What is Recruitment?

Big goals are rarely achieved alone. The bigger they are, the more professional and ambitious the team should be. Because people is the main active resource and driving force of any organization. We can see evidence of this in world politics, powerful public organizations, various subcultures and, of course, in business.

Recruitment meaning

All the processes of expanding/reducing/renewing the staff, changing its structure is always closely linked with other business processes in the company. As a consequence, there are always new or vacant positions for which you need to quickly find the professionals. Sometimes this is a very difficult task, and that is why many companies have departments that specialize in finding and recruiting staff, i.e. recruiting.

Recruitment definition

Recruiting is a complex of measures on attracting the necessary staff in the organization. Finding good specialists on the labor market and convincing them to work for this particular company is the main goal for specialists in this business area (art, to some extent).

The main tasks of recruiting

Recruiters may be on staff or outside of the company, such as at a recruitment agency. Nevertheless, recruiters’ main daily tasks are usually as follows:

• Collecting and updating information about current open positions in the company. Recruiters should understand exactly whom to look for, what requirements and preferences employers (so-called “customers”) have, and negotiate with them.
• Dissemination of information about the company and its vacancies in the public environment: various specialized websites and other information resources. It is important to present the company and position in the best possible light, creating a successful, positive HR-brand.
• Independent search for candidates by all possible means. Here, everything depends on the recruiter’s experience and skills, often even on their ingenuity.
• Gathering a database of candidates and a thorough pre-screening of candidates according to established criteria. This includes processing resumes, calls, correspondence, and even face-to-face meetings.
• Ensuring there are enough candidates who are ready for final interviews. Coordinating and conducting these interviews. Different candidates, different customers. Pleasing two parties at the same time is a difficult task.
• Getting feedback, agreeing on choices and terms, additional negotiations. It can take weeks to get a final “Yes” or “No” from the customer or candidate.
• Hiring and onboarding. Organizing and assisting the new employee who starts to work (documentation, workplace, business contacts, etc.).

In order to handle all of these tasks quickly and efficiently, it is important for a recruiter to have high communication skills, be able to withstand stress, meet deadlines, and be prepared for routine work. To minimize routines and improve performance, recruiting automation with specialized systems such as ATS Cleverstaff is increasingly being used.

Provision of an effective full cycle of recruiting is the main task of recruitment specialists. But recruiting does not end there. As they develop professionally, recruiters can be involved in many processes in the company as consultants and as important business decision makers regarding personnel policy, strategy and employee development.

Types of recruiting

Depending on the complexity and specifics of the vacancies, the following types of recruiting are distinguished:

• Linear recruiting – a relatively quick search for employees for low- and mid-level positions. Usually these are common jobs that do not require very high qualifications. Mass recruiting can be singled out as a separate direction here – quick filling of a large number of vacancies for line personnel, for example, when a branch opens in a new region.
• Management selection – to find highly qualified specialists, beginner-level and middle-level managers.
• Executive search – search for specialists and executives, and top managers.
• Headhunting is a search of a specialist with definite professional skills, as a rule in competitor companies.

Every next level of complexity of a vacancy is a new professional challenge for a recruiter, only the most experienced and capable professionals can effectively cope with the search for top managers and headhunting.

The search is divided into external (via job sites, social networks, etc.) and internal recruiting. In the second case candidates are selected among the company’s employees – they are promoted or transferred from other divisions. The most complicated in this aspect is international recruiting – searching, selecting and hiring high-level specialists in other countries, including relocation.
There are a large number of different recruitment techniques and methods. They often depend on the sources of the search for candidates, of which the main ones are:

• Digital recruiting, online recruiting is a way to search for and select candidates by means of open sources. The main advantage of online recruiting is the huge number of candidates, since most job seekers are also looking for vacancies in the Internet.
• Referral or recommendation recruiting is no less effective than digital recruiting, because the search circle is also quite wide, but there is more information about candidates by default (colleagues, acquaintances, friends).
• Screening is used for superficial monitoring of the market in order to hire people for the least qualified positions, with the minimum number of requirements with a high employee turnover.

A recruiter may be an expert at working with only a certain source, but being familiar with all other types (at least in theory), it is very useful for complex non-trivial tasks.

Who is involved in recruiting in a company?

The recruiting process in companies is conducted differently, depending on the size of the company, its structure and areas of responsibility of various departments. Most often the following persons are involved in the personnel recruitment: 

• Professional recruiters. They are focused directly on the systematic attraction of new employees and perform the full cycle of recruiting for the search, selection and recruitment of candidates.
• HR managers can also engage in recruiting, but in recent years these employees are more focused on human resources tasks – new employee onboarding process, team building, improvement of employee performance, etc.
• Owners and business unit managers. This scenario is more common among young companies with few employees and open vacancies.

Recruiters work closely with HR managers, who, in turn, are more specialized in organizing and developing employees within the company. Recruiting and HR departments in companies can be either combined or exist separately – everything depends on a company’s personnel policy.

Why is professional recruiting important for business?

Good employees in the right place can grow a business to unprecedented heights, from a small company to an international corporation – there are a lot of successful examples in history. On the contrary, an incompetent employee can lead a company to very serious problems, sometimes even collapse. Absence of a necessary employee leads to loss of profit, inactivity of an inefficient employee leads to standstill and the subsequent stagnation of business processes.

In addition, today, many companies face various challenges, such as labor migration, shortages of professionals, generational differences, employer brand building, etc. Recruiters who track these trends have a much better chance of success, because recruiting is a complex process that requires appropriate professional qualities and skills.
Recruiting is not only specialists, but also a well-built system of recruitment and analytics: successful recruiters know their tasks, monitor their efficiency, speed of work, skillfully prioritize and use available resources. By improving their personal performance, they improve the efficiency of the business as a whole.
Only professional recruiters can effectively form the image of an employer in the labor market, show candidates a company where highly qualified specialists will sincerely want to work… And make these specialists a great offer.