Job boards, and you can manage the social recruitment operations.
2. SELECTION
Once you’ve received the application it’s important not waste time on the screening phase: a company can receive an average of 250 CVs for an open vacancy (Google received over 75,000 per week!) so it is important to master the search functions of your CV database. It is also crucial to effectively manage the relationship with the candidate: according to research, 58% of candidates rate their experience as negative precisely because of the lack of feedback from a company (Source: Visibility).
With recruitment software, a recruiter can quickly filter out the applications using filters and advanced search features. You can also manage the entire process in collaboration with the recruiting team and any line managers. Finally, the software can automatically send feedback to applicants, so as to improve their overall experience and perspective of your company. Recruiting software can help you reduce the non-relevant applications by 75% (Source: CareerBuilder).
3. ONBOARDING
Onboarding is the last step of the recruiting process but it’s still really important. Data show that the first six months are critical in determining whether the employee will remain in the company or leave after a short time (it’s estimated that less than a third of new employees are satisfied with the onboarding phase and that after two years one-third of new hires have changed jobs).
With recruitment software such as In-recruiting, your company has the ability to set all the activities (training and otherwise) that are needed to bring a new employee up to full competence. With the new generation of ATS, it is also possible to export all the data relating to a candidate and transfer it over to your HR management platform.
4. ANALYSIS
A major objective of the whole recruitment team is to minimise the time required to find the right candidate for the company. To affect this variable you need to track and measure the data relating to this very process. For example the number of applications, the sources and channels of CVs, the time to hire, the cost to hire and the ROI of the whole process.
Using a centralised recruitment platform such as an ATS allows you to track all the data of the recruitment process. In this way, a recruiter can monitor the progress of the selections, map their processes and gradually make improvements, but most significantly you will be able to make decisions based on evidence and data to plan your future investments with greater confidence.