Recruitment Planning – how to do it

Strategic recruitment planning is so much more than hiring for immediate vacancies. Recruitment planning ensures that the right hires are being made at the right times, and considers the needs of the business, both in the short and long-term.

Poor recruitment decisions can be costly. If you want your business to grow, then the odds are that your team will need to grow along the way too. So how do you tackle recruitment planning? Here are our tips for success.

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Confirm your company’s business goals

What are the goals for your company? Establishing these will allow you to work backwards, and identify the type of new hires you’ll need in order to to reach them. At the end of the day, your business goals are what your company is geared towards, and success is rooted in achieving them.

Conduct a skills gap analysis

The next step is to carry out a skills gap analysis. This is a systematic method that allows you to gauge the current skill levels in your organisation. You can then pinpoint the additional skills that you’ll need to build on your progress so far. The result? You’ll know exactly what skillsets and traits you’ll be looking for in candidates.

There are three steps to a skills gap analysis. Firstly, you’ll need to identify skills that current employees in your company possess. You can do this by speaking to managers, as well as members of staff themselves. Look at their performance reviews to see what you’ve got and what you still need. Secondly, you need to determine the skills that the company will need in the future, in order to reach its goals.

The last step is to compare the two lists. The hope is that many of these will cancel each other out, as the required skill already exists within the company. You’ll then know which skills you require from new employees and when you need them.

Recruitment planning makes you review/write job descriptions

If you don’t yet have job descriptions for each position, then it’s time to get writing. As part of your recruitment planning, conduct a job analysis by speaking with each employee about their responsibilities and requirements, this will really help.

If you already have job descriptions, it’s important to review them. Roles naturally change, especially as a company is growing. Ensuring that all descriptions are up to date enables existing employees to be clear on their responsibilities. It also make you better placed to recruit someone in the same role, whether that’s due to expanding your team or replacing an employee.

Writing descriptions for new roles is a vital part of recruitment planning. You can include any relevant skills, but be realistic. Don’t assume that one candidate can cover an extensive skills shortage. Try to identify a few of the most important skills for that particular role rather than give a skills overload.

Create a recruitment calendar

The skills gap analysis will have given a good indication of the new hires your company needs. It’s also a good idea to speak to departmental managers about their current and future needs. Sometimes it’s as simple as a bit of arithmetic. It’s often possible to calculate how many staff members are required to manage the predicted workload, based on the work handled by the current number of staff.

Creating a year’s calendar that shows relevant information predicting the need for additional skills for upcoming projects, means that hiring timelines can be added in anticipation of these events. You then know exactly when you need to start each hiring process. Recruitment can, and should, be planned well in advance, avoiding any last-minute rush.

Set a recruitment budget

Budget, budget, budget. It’s best to draw up a recruitment budget for the year. This should cover all costs associated with the hiring process, from job advertisements to the salary of the new employee.

Establish the candidate selection process

It’s important to consider exactly how you’ll select the right candidate for each upcoming position. Decide how many interview rounds you’ll have, the interview format, and who’ll take responsibility for interviewing and selection. It’s worth bearing in mind that the ideal process and people involved may well vary depending on the position. For example, you wouldn’t plan to have your Head of Accounts interviewing for a Junior Designer.

Decide how you’ll attract candidates

You want the best, right? Finding, and appealing to, the best candidates is a huge part of recruitment, so it’s important to identify how this will be done. This involves everything from how you plan to advertise the role, to the wording used for the job advert itself. It’s vital to attract the right people in order to secure the highest quality candidate. A recruiter can be of great assistance here, ensuring that the vacancy is advertised in the right way, in the right places, and to the right people.

And voila! All that’s left to do is follow your plan, and begin the hiring process for each position, as and when it’s required. Of course there’ll be changes along the way and you’ll need to be flexible. as the saying goes; the best laid plans…. we can’t predict everything. However, by being adaptable, and applying your same process to any sudden vacancies, recruitment is manageable.

Recruitment planning allows you to spend your valuable time concentrating on working with your team members to reach those all-important business goals. After all, these goals are what define the success of your business, and these people really are your biggest asset.

Whether you’re looking to recruit for one role, or many more, Headway Recruitment is here to make sure you find the perfect fit for your company. Our in-house model allows us to select the the best candidates in as little as 72 hours, taking the hassle out of recruitment for you

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