How To Build a Successful Recruitment Plan

An effective recruitment plan helps your business identify its hiring needs and attract suitable candidates.

A recruitment plan is a strategic roadmap for successful hiring, onboarding, and retaining new employees. As small businesses compete fiercely for top talent, a structured recruitment plan can help them streamline the hiring process, maximize efficiencies, and build a positive candidate experience.

Business leaders and hiring managers have to utilize varied recruitment strategies to devise a recruitment plan that aligns with the overall business goals, targets the right candidate, and measures the success of the recruitment efforts.

In this article, we’ll learn the benefits of a recruitment plan and how to build and measure one.

Benefits of having a recruitment plan

An effective recruitment plan is a strategic blueprint for hiring, outlining responsibilities, timelines, processes, and tools. This document can help businesses manage the onboarding and interviewing process efficiently. Here are the benefits of having a recruitment plan.

   Ensures consistency and standardization

Recruitment plans help small businesses align internal teams with the business's strategic hiring initiatives. It clearly outlines the business’s needs, budgets, and processes, increasing transparency and accountability within the internal team. It helps businesses consistently adopt high-quality talent with a step-by-step guide for new roles. 

   Increases productivity and streamlines hiring

A recruitment plan streamlines the hiring process, reduces inefficiencies, and clarifies roles and responsibilities between hiring managers and recruiters. It accelerates time-to-hire, enhancing productivity as roles do not remain unfilled for too long.

   Enhances flexibility to leverage AI

The rapidly changing artificial intelligence (AI) landscape has pushed HR professionals and business leaders to understand the core capabilities of leveraging automation for HR-related work. As per Gartner’s research report, 79% of hiring managers want to leverage automation for more efficient recruiting, using technology like applicant tracking systems, chatbots, screening tools, and job description automation.^[1]

Many small-and-midsize businesses have adopted automation to improve HR operations, including candidate screening and payroll distribution.  Seventy-two percent of Capterra’s 2023 HR Chatbot Survey* respondents claim to use chatbots to summarize or evaluate job applicant resumes or cover letters.

   Consistent development of talent pipeline

A well-formulated recruitment plan spaces out hiring appropriately, giving each role its time and focus to stay on schedule. As a talent pipeline is constantly developing, new candidates enter your ecosystem, helping the HR team maintain a list of quality applicants who can be reached when a new job opening exists.

   Adapt to market trends

A recruitment plan helps mitigate changing marking conditions as the pendulum swings between the employers’ market and the job seeker. It clearly lists all the salary and budget expectations and goals so teams can remain accountable during fluctuating market conditions.

How to create a recruitment plan

Developing a well-structured recruitment plan can help your business speed up hiring-related processes. Here’s how you can create one for your business.

1. Define your position needs

The first step to creating a recruitment plan is determining what roles must be filled. While some departments might have urgent needs, others could allow you more flexibility in hiring time. You may use workforce management tools to identify skills gaps, giving you a more robust picture of your hiring needs.

2. Set hiring goals

Establish clear hiring goals across the company, departments, and individual teams. Also, build in ideal timelines for priority hires and stagger hiring as needed throughout the year to mitigate cash flow.

3. Set your recruitment budget

Research industry benchmarks to create an estimated annual recruiting budget. Your planned hiring budget should include additional costs for candidate sourcing, onboarding, and technology costs for applicant tracking systems, communication hubs, and other employee-hiring-related needs.

If you have seasonal hiring needs, your recruitment budget should be flexible and adjusted according to the business’s demands. 

4. Identify target audience to craft job descriptions

Analyze your top performers to asses the ideal candidate's qualities. Clearly list your requirements for candidates’ formal education, certifications, or technical skills. Identifying a defined target audience for your candidate search will help you craft a job description that communicates the roles and responsibilities to be handled by the hired candidate.

5. Choose your recruiting methods and channels

Consider varied platforms to post your job description, including social media channels and job portals. You may check multiple job portals’ metrics and reviews to assess the quality of candidates they can help you find. Sponsoring or featuring your job posting on specific job portals can enhance visibility, reducing the time-to-hire.

You can also consider hiring staffing agencies to help source candidates on your behalf, saving you time and resources for other important tasks.

6. Screen candidates

Once you begin sorting through resumes and identifying qualifying applicants, it’s time for screening interviews. These are typically quick, informal chats done by a recruiter or HR manager to assess the applicant’s basic qualifications, communication skills, salary range, and overall job fit. Candidate screening helps you create a more filtered list of top candidates that you can send to the hiring manager for detailed interviews.

7. Conduct interviews

Candidates who pass the initial screening are passed on to the next stage, where the hiring manager conducts detailed interviews with other hiring team members. Establishing an interview panel for each role is important so that every candidate speaks with the same individuals. To get a well-rounded picture of the candidate, each interviewer should focus on different topics, including their technical skills, go-to-market strategy, and work ethic.

8. Make an offer

Once interviews are concluded, the hiring manager can make an offer and negotiate with the right candidate. The staffing agency will complete this step if you hire one. Create a formal offer letter, including details about the hired candidate’s salary, annual bonus, perks, and benefits. A well-crafted offer letter helps you build a healthy relationship with the employee right in the beginning.

9. Onboard the new employee

You can start the onboarding process after the candidate has accepted the offer and signed the formal offer letter. You can now establish a start date and begin working on the transition or onboarding materials. This might include product training, documentation, administrative tasks, and company policies knowledge sharing.

Track your recruitment plan’s results

After you’ve hired several candidates using a planned recruitment process, you should set aside some time to measure its success rate. Here are some questions to consider when checking if your recruitment plan needs adjustments. 

• Was the recruitment process positive for the hired candidates?

• Are hiring managers interviewing an appropriate number of people?

• What is the average time-to-hire?

• What were the reasons for candidates denying offers?

• What recruitment channels or partners are performing the best?

• Is any technology being used helping or hurting the overall recruiting process?

• Are you meeting diversity metrics?

An effective recruitment plan should set your business to find the right candidates, move them through the interview and assessment process, and make a strong offer to your top candidate in less time.