What are the 7 stages of recruitment?

Are you looking to hire but you’ve never hired before?

Not to worry, we’ve listed the 7 steps you need to take to ensure you find the right candidate for your business…

1. Identifying your hiring needs and requirements

Firstly, you need to identify what the requirements are in your business, so you can establish the vacancies you have and then define job roles from these.

These factors could be:

Any skills shortages you’re currently missing from the business
Have any staff recently left the business who need replacing
Do you currently have or are you soon to have any staff off long term, i.e. sickness, maternity leave etc.
Do you need to restructure your management system, are there any any requirements for leadership roles
Have you seen an increase in orders, do you need more staff to get these orders out to the customer

2. Prepare your job descriptions

After gathering the above information, you can now build your job descriptions for the roles you need to hire for.

A job description is used to help you know what you are looking for in a potential candidate, and lets potential candidates know if they have the skills and experience you are requiring before they apply – to help to filter more suitable applicants.

In a job description you need to include the following:

The job title
The location of the job
A brief description about your company and what you do
The hours / shift pattern
The salary (this can be by per hour or per annum)
The contract type (temporary or permanent)
The main duties and responsibilities
Any perks or benefits you can offer the candidate
The experience and skills required
How to apply

3. Plan how you are going advertise

What is your strategy going to be to find the suitable candidates you are looking for? Are you going to advertise yourself or look to hire outside of your organisation, like through an agency for example?

Here a list of advertising ideas you can try:

Advertising through job boards like Indeed, Total Jobs, Reed etc.
Advertising through social media i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
Advertising in local papers and magazines
Offering an employee referral scheme
Advertising on your company website

Use social media to advertise your roles? We have over 135,000 members across our Facebook job groups

4. Shortlisting suitable applicants

Once you have received an adequate amount of advert response, it’s time to filter through the applicants to select the candidates you’d like to take to the interview stage.

The part can be quite time consuming, the easiest way to shortlist candidates in the shortest time possible is to skim read through the applications. Look out for key pieces of information that match your job requirements, like those who are displaying the experience and/or qualifications you are looking for.

Once you have narrowed your list of applicants down, you can now focus on selecting the applicants who you would like to continue with their application. The next step you could take would be to arrange a phone interview to ask them some questions to get to know the person a bit better and get an initial feel about the person. After you have finished the selection process you then invite your shortlisted candidates for a face-to-face interview.

5. Interviewing

This step is where you’ll get the best feel about the candidates you’re interviewing, meeting someone face-to-face enables us to make a better judgement on the person’s characteristics, attitude and persona.

The interview stage is the time you need to ask the questions needed to shortlist your applicants even further. In the interview you can discuss the applicants CV/application in more detail, gaining more information about their work history and experience.

Remember to ask questions about their interests outside of work, this provides you with the information to paint an overall picture of who the person is.

Things to take note of during an interview which can help you to decide if the applicant is the right person for the job:

Have they researched your company / do they know about you
Are they enthusiastic and taking an interest in the position
Are they asking questions to find out more about the role
Are they engaged with you, keeping eye contact, smiling etc.
Do they have long term goals / willingness to develop a career
Were they on time to their interview
Did they end the interview politely i.e. shaking your hand, thanking you for your time etc.
Did they come to the interview dressed appropriately and presentable

6. Selecting the right candidate(s) / Making an offer

Once you have finished your interviews, it’s time to reference check your applicants, just for final confirmation that you are hiring the right person for the job. Once their references have checked out and you feel you have found the perfect person for the job it’s time to offer that candidate the job. Remember to take note that the first person you offer the job to may not accept, as they may have received an offer elsewhere too, so it’s good to also line up another potential candidate or two, just in case this happens.

7. Onboarding

Once your successful candidate has accepted the position within your company, it is time to start the onboarding process.

The onboarding process includes:

Sending over essential documents and confirmation of employment offer
The employee signing their new contract
Requesting any formalities that they may need i.e. passes, badges, keys
Making sure their work space is set up, for example having their own desk, computer, chair, access to the company server etc.
Settling the employee in and introducing them to the other employees
Showing them around the working environment
Making sure the candidate understands company rules, polices and procedures
Helping them to understand their day to day duties and responsibilities
Providing them with the necessary resources that they need
Providing any additional training that they need