In a tight labor market, it can be hard for your organization to attract the right talent. Optimizing and streamlining your current recruitment process can give you huge advantages above your competitors by attracting the best employees. In this article we teach you how you streamline your recruitment process in 7 easy to follow steps.

The recruitment process

Let's start off with the basics. A good HR process always starts off with a good strategy. Just like every other decision within your organization, it needs to be thought over before an action is taken. The recruitment process ideally consists of 7 steps.

1. What do you need?

The first thing you need to ask yourself is what you need. Before you look for the right type of candidate, ask yourself why the new employee is needed and what responsibilities this candidate will have. A good thing to do is deciding how much a new employee may cost. What is the maximum wage you're willing to pay and what do you expect in return?

2. Who you need?

As soon as you know what you're looking for in an employee, you can set up a job and person description. Usually, job descriptions are only made up of activities. You should try to include different responsibilities you expect from a employee working at your company. In return, you can mention what success feels like at your organization.

3. Where to advertise?

As soon as you have set up your job offer, it is important to look for the right ways to target your potential candidates. We recommend you to use cross-media advertising. By using different channels, you increase your reach which results in more views. Start off internally. Put the job offer on your website and LinkedIn and ask your employees to share it. Did you know that job seekers spend up to 30 minutes a day on LinkedIn? (Source: comScore). Depending on your budget, you can always advertise your job offer so it will be viewed by more members of your target group. We can't stress enough to research your target group before you start looking for a candidate. Another way to advertise job offers is through job sites. Although very good way to get a lot of visibility, you need to watch out for CV's you might see as spam (not fit for the job).

4. Conducting interviews

Your campaign is going well and you are receiving some quality CV's. It is time to review the candidates. Let's say you got a message from 20 applicants. Try to cut down to the best 5-6 candidates. This might be hard to do, but you interviewing 20 applicants will take too much time. As soon as you selected the 6 best candidates, feel free to plan an initial interview. You can do this via telephone, Microsoft Teams (Skype) or in person. Try to cut down to 3-4 candidates for your second interview, which we recommend you do in person. For the third round, we advise you to only invite the two most fit candidates. After this round, you chose the candidate that fits best and make him/her an offer.

If your organization uses background checks, it might be a good idea to screen at least the last 5-6 candidates.

5. Setting up a contract

After finding the most fit candidate, it is time to set up a contract. We can't really help you with the right salary, since wages differ across the world. 'Quality costs money, but no quality costs more money' is a saying you should keep in mind. Be sure to listen to your candidates needs in terms of growth. Where do they see themselves in two, five or ten years? Can your organization offer this path?

6. Onboarding process

The onboarding process starts before the first working day. With Dynamics 365 for Talent, you can easily streamline your onboarding process so employees feel more welcome when they start. With the onboarding software you can let your new employees meet their new team so you can improve teamwork and increase involvement.

7. Evaluation

After your new employee is all settled, you can start the evaluation. Feel free to ask your employee(s) about your way of recruiting in order to keep improving your recruitment process. What do they think your organization could do better? How did they find your job offer? What did they think about your interview technique? Your HR-department can always improve.

If you have questions about your current recruitment process or in need of assistance, feel free to contact us by using the contact form to your right.