Having a recruitment strategy plan helps ensure the time and money you dedicate to recruitment efforts are well spent. Learn how to build a 2024 recruitment strategy that will help you attract strong talent and fulfill your organization’s staffing needs in the year ahead.
What Is a Recruitment Strategy?
A recruitment strategy is a plan that details how an organization will find, assess, and hire candidates to meet its staffing needs. A recruitment strategy should be customized based on factors that are unique to the company, like its operational goals, size, growth plans, skills needs, and budget.
A good recruitment strategy outlines not only the ‘how’ of attracting candidates but the ‘why.’ Having a thorough understanding of your organization’s needs and what drives them will better position you to create recruiting campaigns that achieve the results you’re looking for.
How to Create an Effective Recruitment Strategy Plan for 2024
To create your 2024 recruitment strategy, follow these steps:
1. Review organizational goals
The company’s overarching goals should be the primary factors driving your recruiting efforts. These goals should be clearly defined by management. They might include things like growing revenue by a certain percentage, strengthening brand awareness, investing in research and development, or moving into new markets.
The organization’s goals spell out where the company is headed. Once they’ve been defined, it’s much easier to identify the roles that will be necessary to get the company there.
2. Define recruitment goals
Next, strategize how to use recruitment to achieve the company goals you identified. For example, if the company intends to expand its research and development initiatives, it will require a push to recruit talented scientists, engineers, and project managers. If the company is expanding into a new geographic market, you’ll create campaigns targeting people in those new cities.
You may also define recruitment goals to enhance your overall recruiting capabilities, like strengthening your employer brand or improving diversity and inclusion. While these aren’t necessarily tied to specific operational goals, they strengthen your ability to attract and retain top talent, which will advance any mission the business is trying to achieve.
3. Assess current situation
Take a closer look at the company’s current position regarding skills and experience to identify talent shortfalls. A skills gap analysis can be useful here. It will reveal which skills the existing workforce lacks that will be necessary in the near future.
In addition to analyzing skills needs, look at workforce KPIs like turnover, absenteeism, and employee engagement. These metrics can highlight areas of your recruitment strategy that require attention.
For example, if you’re experiencing high turnover in a certain role, it could indicate that you haven’t perfected the hiring criteria for that position and, thus, aren’t putting candidates in a position to succeed. If you’re seeing high levels of absenteeism, it could be a sign that current staffers are overworked and you need to hire someone to provide additional support.
4. Identify key openings
Most of the time, the abovementioned analysis will reveal several obvious hiring needs. These are your low-hanging fruit: the positions you know you definitely need to hire for. If you want to grow your client base by 20%, you need more salespeople. If your financial situation got a lot more complex in the last year, you might need a CFO, and so on.
You can begin drafting job descriptions and sourcing candidates for these roles immediately.
5. Predict likely needs
Next, address the hiring needs that might not be so obvious or urgent. Technology can be a great asset here.
Machine learning models can layer your historical hiring data on top of your growth projections to accurately predict your imminent staffing needs. It can even recommend critical skills to look for and aid in candidate matching when you’re ready to begin hiring.
Also, consider succession planning. Look ahead to predict likely vacancies that will be occurring in the year ahead, like seasoned team members who will be retiring. Strategize how you’ll fill these vacancies and whether they will create new openings you need to incorporate into your recruitment plan.
6. Define your budget
It’s a hefty question: how much money do you have to accomplish your recruiting goals? What funds are in hand now, and how much will be allocated for the rest of the year? Based on this information, you can build your recruiting budget.
Your recruiting budget should cover every activity involved in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding candidates. Here’s a basic list of line items to consider:
- In-house recruiter salaries
- Third-party recruiter fees
- Job board memberships/posting fees
- Website maintenance
- Content creation/photography/videography
- Social media advertising
- Traditional advertising
- Recruiting events
- Recruiting technology/ATS
- Assessment and screening services
- Background checks/drug testing
- Candidate travel and relocation expenses
- Referral bonuses
Your budget from last year is a good starting point. Even if your needs have changed significantly in the last 12 months, it will give you an idea of how scaling your efforts up or down could impact costs.
7. Outline sourcing strategies
Aside from defining your hiring needs, this is arguably the most essential step in your recruitment strategy. How will you get qualified candidates into your pipeline? You can’t hire without qualified applicants, so it pays to devote a significant amount of your planning time to strategizing where candidates will come from.
It’s not just about getting people to apply–it’s about reaching the right people. Your sourcing tactics should be tailored to the list of positions you need to hire for.
If you need to hire many seasonal sales associates, job boards like Indeed may yield many viable applicants. On the other hand, if you need specialized tech talent, posting to a laundry list of general interest job boards probably isn’t going to reach those people. Instead, you may need to utilize strategies like posting to niche forums or poaching talent from competitors.
Consider both inbound recruiting and outbound sourcing strategies. Here are some of the top recruiting channels to consider as you create your plan:
- Job boards
- Social media
- Company careers page
- Referrals
- Recruitment agencies
- Professional networks
- Career fairs and other events
- Colleges and universities
- Internship programs
- Community/government employment agencies
- Freelance marketplaces
These posts will also give you a variety of creative sourcing ideas:
8. Refine your selection process
Outline the series of actions that will occur once a candidate enters your pipeline. This may include things like phone screenings and video screenings to qualify applicants before scheduling an interview, pre-employment assessments that can increase hiring accuracy, the interview process, and the messaging you’ll send to candidates throughout the candidate journey.
Define your process for developing and selecting interview questions, decide which interview style you’ll use, consider how you’ll train interviewers, and identify the process that will be used to score candidates.
Having a clearly defined selection process saves a ton of time and keeps your talent pipeline moving smoothly so you can hire swiftly and accurately.
9. Perfect your value proposition
Boosting your offer acceptance rate can significantly improve the overall quality of your workforce. Strategize how you’ll get candidates to say yes. Research similar companies in the market and compare your salaries to ensure they’re competitive. Assess your benefits package and identify areas that could be optimized. Collect employee feedback to find out how you can further improve your offers.
Additionally, enhancing the candidate experience throughout the recruiting process can make a substantial difference in attracting top talent and increasing your offer acceptance rate.
10. Enhance your onboarding
As we always say, recruitment doesn’t end when a candidate accepts your offer. A smooth and enjoyable onboarding process is crucial to retain the talent you’ve worked so hard to attract and bring them to full productivity in their new role.
Things like scheduling technology set up ahead of the candidate’s first day, providing virtual materials they can peruse at their leisure, and using interactive media to communicate key information can greatly enhance the new hire experience. Learn more about creating a positive onboarding experience.
11. Review and refine
Don’t put the finishing touches on your recruitment strategy without setting regular check-in dates on the calendar. Monthly or quarterly, review your recruitment metrics and KPIs to assess the effectiveness of your strategy. Seek input from hiring managers and recruiters and gather data from candidate feedback surveys.
By making data-driven adjustments on an ongoing basis, you’ll continuously improve the efficiency and success of your recruitment process and ensure all the hard work you put into building a recruiting strategy pays off.
