6 stages of the recruitment life cycle

The recruitment life cycle starts with a requirement to hire a candidate for an open role and ends with his or her successful hiring or placement. It is the process of getting a new employee all the way up to onboarding them as your new hire. The hiring cycle represents only a part of the recruitment operations. Read on to learn about the various stages of the recruitment life cycle.

     1. Planning
The recruitment process starts with planning to hire a new recruit to fill a position in the company. Once the need is established, the ideal candidate for the role, the qualifications, skill sets and experience necessary are defined. An accurate job description clearly outlining the role and responsibilities is created on this basis and circulated through various direct and indirect channels. This crucial step determines the success of the full cycle hiring process.

     2. Sourcing
After a compelling job ad is created, the next step in the recruitment life cycle is sourcing, when the job opening and description are advertised to attract desirable candidates. It involves a spectrum of activities like posting the vacancy on job boards and career websites to identify potential candidates who possess the required skill sets and experience and also reflect values similar to your company’s, using social media to propel the job ad and gathering profiles through LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. A trusted and favoured method is to encourage employees to recommend candidates from their existing networks. Many large and small companies rely on recruitment partners for better-matched candidate profiles and to reduce cost and time.

     3. Assessing
After sourcing an array of potential applicants, what follows is the assessing stage, where a shortlist of promising candidates is created and formal technical and non-technical assessments are conducted to evaluate the skill sets and proficiency of candidates. Recruitment specialists like HirePro have a wide range of customisable assessments for multiple domains and roles that help identify the right talent and improve the overall assessment process. The last step involves scheduling interviews with potential applicants to narrow down the list further.

     4. Selecting
After the assessment comes the selection process. By now, recruiters will probably already know the final shortlist and have a fair idea of the ideal employee. However, the final decision is made in consultation with team managers and the leadership after going through all the data and reviewing the candidates’ performance. Once the decision is made and the final set of candidates are selected, invite them to the next stage.

     5. Interviewing
Another critical phase in the employee recruitment stage is conducting interviews with the best talent identified thus far. Halfway through the recruitment cycle, recruiters have a good understanding of the shortlisted candidates’ experience, skills and knowledge. They will prod the interviewees further with behavioural interview questions for insights to understand the candidates’ motivation and ascertain how good a cultural fit they might be. At this stage, a recruiter is fairly sure about what they are looking for in a candidate. By the end of the process, the one chosen will be handed an official job offer. The potential hire will be informed about the terms of hiring, their salary and benefits, working hours and so on. Typically, this stage also involves negotiation.

     6. Onboarding
Onboarding is the final stage in the cycle. After the candidate accepts the offer, the new hire is familiarised with the organisation and introduced to his or her team. Better known as the employee onboarding stage, it consists of a formal orientation, mandatory training programmes and sessions with team mates and colleagues. This is an extremely important phase for the future success of a new hire. Recruiters must make sure that they have a good onboarding strategy and create an engaging onboarding programme because this will eventually contribute to whether or not the employee wants to continue working for the company.

The recruitment life cycle, or end-to-end hiring process, is an essential component of any business and, if leveraged well and managed effectively, it can help substantially increase the chances of achieving your strategic recruitment goals.