Eddy’s HR Mavericks Encyclopedia
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Strategic Recruitment
Attract top talent in less time with strategic recruitment. Read more to find out how!
What Is Strategic Recruitment?
Strategic recruitment involves having a plan, gathering the right information, and setting up the proper systems prior to recruiting.
Why Is Strategic Recruitment Important?
The goal of recruiting is to attract top talent so the right people apply to work for you. Being strategic with your recruitment ensures the minimal amount of time, money, and energy is spent in the process.
- Qualified candidates are in high demand. You must be thorough and move quickly to secure the best people for the job. Having a strategic recruitment process helps you attract, interview, and hire the right people before someone else does.
- The best candidates want information. Highly qualified people know the right questions to ask to see if it will be a mutual fit, so you need to be prepared with the information they’re looking for.
- First impressions are important. From the job description to your website, job boards, review sites, and first interaction, you’re making an impression. Make it positive each time.
Best Practices for a Strategic Recruitment Plan
Start planning your recruiting strategy with an outline of who you are looking for, where you will find them and what resources you will allocate to acquire them. Attract the right candidates by focusing on employer branding and creating strong job descriptions. To free up even more time and money, set up automation tools and make a plan for proper reach-out sequencing and messaging.
Employer Branding
Your brand as an employer is just as important as marketing to your clients. It’s your reputation as a workplace. Ensure that you’re making the right impression from the outside. Important: Before working on your external branding, get to know what your employees think of their workplace. If it’s good on the inside, it will be easier to reflect that on the outside.
Staffing Plan
Know exactly what hires are needed. Know the timeline and priority for each. Understand why these hires are important now. Research where the ideal candidates would find job posts. Prioritize each vacancy and create a staffing plan. Important: This should be handled by the executive leadership team with feedback from the hiring managers. Staffing needs to be budgeted and in line with the overall strategic plan for the business.
Compensation Plan
Know the pay range for each role and what additional incentives and benefits are included in the job offer for each position. Important: All compensation plans should be reviewed by an employment lawyer and include a disclaimer notifying employees that compensation plans may be revised and will be updated in writing.
Success Plan
Understand the baseline responsibilities for each role. Know the desired outcomes for that role. Define expectations and clearly identify how you track and monitor success for each role. Important: Success plans can be defined and managed by the supervisor. It’s good practice to know the expectations and how employees will be evaluated for success before beginning the search.
How to Create a Strategic Recruitment Plan
You want to attract top talent and have the right people work with you? Then it’s important to put in the effort to attract awesome talent. Recruiting can be time-consuming and expensive, but if you create a strategic recruitment plan ahead of time, you will stand out from the competition. Here's how:
Step 1: Review Your Brand
Your public brand is your employer brand. Do an audit to see how other people might view your workplace.
- Are all public profiles complete?
- Are all public profiles consistent?
- Are all public profiles attractive to prospective employees?
- Is your company profile complete on your job boards?
- Is it clear what your company does and who you service?
- Are employee reviews public and positive?
Once you’ve answered these questions, take the time to improve your employer branding. If you need more positive public employee reviews, request them from your existing team. Branding starts from within. Happy employees will refer other great people and people want to know how happy your current team is.
Step 2: Develop a Process
A three to the four-step interview process should be all you need to assess the right candidates in most cases. When you know the staffing, compensation, and success plans, you can put your interview and offer steps in the right order and streamline the interview and hiring process.
- Who will review resumes and applications?
- How will they be tracked?
- Who will conduct the interviews?
- How will interviews take place?
- What are the screening criteria?
- How will job offers be presented?
Once you have these answers, create and execute a process that keeps interviews flowing smoothly and increases your chance of hiring those “right fit” candidates.
Step 3: Write Great Job Descriptions
The quality of applicants will reflect the quality of the job posts and descriptions. About the Company Write a few sentences about the company, highlight the unique value proposition, and describe the company and what exciting things are on the horizon. About The Role Write a few sentences about the role you’re hiring for and why you’re filling it, now. Use language that gets someone excited about the position. Day to Day Describe the day-to-day activities in the role. Skills List in bullet point format the skills required for the role. Specify what’s required and what is desired or preferred. On Offer List what’s on offer for the employee, including compensation, benefits and other incentives.
Step 4: Start a Referral Program
Encourage current employees through rewards to refer qualified candidates for open positions within the company. You might also consider using an internal job board to get the word out to employees about open roles. Here’s a sample template: Hello All, We are expanding our team and currently have the following open positions (list of open positions). We have started our recruiting efforts and need your help! If you know any qualified (position titles) who may be interested in joining our growing team, refer them and earn up to (incentive amount) per hire! For more information, please contact me for details on our Referral Bonus Program! Sincerely, HR
Step 5: Post to Job Boards
Refer to your staffing plan and post jobs in the places your ideal candidates might be looking. Budget accordingly to ensure you’re showing up in enough places and are visible to applicants who might stumble onto your ad even if they’re not actively looking.
Step 6: Automate Outreach
For those roles that are harder to fill, actively doing outreach recruiting might be necessary. Automating the reach-out process can save you hours each day. Research and decide on the right automation tool(s) to help your outbound recruiting. Create the right search criteria and set up campaigns with the appropriate messaging sequencing. Keep testing the outreach style to get a strong pipeline of interest.
Topics
Jessica Holsapple
As an operations leader with a staffing and recruiting background Jessica has been overseeing, growing, and transforming teams and organizations around the globe across almost every industry for over 10 years. In 2015 she started SCG Consulting Group, a full service agency for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Jessica studied Organizational Leadership at the University of Arizona, completed an Undergraduate Degree in Management from Northern Arizona University, and holds certifications in Nonprofit Leadership and Six Sigma Project Management.
Frequently asked questions
Other Related Terms
Eddy’s HR Mavericks Encyclopedia
Strategic Recruitment
Attract top talent in less time with strategic recruitment. Read more to find out how!
What Is Strategic Recruitment?
Strategic recruitment involves having a plan, gathering the right information, and setting up the proper systems prior to recruiting.
Why Is Strategic Recruitment Important?
The goal of recruiting is to attract top talent so the right people apply to work for you. Being strategic with your recruitment ensures the minimal amount of time, money, and energy is spent in the process.
- Qualified candidates are in high demand. You must be thorough and move quickly to secure the best people for the job. Having a strategic recruitment process helps you attract, interview, and hire the right people before someone else does.
- The best candidates want information. Highly qualified people know the right questions to ask to see if it will be a mutual fit, so you need to be prepared with the information they’re looking for.
- First impressions are important. From the job description to your website, job boards, review sites, and first interaction, you’re making an impression. Make it positive each time.
Best Practices for a Strategic Recruitment Plan
Start planning your recruiting strategy with an outline of who you are looking for, where you will find them and what resources you will allocate to acquire them. Attract the right candidates by focusing on employer branding and creating strong job descriptions. To free up even more time and money, set up automation tools and make a plan for proper reach-out sequencing and messaging.
Employer Branding
Your brand as an employer is just as important as marketing to your clients. It’s your reputation as a workplace. Ensure that you’re making the right impression from the outside. Important: Before working on your external branding, get to know what your employees think of their workplace. If it’s good on the inside, it will be easier to reflect that on the outside.
Staffing Plan
Know exactly what hires are needed. Know the timeline and priority for each. Understand why these hires are important now. Research where the ideal candidates would find job posts. Prioritize each vacancy and create a staffing plan. Important: This should be handled by the executive leadership team with feedback from the hiring managers. Staffing needs to be budgeted and in line with the overall strategic plan for the business.
Compensation Plan
Know the pay range for each role and what additional incentives and benefits are included in the job offer for each position. Important: All compensation plans should be reviewed by an employment lawyer and include a disclaimer notifying employees that compensation plans may be revised and will be updated in writing.
Success Plan
Understand the baseline responsibilities for each role. Know the desired outcomes for that role. Define expectations and clearly identify how you track and monitor success for each role. Important: Success plans can be defined and managed by the supervisor. It’s good practice to know the expectations and how employees will be evaluated for success before beginning the search.
How to Create a Strategic Recruitment Plan
You want to attract top talent and have the right people work with you? Then it’s important to put in the effort to attract awesome talent. Recruiting can be time-consuming and expensive, but if you create a strategic recruitment plan ahead of time, you will stand out from the competition. Here's how:
Step 1: Review Your Brand
Your public brand is your employer brand. Do an audit to see how other people might view your workplace.
- Are all public profiles complete?
- Are all public profiles consistent?
- Are all public profiles attractive to prospective employees?
- Is your company profile complete on your job boards?
- Is it clear what your company does and who you service?
- Are employee reviews public and positive?
Once you’ve answered these questions, take the time to improve your employer branding. If you need more positive public employee reviews, request them from your existing team. Branding starts from within. Happy employees will refer other great people and people want to know how happy your current team is.
Step 2: Develop a Process
A three to the four-step interview process should be all you need to assess the right candidates in most cases. When you know the staffing, compensation, and success plans, you can put your interview and offer steps in the right order and streamline the interview and hiring process.
- Who will review resumes and applications?
- How will they be tracked?
- Who will conduct the interviews?
- How will interviews take place?
- What are the screening criteria?
- How will job offers be presented?
Once you have these answers, create and execute a process that keeps interviews flowing smoothly and increases your chance of hiring those “right fit” candidates.
Step 3: Write Great Job Descriptions
The quality of applicants will reflect the quality of the job posts and descriptions. About the Company Write a few sentences about the company, highlight the unique value proposition, and describe the company and what exciting things are on the horizon. About The Role Write a few sentences about the role you’re hiring for and why you’re filling it, now. Use language that gets someone excited about the position. Day to Day Describe the day-to-day activities in the role. Skills List in bullet point format the skills required for the role. Specify what’s required and what is desired or preferred. On Offer List what’s on offer for the employee, including compensation, benefits and other incentives.
Step 4: Start a Referral Program
Encourage current employees through rewards to refer qualified candidates for open positions within the company. You might also consider using an internal job board to get the word out to employees about open roles. Here’s a sample template: Hello All, We are expanding our team and currently have the following open positions (list of open positions). We have started our recruiting efforts and need your help! If you know any qualified (position titles) who may be interested in joining our growing team, refer them and earn up to (incentive amount) per hire! For more information, please contact me for details on our Referral Bonus Program! Sincerely, HR
Step 5: Post to Job Boards
Refer to your staffing plan and post jobs in the places your ideal candidates might be looking. Budget accordingly to ensure you’re showing up in enough places and are visible to applicants who might stumble onto your ad even if they’re not actively looking.
Step 6: Automate Outreach
For those roles that are harder to fill, actively doing outreach recruiting might be necessary. Automating the reach-out process can save you hours each day. Research and decide on the right automation tool(s) to help your outbound recruiting. Create the right search criteria and set up campaigns with the appropriate messaging sequencing. Keep testing the outreach style to get a strong pipeline of interest.
Topics
Jessica Holsapple
As an operations leader with a staffing and recruiting background Jessica has been overseeing, growing, and transforming teams and organizations around the globe across almost every industry for over 10 years. In 2015 she started SCG Consulting Group, a full service agency for entrepreneurs and small businesses. Jessica studied Organizational Leadership at the University of Arizona, completed an Undergraduate Degree in Management from Northern Arizona University, and holds certifications in Nonprofit Leadership and Six Sigma Project Management.
Frequently asked questions
Other Related Terms
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