In order to recruit the right candidates, you’ll want to master full life cycle recruiting, and to do so, you’ll need to understand each stage of the process. While each stage is important, there’s a critical first step that you have to get right before moving on to the other stages.
The first stage is the preparing stage, and it’s like doing your homework. You ready your organization to welcome in new and exciting prospects, aligning the people you plan to interview with your team’s goals and values.
But what is involved in the preparing stage of full life cycle recruiting? In this post, we’ll talk about what you need to do to prepare yourself to recruit successfully.
What is full cycle recruiting?
Before we dive into the preparing stage of the process, let’s take a quick look at the stages of full life cycle recruiting. Full life cycle recruiting is a holistic solution that can empower small to medium-sized businesses to hire quality talent without large recruitment teams. It can also make large recruiting teams lean and efficient.
Full cycle recruiting channels an organization’s recruiting capabilities into a process. It allows a single recruiter to facilitate the entire apply-to-hire recruiting cycle.
While different organizations adapt the full cycle recruiting process to their unique needs, it takes place in six general recruiting process steps:
- Preparing: The full cycle recruiter works with the hiring manager to define the needs for the position. This process includes highlighting the problems the organization wants to address, the qualifications of an ideal applicant, and the job duties.
- Sourcing: The recruiter uses the job description and qualifications to create a list of candidates from a pool of applicants using job boards, social media, and other tools. Internal and passive candidates with the right qualifications can also be encouraged to apply.
- Screening: The recruiter reviews candidate resumes and applications from the sourcing step to eliminate unqualified candidates and offers a phone screen to assess candidates that make the cut.
- Selecting: Selecting is the critical stage after the initial screening, and it’s typically a collaborative effort between the full cycle recruiter and hiring manager. While the specifics will vary across different organizations, the selecting phase typically includes post-first-round interviews, additional evaluations, and scorecards.
- Hiring: The recruiter sends a job offer to the preferred candidate, and finalizes background and reference checks, pay negotiations, and start dates.
- Onboarding: The recruiter or HR team will take the final step in the full cycle recruitment process. They arrange for the employee to arrive and meet with a point-of-contact to ensure the organization makes a good impression to keep the new hire long-term.
What does the preparing stage involve?
According to Indeed, the preparing stage of full life cycle recruiting involves:
- Understanding what skills and experience types are needed to fill the role.
- Coordinating with your hiring manager and company leadership to identify the skills needed as well as other crucial details, like salary range and work location.
- Determining your timetable for recruiting and hiring your candidate.
Look at this stage as the foundation of the full cycle recruiting process where you truly kick off the hiring process. If you fail to prepare adequately, it could cost you more time and effort down the line. By communicating with your organization and clearly identifying what type of person you need to fill a specific role, you’ll be able to meet the later recruitment stages head on.
How does preparing impact later stages of the recruiting cycle?
Preparing is the very first stage of the recruiting cycle. After it comes sourcing, in which you begin to identify the right candidates needed to fill the role. Preparation ensures that your sourcing efforts will be well-informed. Sourcing involves identifying methods for engaging prospective candidates. This process can include both external and internal recruiting, but without the initial prep, you won’t know what to look for.
You’ll want to have your role fully fleshed out before speaking with internal or external candidates. According to Recruiting.com, you’ll need to write the job post to include details of the role and relevant responsibilities.
Your candidates will likely have many questions about the role, such as day-to-day responsibilities, the size of the team they’ll be working with, and other considerations. If you’re unable to answer these questions, it may disenfranchise them, and cause them to seek out opportunities elsewhere.
The preparing stage is where you establish your comprehensive recruiting plan. That’s not to say you can’t alter it later, but if you prepare correctly, you may not need to.
The keys to successful preparation
Here are three key elements of getting the preparation stage right:
Ensure all internal stakeholders are aligned
Having all interested parties within your organization in agreement and alignment is critical. That means getting approval from leadership, and interviewing the hiring manager and/or anyone else who may be interviewing or deciding on the candidate.
Let’s say, for example, you speak with the hiring manager but fail to connect with the right people within that individual’s chain of command that may need to approve the salary range. You may advance with a well-qualified candidate only to later find out that they’re out of your price range. By keeping everyone informed throughout the process, you’ll keep something like this from happening.
Map out your strategy
Where do you plan to source your candidates? Is your focus internal or external? What does your ideal candidate look like in terms of skills, experience, certification, and education? What do they need to have to succeed? What’s the interviewing strategy going to be for your hiring manager? How many rounds of interviews will there be?
All of these questions don’t have to be answered prior to the interview process, but the more you can answer at the preparation stage, the better. Map out your strategy and then execute. This makes the subsequent stages much easier on everyone.
Be flexible when compiling your requirements
It’s fine to compile a profile of your “perfect” candidate, but remember, you’re not hiring a list of skills and certifications. You’re hiring a person, a team member who needs to interact with other employees within your company.
Approach the preparation stage with an open mind, and be ready to compromise on certain requirements for a person with the right attitude, temperament, and set of qualities that match your company’s values.
Why preparing paves the way for future recruiting success?
Thorough preparation enables you to know what kind of candidate you’re looking for to fill your recruiting pipeline. It also helps you strategize the best way to find them before you embark on the rest of the recruiting process. Connecting with your teammates and knowing what they need from a new hire is also critical.
Preparing the right way elevates your recruiting process steps that come after it, maximizing your chances for success. That’s why it’s so vital to partner with a team who can help you stay organized and on target as you begin the journey. With Comeet’s full range of recruiting services, we’re that partner.
Comeet’s platform equips you with the tools and information you’ll need to coordinate your recruiting plan, but it goes beyond just empowering you with the right capabilities. The Comeet platform moves your entire hiring process into one easy-to-use location, enabling collaboration between recruiters, HR, and your hiring managers. Your entire team will have their communication and efforts aligned.
At Comeet, we offer sourcing as part of our Elastic Sourcing program. For more on how Comeet can help you cultivate your recruiting pipeline, contact us today.
