Recruitment Plan: 9 Steps you can't mess up to hire better people faster

We've helped companies worldwide improve their hiring plans and reach their goals of hiring better people faster and spending less on agency recruiters. In this article, we'll show you the same nine steps to help your business make a firm plan for hiring people.

What is a recruitment plan to hire people?

A recruitment plan is a well-thought-out plan for finding, hiring, and bringing on the right people.

Usually, a strategic recruitment plan will include:

•  Your recruitment goals.
•  Planning for the number of people you need to hire.
•  Profiles of the best candidates.
•  Your employee value proposition
•  Your marketing plan for hiring people
•  How you choose people to hire
•  How you bring new people on board
•  Tools and tech
•  Your budget for hiring

1 Write down your goals

The first step in making a plan for hiring people is to know what you want to hire. At this point, it's all about long-term goals; we'll discuss tactics later. Even though every company is different, some of the common goals we see among our clients are:

•  Growing headcount
•  Improving diversity
•  Reducing the cost of making a new hire
•  Reducing the time taken to make a new hire
•  Streamlining recruitment processes and reducing repetitive admin
•  Giving hiring managers more power to be involved in the hiring process
•  Improving employee retention
•  Becoming less reliant on external recruiters
•  Building a solid team

2 Plan for hiring people in the future

Now that you have some big-picture goals, it's essential to figure out how many people you'll need to hire over the next year. Even though this can never be 100% accurate, the goal is to make a good guess so that you can

•  Start proactively attracting and developing the right talent
•  Plan your approach and budget well

3 Know what kind of applicants you want to attract

What values do the people on your team who do the best share? What kind of people has done well in the past at your company? Who doesn't think that? What would they be if you had to find things that all of your "star recruits" had in common? Are these answers the same in all departments and all places, or do they change?

4 Revisit your employee value proposition

In a market where companies compete for the best workers, the ones that will win are the ones that clarify why someone should work for them instead of a competitor. This is called a "value proposition" for employees. When you work for a company, it's easy to see all of its good and evil. You know what the team is like, expectations, and what kind of people do well in your organization. You can also tell if a new employee will fit in or, on the other hand, leave in their first month.

5 Make A Plan for Getting Your Supplies

Once you've worked on your employee value proposition, it's time to make a plan for attracting suitable candidates and look at how well you're communicating your employer brand in the market. Don't be the fool who thinks they're doing a good job already. We can all always do better.

6 Change the way you choose

Yes, the recruitment team is partly to blame for turnover. Staff turnover is brutal for everyone. One way to ensure you don't lose a lot of staff is to ensure you have a great hiring process that gets the right people hired.

Here, there are a few things to get right:

•  Make sure that every candidate gets a fair chance in your process of choosing.
•  Make sure your best candidates are still interested.
•  Make sure your people in charge of hiring are involved in the process.
•  Cutting down on unnecessary paperwork by making the selection process easier.

7 Make a process for getting new employees started that sets them up for success

Retention is, of course, one of the most critical metrics that every recruiter should look at. If your onboarding plan isn't good, you'll likely lose the great people you worked so hard to hire. Still, 30% of people who start a new job quit within the first six months. Let's make sure that your new starter isn't one of them.

8 Figure out what tools can help

Processes that used to be tedious and time-consuming can now be done automatically, data can be stored in one place instead of on a bunch of spreadsheets, and modern career websites can be kept up to date by themselves.

9 Make a budget to help your plan for hiring people

If you plan your recruitment budget well, you'll be able to show senior stakeholders the return on investment of your direct hiring strategy and put your in-house recruitment team in a good light. And if you can show that your in-house recruitment team saves the company money compared to hiring outside recruiters, it's easier to get more money for the tools you need to do an even better job.