What’s the best way to fill open positions? This is the age-old question that hiring managers and HR teams keep asking themselves time and time again. This article looks at the recruitment and selection process and how to do it well so that you hire the best possible employee at the end.

What Is the Recruitment and Selection Process?

In case you’re new to the world of HR or being a hiring manager, we’ll break it down for you. There is an empty vacant slot at your company. The recruitment and selection process is the process you undergo to find a suitable candidate to fill that empty position.

There are plenty of steps to be done in this process, so it can quickly become confusing. That’s why we’ve created this guide to how to complete the process so that you end up with the best candidate possible on your team.

Recruitment vs Selection

First of all, many people don’t realise that there is a difference between recruitment and selection, as they are so often grouped together in the hiring process. It’s important to know the difference between the two as each is a unique element that goes into hiring a new employee.

Recruitment

Recruitment is the first step that needs to happen. This refers to your search for prospective employees and getting people to apply for your vacant position. In larger organisations, this section of the hiring process will be done by your human resources team. However, at a smaller organisation, it may be the hiring manager’s job to get this done. Recruitment is not one task but a series of things you need to do, including:

• Analyse job requirements

• Create a job ad

• Advertise the role

• Get candidates applying

• Manage your response to applicants

• Review applications

• Shortlist candidates

Selection

Selection is the part where you choose who will be the successful applicant. You’ve got your applicant pool that is hopefully full of great candidates, thanks to your recruitment process. Now you’ve got to decide who is the best person from that group for the available position. Some tasks involved in the selection process include:

• Deciding who is unsuitable

• Screening applicants

• Using selection processes such as intelligence or psychometric testing

• Interviewing candidates

• Background checks

• Reference checking

7 Step Approach

Many organisations employ a 7 step approach to the recruitment and selection process. Keep reading to find out the steps and how they can help you make a fantastic hiring decision.

Needs

First, you need to consider what skills and abilities you already have within your team. What other skills might you be seeking to best complement that? It’s not only about filling a role but analysing where that role fits into your team. There may be a change around in roles before you can define a role that needs filling. Priorities and tasks may need to be shifted around to better reflect the responsibilities within the team.

Job Description

After you know what will be required of the person filling the role, you can start writing the job description. A good job description will define the responsibilities and tasks of the role. The more thorough you can be, the better. When a job description communicates a well-defined role, it can help qualified people decide to apply for it.

Include:

• Job title

• Duties

• Benefits

• Location

• Education, experience, or skills required for the job

• Qualities that would be ideal in a candidate

  
  

Finding Candidates

The next step is to find candidates to apply for the role. You can do this by advertising the position on a job board, newspaper ads, or somewhere else. Word of mouth can also be a key component in finding great candidates, so get your team to let people know that you’re hiring. You could also advertise the role on social media and your company website.

Screening Candidates

Screening candidates might be the most critical part of this entire process. So that you don’t get confused about your candidate lists, using an applicant tracking system can be very useful. Most of these will allow you to mark candidates as declined, shortlisted, or on hold. That way you will know who you’ve already screened and who’s CV you still need to take a look at.

Most hiring managers will start by screening applicants based on whether they met the minimum criteria for education, experience, and skills. From there, you can see who had some of the items on your ideal qualities list. If this shortlist is still too long, you may decide to add some psychometric testing into the mix. These tests can help you to determine which applicants are best at different skills the position requires.

Interviews

Once you have whittled down the shortlist to just a few people, it’s time to invite them in for a face to face interview. If this isn’t possible, you can do video or phone interviews instead. Prepare your interview questions to find out more about what abilities these people will bring to the table. You may also want to ask some questions about how they handle difficult situations, to see how they perform under pressure.

Just make sure that you ask all of your interviewees the same set of questions. This keeps the interview process fair and gives you a way of comparing candidates against each other.

Job Offer

Once you have selected the person who best fits the job requirements, you can make the job offer. Let the person know that they are successful and send them the offer letter. Using a job offer letter template can save you a lot of time when you do this. Just fill in the specifics related to the job you are offering, and you’re ready to send it!

Induction

Finally, it’s important to point out that onboarding and induction are a step in the recruitment and selection process. Often managers see this aspect as a separate process, but that’s not correct. An employee’s first few days with your company will make or break how long they stay and how satisfied they are in the role. If you don’t get this part right, you may end up having to do the entire process all over again.

To nail induction the first time, let your new hire know ahead of time what to expect on their first day. You might even create a schedule for them to follow and include things such as:

• Introduce the new employee to their team

• Set up computer and logins

• Meet and greet with other departments

Once you learn how to perform an incredible recruitment and selection process, this makes your job far easier. You will be hiring the right employees the first time, and you’ll have a higher-performing team. So, it’s a process worth investing your time in.