In today’s competitive business world, recruitment has become a complex task. Businesses are competing with each other to find the best potential candidate for their organizations. The situation has become dire after The Great Resignation, where there are numerous applicants for any given job role, while talented staff have become hard to come by.
In this scenario, companies can move forward without disruptions only due to the well-established process of ‘recruitment’. Hence, we shall discuss the importance of recruitment in human resource management for organizations. We will also help you understand the exact purpose of recruitment and the various stages in the recruitment process.
What is Recruitment?
Recruitment is the process of searching and finding the ideal candidate for a specific job role. Hence, it consists of different operations such as searching for talent, screening and shortlisting them, as well as interviewing them before finalizing a specific candidate for the position.
Since recruitment and selection helps find the most valuable resource within the company, the HR team ropes in the senior management as well as the supervisors and managers to find the ideal recruit for the job role under consideration. With the advances in internet connectivity, the process is increasingly being augmented with cloud-based technologies and HRMS software to aid companies find the ideal candidates.
Top 10 Importance of Recruitment
The importance of recruitment in HRM lies in the fact that it helps you identify the best candidate for any given job role. It is important for the organization since it follows a well-defined process that enables the company to search for the relevant candidates and identify the best one to recruit and onboard them successfully.
Hence, let us understand the other major factors that highlights the importance of recruitment for an organization:
1. Improved Efficiency
Through the recruitment process, it is important to provide prompt responses to communicate with potential candidates. Along with dedicated recruitment software, you can communicate seamlessly, while automating functions such as auto-responding to emails. It enhances your communication channels and helps keep the applicants in the loop. Similarly, by having a dedicated process for hiring, you can optimize the overall efficacy of the process.
2. Wider Reach
Additionally, once you have set up the recruitment process, you can ensure that your job postings reach a wider audience using dedicated channels. For example, modern recruitment software allows you to post on your social media along with traditional job posting options to ensure better reach while also targeting your niche audience.
3. Better Talent Acquisition
Having a pre-defined recruitment process also ensures that you attract better talent. With keyword-infused job descriptions and attractive overall packages, you can attract the right candidates, while your employer branding will resonate with them to enable them to take up your offer. By defining the hiring process, you can also improve the overall process efficiency, enabling you to keep your talented candidates warm, resulting in better talent acquisition.
4. Culturally Fit Employees
Similarly, it is essential to hire candidates who are culturally the right fit for your organization. Through a well-established hiring and onboarding process, you will be able to find the right candidate, who is not only talented with their skills but also have the right mindset to be a team player in your organization.
5. Better Data Collection
You can use dedicated recruitment and selection software to obtain applications from a variety of sources such as your website, job portals, social media, etc. Additionally, you can use the software to gather useful data about the candidates and use them to make informed decisions while shortlisting. Moreover, you can obtain other useful data such as the responses of the candidates, how many people have viewed your job posting and applied for it, etc. through the use of a recruitment management system.
6. Continuous Availability
Traditional recruitment procedures can be undertaken only during working hours. However, with the increasingly connected digital age, you can use recruitment software to access your hiring information at any given time, increasing the productivity of the recruiters. Using this system, they can also reply to their candidates in real time, resulting in an engaging recruitment experience.
7. Fair Hiring Process
Since recruitment is a process involving multiple individuals, it will be undertaken fairly with the help of a dedicated process. In the absence of such a process, it could be misused to favour individuals related to the recruiters. Hence, having a pre-defined recruitment process ensures a fair and transparent recruitment process where only merit is the parameter for the placement of a candidate.
8. Better Employer Brand
With the help of a dedicated recruitment process, you can improve the efficiency of the hiring process for better reach and better talent acquisition. It also leads to culturally fit staff members, who are engaged with your organization since they identify with your mission and vision. All of these factors lead to a better employer brand, which further results in better talent acquisition.
9. Increased Quality
By hiring better-quality candidates, you are actively improving the quality of your products and services. Numerous studies have shown that employees who believe in your products and services and are aligned with your organizational goals are bound to undertake their work better, enhancing the quality of the final product.
10. Business Growth Assistance
Going a step further from the point discussed above, better quality hires are bound to improve the quality of your products and services resulting in increased business growth. Hence, the existence of a dedicated process for hiring results in increased profits too. Hence, recruitment is essential for improving the profitability of any business.
Purpose of the Recruitment Process
The basic purpose of recruitment is to find and hire the ideal candidate for any specific job role. However, as we covered in the ‘Benefits’ section above, recruitment is critical for the company’s profitability and branding too.
Hence, the purpose of recruitment includes the following aspects too:
➔ Determine Staffing Needs
The recruitment process enables the HR teams to understand their current and future staffing requirements. With the help of this data, they can create departments, and the job roles required to meet the needs of their organization. It also enables them to understand what kind of candidates are required to fill these roles and the experience required to successfully undertake their duties.
➔ Avoid Business Disruption
The recruitment process enables the organization to have a steady flow of staff members through the implementation of a talent pool. As a result, it helps avoid business disruption in case an employee wishes to leave the organization for better prospects. The HR team can tap into their talent pool and choose a better candidate since it was developed through the hiring process.
➔ Hire Successfully
The hiring process shortlists and screens candidates through dedicated mechanisms like interviews, assignments, etc. It helps the HR and recruiters to find the right candidates within a relatively short time. It also enables them to keep interesting candidates warm by engaging them effectively. As a result, it increases the hiring success rate, resulting in a better organization.
➔ Expand Talent Pool
Through a dedicated recruitment process, you gain access to a wider talent pool since you are actively scouting for talent, and creating a talent pool that you can tap into, whenever required. Additionally, through innovative hiring and onboarding strategies, you also improve your employer branding, leading to better quality candidates for your organization.
➔ Make Hiring Cost-effective
Since the hiring process is defined, you can set a budget for it and follow it diligently to ensure effective results while staying budget-friendly. Since the recruitment process is organized and optimized to be cost-effective, you can attract more talent by utilizing fewer resources than an unstructured approach.
➔ Improve Organizational Credibility
A robust recruitment process also improves the overall credibility of the organization since it reflects the company’s professionalism and work culture. By staying true to the candidates, and fulfilling your promises, you are effectively displaying your ethical nature, leading to enhanced recognition and better employer branding.
Stages of Recruitment
Since we have discussed the significance of recruitment, let us understand the various stages of hiring that a candidate must clear, to get placed in an organization. While the exact recruitment stages can vary from one company to another depending on the sector they conduct their business, as well as the vacant position, the general stages remain almost the same. The importance of recruitment remains the same irrespective of the different stages of recruitment.
Hence, the various Stages of Recruitment are:
1. Job Analysis
The first step in recruitment is conducting a job analysis. It helps you identify the daily responsibilities to be undertaken in that job. Once you have a robust idea of the duties, you can list the necessary qualifications and experience of the personnel required to perform the job.
2. Candidate Sourcing
Candidate sourcing is undertaken by posting job vacancies on job boards, social media, and other online forums. It enables the companies to attract the right candidates through targeted posting which utilizes the right keywords.
3. Resume Screening
Screening is the process of identifying the candidates who meet the exact job requirements. Hence, HR professionals use specialized HR software for reviewing resumes and identifying the right candidates.
4. Assessment Sharing
At this stage, the shortlisted candidates are provided with assessments to gauge their skills. These assignments include aptitude tests, personality tests, and other skills assessments, which enable employers to identify skilled and qualified candidates.
5. Interview Scheduling
Once the candidates complete their assignment successfully, they are moved to the next stage, which is interviews. The Interviews can be conducted either over the phone or over video calls or by requiring the candidate’s presence in the office. Nowadays, it is undertaken using dedicated interview scheduling software to know the candidate better.
6. Reference Checks
Once the interviews are complete, the HRs conduct reference checks to verify the information shared by the candidates. They can even contact the previous employer to understand the work ethic of the candidate and ensure that they are the right fit for the role.
7. Background Checks
Once the candidate is found suitable, companies conduct background checks to verify whether the candidate has a clean criminal record. It also helps them identify any discrepancies in their resume.
Conclusion
The importance of recruitment in HRM lies in the fact that it enables companies to find and hire the right personnel to fulfil their business goals while optimizing it to remain cost-effective for the organization. Recruitment ensures that the recruits are ideal for the role, while also developing a dedicated talent pool for the recruiters to tap into whenever they require new talent. Hence, the importance of recruitment in human resource management cannot be overstated.
