Recruitment

 Recruitment  is a term used to describe the entire process of finding and hiring qualified human talent for an open vacancy or for a proactive hire for an organization. In the United States, recruitment is more frequently referred to as recruiting, talent acquisition, or hiring. Around the world, particularly in the UK, recruitment is the most frequently used term to describe the process of sourcing and hiring people.

Many companies retain in-house recruiting specialists that are charged with posting jobs, finding candidates, and assisting to hire qualified individuals. The trend toward developing more in-house recruitment talent is more fully developed in the US than in most other countries.

When a company needs assistance recruiting talent beyond that which their internal recruiting department can manage, organizations often turn to external professional recruiters. These external recruiting companies vary in scope, type, and volume of positions in which they specialize.

Categories of recruitment agencies:

1. Staffing and temporary recruitment firms
2. Boutique “headhunters” or Executive Recruiters
3. Agency or contingency recruiters
4. Recruitment consulting firms / RPO / VMO

These four different types of recruiting companies are broadly separated by the types of vacancies for which they recruit most frequently. Temporary and consulting projects are often filled by staffing and temp agencies. Very senior and executive roles are filled by executive search professionals (often called headhunters.) Regular professional positions are most often made distinct by the type of profession, and contingency/agency recruiters usually fill a specific niche (such as recruiters for technology or accounting positions.) The fourth category of recruitment firms consists of companies in various degrees of recruitment process outsourcing. From simple recruiting best practices and training consulting contracts, to entirely managed recruiting and staffing outsourcing, these firms retain strong in-house talent and consult with their clients usually on a project basis.

Recruitment Process

The recruiting process or “recruiting life-cycle” consists of everything that needs to be done in order to find and hire an individual into an organization. Each topic has its own best practices, specialists, technology, and knowledge base:

1. Recruitment Advertising: Posting jobs, marketing an employer website or other “push” methods of generating candidate interest.
2. Sourcing or Recruiting: The process of finding qualified candidates through any variety of means, including company databases and applicant tracking systems, online job boards, Internet searches, career fairs, etc… Any method that actively “pulls” a candidate to become an interested applicant.
3. Selection and screening: The process of interviewing, assessing, testing, and screening individuals.
4. Negotiation and Job Offers: The process of offering a candidate the job, describing the available benefits, and walking them through what their job would entail and the job description and title.
5. Onboarding: The process of bringing new hires into the company. The recruiting and Human Resources team may or may not be involved with this aspect of the process. Onboarding involves set-up, setting expectations, introductions, and follow-up.

Major Recruitment Agencies

In no particular order, here are some of the major International companies that work in staffing and recruitment. Within major companies, there is heavy crossover with staffing and direct hire/contingency based recruiting so we did not differentiate the types of companies – this is a simple broad list of the largest international companies in the space.

1. Adecco
2. Allegis Group
3. Groups Crit
4. Hays Recruitment
5. Impellam Group
6. Kelly Services
7. Korn Ferry
8. Manpower
9. Michael Page Intl
10. Pasona Group
11. Randstad Holding
12. Recruit Staffing
13. Robert Half Intl
14. Select Appointments
15. Spherion
16. Synergie
17. USG People
18. Volt Information

Recruitment Strategies

A recruitment strategy is a way that recruiters and companies find qualified and enthusiastic candidates for open positions, including college recruiting initiatives, posting on job boards and with trade organizations. Many recruiters think they know all the recruitment strategies under the sun, but there are many different creative ways to find great talent. Also, not all recruiting strategies are best for every industry, so recruiters can always benefit from trying new approaches to finding the best candidates. Here are some recruitment strategies and how they might work.

1. Targeted Marketing: The best recruitment strategy for finding candidates who will be most likely to fit with a company’s corporate culture or excel in the position is to target those candidates. Marketing strategies translate easily into recruitment, and one of the best marketing strategies is finding a target market to advertise to. Employers and recruiters should find out who their target candidates are and focus their recruiting efforts on that population.
2. Finding Young Talent: Many recruiters know the power of college job fairs for finding young talent with knowledge fresh in their minds, but they can overlook other ways to find college graduates and students. Work study programs and mentored internships can be a great way to show young people how fun it is to work with the client and can often lead to hires after graduation.  Marketing job openings at events that aren’t job fairs where younger talent might congregate is also a great recruitment strategy for finding fresh talent.
3. Using Media: Recruiters might be familiar with traditional advertising methods like print media and Internet advertisements, but there are also videos, radio spots, podcasts and animations. Using new media or old media in new ways can be an excellent recruitment strategy for creative and technical candidates especially.
4. Internet Recruitment: Recruiters should be all over the Internet looking for qualified applicants, but they can also use social media networking to find the best and brightest. By searching through websites where users can post resumes and other details about their work experience and talents, recruiters can find qualified candidates more easily than sifting through thousands of resumes in a database.
5. Employee Referrals: Referrals from current employees at client companies can be a recruiter’s best friend. Referrals have already learned something about the company from the employee who told them about the job, and they are more likely to be qualified and excited about the position than candidates found through traditional recruitment strategies.
6. Open House: One creative recruitment strategy is asking job seekers to come to the client. If a company throws open its doors and invites potential employees to come see the work environment and meet the teams they might be working with, it sends a message to candidates that the company is open and fun. Open houses also get qualified and interested candidates to come to the company, rather than the other way around.

Hiring Recruiters for your Department

The economic crisis, now on a global scale, has caused many employers to worry about the future of their organization. Many employers have been forced to downsize causing them to layoff excellent middle and executive level employees. As the economy starts to show signs of recovery, so will many businesses, and the need for good quality employees will become important again. Sometimes many employers decide to recruit their employees themselves by using the latest trends of social networking and job boards, but it often times becomes more difficult than it seems. Most employers have not been trained in the recruiting process, even if an employer have been involved in previous recruiting efforts. The recruiting process becomes very time consuming, and many employers cannot spare the extra time to recruit correctly, and that’s why all employers need a great recruiter by their side.

The process of recruiting has dramatically changed over the years, before the usage of personal computers and the Internet, the recruiting process consisted of using newspapers and directories to find available candidates, and contact them using the telephone. Now the recruiting process consists of finding potential candidates, by using the Internet and social media networking, and using email as the preferred method of contact. Even though the latest technology can help find available candidates, technology cannot recruit, interview, and secure top talent, and that is why having talent in-house recruiters are still very important to many organizations.

Hiring well-qualified recruitment professionals is not easy. A solid recruiter has a lot of intangible qualities about themselves. Some qualities to look for in a recruiter are someone who does not only rely on the Internet to obtain resumes, when they are looking to recruit a job applicant. Recruiters should be able to use their networking skills and even cold call potential job applicants to establish a relationship with them, and identify if the potential job applicant is open to a career move. They should understand the urgency to fill open positions, and they are able to work quickly to provide the employer with quality candidates. Look for recruiters with well-honed listening skills that will be able to understand the needs of your hiring managers.

Trends in Global Recruitment

Global recruitment is an emerging trend in the recruiting industry, with more and more companies doing business around the world. Global recruiting firms find qualified candidates in different countries for international organizations like global corporations, research foundations, international consulting firms and government contractors. Global recruiters need to be knowledgeable about international business trends and be well versed in technology used in global business like video conferencing.

1. The Internet: The rise of the Internet has made global recruiting a reality because applicants can connect with international organizations from wherever they are. Global recruitment firms often use cloud computing, or software that is accessed through the internet, to perform many of their business processes so that recruiters in different countries can be on the same page. International recruiters need to be very comfortable working on the web to find qualified candidates, screen applications and stay in touch with clients and candidates.
2. Translation Services: English is fast becoming the international business language, but there are times with global recruiters will need to communicate in a language other than English. When working in an international environment, it’s very important to be able to communicate with others in different languages. While global recruiters might not speak twelve languages, they should have contact with translation services to put employer marketing materials and other written communication into the native language of the applicant.
3. Global Employer Marketing: When working with an international client, global marketing strategies are even more important because there are so many voices in global marketing, you have to make your voice heard. To work with an international employer brand, you have to set that brand apart from others with unique marketing strategies. Target audiences are also very important, so recruiters should do some international job market research to find qualified candidates in different countries.
4. Know Your Job Markets: It is important for global recruitment specialists to understand the different job markets around the world. Certain countries have highly skilled workers and powerful executive candidates, but each market has specializations in various fields. Learn more about the job markets in various countries in order to identify opportunities and find candidates who fit with the international client.
5. International Universities: Just like college recruitment strategies work in a local recruiting push, global recruiters should look to major universities in the client’s target countries to find qualified candidates. There may be a learning curve about which degree plans and education certificates are equivalent to US degrees, but universities in other countries can still be great places to find great international talent.