In this article, we wanted to take a moment to return to the very definition of recruitment.
While our clients use our ATS recruitment solution Nicoka CABS every day to organize and facilitate their recruitment, we wanted to take a step back to not lose sight of the essential: the human element.
If we offer the ATS Nicoka CABS to recruiters and recruitment agencies, it is indeed with the objective of facilitating human interactions between recruiters and candidates.
The simplest way is to refer back to the linguistic definition of recruitment
"Action of choosing and selecting a person to join a structure, an association, a company."
Recruitment is a process composed of several actions and stages, which ranges from identifying a group's needs, drafting a job description, sourcing, and up to the integration of new hires.
Each notion mentioned in the definition is essential to the recruitment process: choice, selection, the person, integration, and the concept of a group in various forms (organizations, associations, ...).
We are far from the triptych generally cited when discussing recruitment, namely a job offer, a resume, and an interview. This "reduced" path is regularly cited by recruits who first seek and find a job offer online, create or update their resume to find a job, and have one or multiple interviews with HR and/or potential managers.
"We are far from the triptych Job Offer + Resume + Interview"
Step 1 - The group and the identification of its needs
Let's start at the beginning of recruitment: a group, in the form of an organization, that wishes to welcome one or more new person(s) to meet needs observed by and for the organization.
To succeed in recruitment, it's imperative to identify the current and future needs.
Through exchanges with team members and team leaders, the recruitment manager will establish the expected job profile: skills, soft skills, availability, experiences, education, responsibilities.
It may be
- a new profile, identified for new needs
- a known profile, whose description may have been established in the past for known needs
- a known profile that needs to be revised due to changes in needs or a recruitment that did not work out
This step must be continually carried out by the recruitment manager, meaning they must anticipate the organization's current and future talent needs to align with its development objectives.
This involves a constant monitoring of talents within the company known as Human Resources Planning (HRP).
Step 2 - Choice or Sourcing
Here is the Wikipedia definition of Sourcing in Human Resources.
"Sourcing is the set of actions taken to access your talent pool and generate the maximum number of targeted applications for a given position."
For the recruiter to make a choice, they must establish their recruitment strategy for the defined position that will bring them several resumes.
They have at their disposal several means to access the pool of candidates and non-candidates:
- career site: the organization's job offer site where all open positions in the organization are listed.
- job offer sites or job boards: online sites where you can post your job offers. Some specialize in one or more fields. They can be free or paid. Example: APEC, Welcome To The Jungle, LinkedIn, MétéoJob, HelloWork, ...
- professional networks: social networks such as LinkedIn or Viadeo
- company network or referral: the job offer is published internally to be relayed by employees who can then refer a colleague with the required profile
- street-sourcing: a technique that involves recruiting on the street, focusing first on soft skills (curiosity, presence, creativity, boldness, ...)
- RPO (recruitment process outsourcing): the recruitment manager can also outsource all or part of the recruitment by hiring headhunters or recruitment agencies
If their strategy works, they will have a multitude of resumes to process, allowing them to refine their search and make a choice on whom to pre-select and contact as a priority. They ensure the follow-up of applications.
The term "person" mentioned in the recruitment definition is particularly important here. The corresponding profile may never apply for your job offer; it may be necessary to approach individuals already in positions or not open to the market.
Step 3 - Selection or Evaluation of individuals
At this stage, the recruitment manager has a selection of individuals contacted and who have agreed to enter the recruitment process.
It is their responsibility to determine the various evaluation methods for the selected individuals: classic job interview, assessment tests, situational exercises, meetings with teams, group interviews.
The process can include an entire series of interviews that will allow refining at each step the selection of individuals.
This step ends when the organization and the evaluated individual mutually agree to enter into collaboration.
Step 4 - Integration or On-boarding
On-boarding or integration of the new hire is a crucial step that must be followed from start to finish by the recruitment manager. If integration fails, the entire recruitment process collapses. It depends on the job description and the organization. The new hire may have to undergo one or more training sessions, introduce themselves to various teams, and go through group interview stages.
It is important to plan interviews with the new hire to ensure that the integration is going well and that everyone's expectations are being met.
What tools to support recruitment?
To facilitate the recruitment process, the recruitment manager can equip themselves with a candidate tracking tool commonly known as an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).
This tool, used alone or in a Human Resource Information System (HRIS), provides multiple solutions to the issues managed by the recruitment manager:
- Single platform for CV submissions
- Management of job offers
- Multi-posting on career sites and job boards
- Import of profiles (CV, LinkedIn) into the platform
- Automatic CV reading and candidate profile creation
- Centralized reception of applications
- Defined recruitment processes (workflow)
- On-boarding process (HRIS option)
Find all these features in our ATS Nicoka CABS.
