What is Recruitment?

  • Recruitment
Recruitment Guide
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Peninsula Group, HR and Health & Safety Experts

(Last updated )

Recruitment involves hiring employees within a business and involves many stages. Seeking the right talent can be challenging. Peninsula explores this process.

Recruitment is the process of hiring new employees to your business. It is essential for growing a business.

The recruitment process starts with advertising a job and ends when a person starts with the company.

A company can put a lot of effort into finding a new addition to the team. 

Choosing the wrong candidate can waste time and money.

Seeking the right talent can be particularly challenging. This is true no matter which recruitment methods a company adapts.

What does a recruitment selection process involve?

The recruitment selection process involves many distinct stages: 

  • Identifying what skills the role requires
  • Attracting the right talent
  • Creating your interview questions
  • Performing a recruitment interview
  • Conducting pre-employment checks
  • Creating documentation for new starters

And these are just the basic points to consider. When it comes to considering how to recruit people, a company has much to consider.

There will be HR challenges in recruitment and selection processes. So, what would be the best HR strategy for recruitment and selection when looking for talent?

The hiring process can vary depending on the resources available to a company. Some will have HR professionals in charge of hiring candidates, whereas others may rely on recruitment agencies.

Peninsula explores recruitment further. This includes the recruitment process and determining what to consider with potential candidates.

Types of recruiting

An HR department will encounter specific challenges when handling job openings. 

Luckily, there are options for making the search easier for potential employees.

One option is to consider internal recruiting. 

Internal

If a role within a company is a good fit for a qualified candidate that exists in a different role, hiring managers can reach out to them. It is advisable to advertise the role externally as well, in order to avoid potential claims of discrimination 

Approaching an existing, trusted and qualified employee can save a lot of time and effort. It can also strengthen a company’s image and performance. It encourages those within and outside of the company that the company respects and values the people that work for them.

Internal recruiting uses many of the same protocols as recruiting external candidates. For example, there must be a fair interview process that considers each candidate equally. 

However, internal recruiting can speed up the recruitment process. After all, some selection methods may require factors such as written or practical tests. 

And an existing employee will have already proven their abilities in their current role.

Employee referrals

A company can also make use of the talent in their employ in a different way; with employee referrals. Providing your employees with job descriptions and asking if they have any good referrals can save a lot of time. 

It can also result in a talent pool out of reach with traditional recruitment methods. For example, a friend of an employee may not have been seeking a role before the referral.

Finally, there’s always the option of turning to social media. This is true whether there’s a special team for social media or a human resources team handles it. Companies can make use of LinkedIn and Facebook for job openings.

In fact, many companies have seen success in hiring via social media.

External recruiting

Filling a role isn’t always a simple task. After conducting a job analysis to see what’s required for the role, specific types of recruitment may merit consideration.

Most of the methods are external recruitment. However, there are some that aren’t either internal or external recruitment.

These methods include:

  • Outplacement recruitment: this form of recruitment is considered neither an internal or external recruitment method, It is an employer-sponsored benefit. Outplacement supports staff that are made redundant, helping with CVs and finding new job opportunities. It can also transition an employee from one job to another, whether it’s in a different branch of the company or a sister company.
  • Staffing recruitment: typically, staffing recruitment deals with external recruitment agencies. This type of recruitment is primarily used for short term roles or temporary contracts.
  • Retained recruitment: For large businesses with a regular need for new recruits, external recruitment specialists handle retained recruitment. It will exclusively see the recruiters work to fill a specific role by finding their own candidates. They will do so using resources and methods outside of the company that’s seeking candidates.
  • Contingency recruitment: this type of recruitment is similar to retained recruitment, with one exception. The hiring company will only need to pay the recruitment specialists in the event they hire a candidate.

The difference between a recruiter and HR professional

It’s these latter two recruitment types that mostly outline the difference between recruitment specialist and HR executives.

Typically speaking, HR can handle recruitment for companies. However, companies looking for specialist talent can require the skills of a recruiter

It’s common to place recruiters vs HR, gauging how each one approaches recruitment. It can be helpful to explore the difference between them and how they handle recruitment.

Pros of a recruiter

One of the greatest benefits to making use of a recruiter is simply their dedication to the role. 

An HR professional may need to split their duties from day-to-day activities and management responsibilities for a company. This divide would become even more present if the HR team needed to handle potential job openings.

Recruiters will be focused on filling the role. 

There’s also the wealth of tools a recruiter may have at their disposal. This includes the years of experience handling and evaluating potential candidates. It also includes an established network of contacts.

Pros of in-house recruitment

While a recruiter may spend more time on the recruitment process, HR will understand the company better. This includes knowing who would fit the role best, both for the job spec and as a part of the team and office culture.

Even when using recruiters, the HR professionals within a company will be the ones who conduct the interview for a candidate. Or, ultimately decide whether they’ll get the job.

Help with recruitment

Whether you’re a recruiter looking for HR expertise or an HR team seeking advice on how to handle candidates, Peninsula can help. 

Our 24/7 HR advice can clear up any confusion you may encounter in the recruitment process. 

Get in touch today to see how our HR specialists can help you avoid recruitment worries.

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