3 Elements of a Recruitment Strategy

At the start of the year many of you will be reviewing 2017 and probably defining a new approach to recruitment for 2018. While all recruitment strategies will be different, you can’t go wrong if you include these three elements in yours:

1.      Alignment to Company strategy. 

Articulate how the recruitment function will help the company achieves its overall, long-term objective. Even if it’s just internal change your company will need new people, so the recruitment strategy needs to be aligned to deliver them. Look at what skills/people the company has now vs. what is needed now vs. what is needed in the medium-to-long term for the company to succeed.

Ask yourself, what are the skills my company needs and are my team focused on recruiting them?

2.      Operational Priority. 

Decide and define the key operational change needed to best improve the recruitment function. What is the biggest change you can make that will have the biggest impact on your ability to deliver on the recruitment needs of your company? Is it adopting some new technology such as AI, chat-bots, new ATS or programmatic advertising? A new diversity strategy to attract more of a certain type of employee?  (You know it’s right!) Or something more fundamental like improved candidate engagement, recruitment team structure or simply costs?

Ask yourself, how can the team deliver on your company’s hiring requirements in the most efficient and effective way?

3.      Team development. 

An often-forgotten element of a recruitment strategy. Your team is your recruitment function, not your ATS or any candidate management/engagement platform. How will they benefit from the new recruitment strategy? Will they achieve better recognition/respect from your internal stakeholders? Career progression?  Will you increase staff retention and industry knowledge? What’s in it for them is just as important as what’s in it for your hiring managers or any potential candidates they engage with.

Ask yourself, how do I make this motivating for my team? 

These essentially define the ‘Why’ of your strategy that should inspire and enable people to get behind it. After that, the 'how' to achieve and your agreed measure of success will better fall into place.

Remember, a good recruitment function won’t look for awards; the awards will find them.

I have written, evolved and delivered on many recruitment strategies over the years so feel free to get in touch if you need help with yours.