If you are reading this article, you might be thinking how much prep work is really needed to recruit someone. After all, if I need to recruit I just put an advert out and phone our agency, that's what my process tells me to do.

Well, the success of your recruitment function may have more importance than you realise and need more work. Firstly, how many businesses can operate without people? Assuming you're not an AI business, I will assume that the human resources of your business is one of the only resources that your business could absolutely not exist without.

To add to this, what is the effect of a bad hire?

According to the CIPD the average recruitment cost of filling a vacancy is £4,000, increasing to £6,125 when the associated labour turnover costs are included [1]. For a senior manager role, these figures rise to £10,000 and £9,000, respectively, and if things fail to work out first time around you can expect to double these for the cost of rehiring once again.[1]

Ok, I have made my point, recruitment is pretty important to your business. This is why I encourage my clients to undertake the work that is needed to create a recruitment strategy. A strategy gives you a game plan of how you will attract, engage and recruit the people you need in the future. The most common misunderstanding is - But this is my strategy, it's just we call it a process.

Process

a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end.

Strategy

a plan of action designed to achieve a long-term or overall aim.

The definition of the words process and strategy explains my point perfectly.

Download our free e-book on the top steps to include in your recruitment strategy.

A recruitment process is a series of actions that an organisation takes to hire someone. It details who is responsible for completing certain actions and the order they should be completed in. A process will often start when financial approval is given for a specific position and end on the first day when the new hire starts work.

A recruitment strategy looks at the long-term needs of your organisation and how you will attract the appropriate people to your company. A recruitment strategy will begin with research on the audiences you wish to attract, will include the platforms you can use to engage with them and will provide a clear engagement plan for a period. Possibly most importantly a strategy will help you to measure the success of the strategy allowing you to make adjustments to improve the outcome.

Both documents are equally important for an efficient recruitment function. A recruitment process will help your function implement a standard way of working, inside the rules of you company and in compliance with the law. A strategy will provide a well researched and measurable game plan for how you will attract people to your business, once theses people convert to candidates they will follow your recruitment process.

Download our free e-book on the top steps to include in your recruitment strategy.

[1] HRzone - Oran Kiazim - http://www.hrzone.com/talent/acquisition/the-real-cost-of-a-bad-hir...

Author

Iain Hamilton 

I have had the privilege of gaining a diverse array of experience in both in-house FTSE100 and recruitment agency style positions. More recently I launched People Traction. Check out our services here.

Throughout my career, I have been passionate about providing a seamless and enjoyable application process and have lead projects to design company websites, careers sites and job boards.

I have been instrumental in creating and delivering global proactive recruitment strategies and training recruitment teams in how to pro-actively resource passive and active talent. The results of delivering a pro-active recruitment strategy have shown a significant reduction in time to fill, improved candidate quality and significant cost savings.

www.peopletraction.co.uk