Why Recruitment and Selection Process is Important

by Aqui Team

In business, our companies are as good as the people we hire and work with every day. An effective recruitment selection process clearly identifies your company's needs and matches them with the right candidate who fits your company both on paper and in the field. If you put together a team of high-calibre people who take your company and the job seriously and are also talented in working with others, your company as a whole will be better equipped to succeed in the marketplace.

What is recruitment?

Recruitment is the search for candidates for interviews and recruitment for open positions in your company. Think about the importance of recruitment in completing a 5,000 piece puzzle. You categorize all the pieces of the puzzle according to patterns and then start putting the puzzle together.

Only the last inserted piece will complete the puzzle. Some pieces may look promising, but only finding the right fit completes the puzzle.

What is the recruitment process?

The recruitment process is all about finding the right pieces of the puzzle for your organisation through activities such as online postings on the Internet, events, networking, word of mouth and much more. Sometimes recruitment takes place outside the organisation, but it can also take place inside the organisation. For example, the new head of engineering could be recruited from a pool of top engineers rather than from external candidates, which would reduce the cost and time required to fill an important position.

What is selection?

Selection is covered by the term recruitment, but is more specific than something like headhunting. The selection process includes features such as:
  • The sorting of CVs and the selection of the most qualified candidates
  • The telephone selection of candidates to determine who should be personally selected
  • Conducting aptitude tests on qualified candidates to narrow down the pool of candidates
  • Interviewing potential candidates for the position
  • Discussing candidates with other members of the hiring team, including department-specific managers
  • Taking into account the corporate and team culture when selecting the final hiring

If the HR department is faced with a large pile of CVs due to advertised vacancies, it would take too much time and money to interview each candidate. The importance of selection for our companies should not be underestimated, because an efficient selection process helps you to exclude those who are not suitable for the position:

  • Those who lack proper education and training
  • Those who lack professionalism
  • Those who do not fit into the company culture or procedures
  • Those who need more experience to be ready for employment

The selection process will also help you identify those who are ideal for your company because they have met the vision, enjoy their work, have fun at work, work efficiently and show sophisticated professionalism.

Why recruitment is important

Because our companies are as good as the people we hire, our recruitment can literally make or break our business. It costs money to find employees, screen them, hire them, keep them on the payroll and offer them benefits. If we find the wrong person for the job or our company, we incur additional costs in the form of severance pay and the repetition of the recruitment process.

The importance of recruiting in your company is that the way you recruit influences who you attract to an application, which leads either to a good hire or a bunch of wrong hits. So what you are looking for should influence where and how you recruit. For example, if you're looking for product innovations in a technology company, set up a stand at job fairs organized by technology and design schools. Or, to find a psychologist with 20 years of experience, network at the next American Psychological Association conference.

Why selection is important

Without a good selection process, recruitment managers may be tempted to hire the first qualified person they find or to hire the people they like best. Selection is not only about finding someone for the job, but also about finding the person who is best suited to the vacancy. This person often stands out because:

  • You are qualified for the position in terms of education and training
  • They are likeable and get along well with each other
  • They are experienced and ready to start work
  • They are knowledgeable in their field and willing to contribute to your organisation
  • These are qualities that we cannot always recognise by just looking at a CV

During the selection process, certain candidates make good connections on the phone, pass exams with flying colours, get along well with HR managers or shine on a sham day at work. These outstanding superstars help us eliminate from the pool of candidates those who are good candidates but don't shine quite as brightly.

In other words, the importance of selection for your company is the fact that they:
  • Saves you money in the long run by finding reliable permanent employees
  • Connecting the right people with your open positions
  • Identifies candidates that click with you and your other employees
  • Finds the best person for the job, not just a qualified person

When to recruit and hire?

Just because the workload is too heavy or you are introducing a new product or service to your company does not mean it is the right time to hire a new employee.

You may be able to reduce the workload and achieve your goals by hiring freelancers or services to perform tasks like these:
  • Planning appointments
  • Provision of basic customer service
  • Social media management and website maintenance
  • Design of advertising campaigns
  • Filling temporary vacancies

These professionals will help your company work more efficiently without the need to recruit and put someone on your payroll.

Because of the importance of recruitment to the long-term success of your organization, it is important not to rush it.

Here are some reasons for recruiting in a company:
  • You have enough work for a full-time or part-time job that you can do permanently
  • You have a clear written job description for the potential new employee
  • You have the cash flow you can spend on hiring and selecting the right candidate
  • You have the cash flow to pay your new employee consistently without compromising.

Considerations regarding the recruitment and selection process

An effective recruitment selection process involves the introduction of a deliberate system. Everything, from scheduling to job descriptions, interviews and final selection, is deliberately and carefully planned. In order to find the best possible candidate, it is important to plan enough time and money for the recruitment process so that you are not stressed or in a hurry.

In addition, in complex hiring processes, you can hire headhunters to find potential candidates for you. They look at your job descriptions, go to job fairs and contact qualified people at other companies or on professional networking sites like LinkedIn. Headhunters sometimes also have an extensive list of contacts in your field, making it faster and cheaper for them to find potential candidates than for you to do it yourself.

Prepare clear job descriptions

An effective recruitment selection process almost always starts with a clear understanding of your company's needs and clear job descriptions. Many positions are not filled as well as they could be due to poor job descriptions or unrealistic expectations of the person filling the new position.

Here are some things to consider when creating job descriptions for your company:

What is their job title? This may seem obvious, but be as specific as possible in your job title. For an open board position, indicate whether it is a finance, fundraising, industry expertise or other role. For an engineering position, indicate whether it is a planning position, a customer contact position, or a new construction position.

Who do they report to? When your new employee comes on board, to whom will he or she report? While a customer service representative is likely to report to a customer service manager, the manager might report to a regional manager. Let your candidates know who they report to.

What are the specifics? List the specifics of a working day for that person. How many hours per week will they spend designing, interacting with customers, in meetings or traveling? Draw a vivid picture for potential candidates to attract those who best fit your organization.

Check your job descriptions before posting the job, especially if you have never worked on the job in person. If you expect someone to do the work of two or three people, you must limit the responsibility for the work. If you leave things out, you need an experienced professional who has your blind spots and suggests changes.

Focus on what you can do for them. You want to attract people who are excited about where you want to go as a company, people who have grasped the vision and can't wait to be part of it. Exciting employees tend to perform differently than those who are just desperate for a job and are relieved to finally have an offer (any offer) on the table.

Selection of an interview process

As soon as you have a qualified pool of candidates to fill the positions described in your job descriptions, the interview begins. The interview process is likely to involve many different rounds of interviews as you narrow down your candidates more and more.

These rounds could include:

Telephone interviews: If you receive a stack of qualified candidate CVs, try to call each candidate and talk to them for a few minutes to ask and answer questions and to better assess their qualifications.

Group interviews: For positions that require a lot of teamwork, such as call center positions, you sometimes gather a pool of qualified candidates to see how they work together as a team towards a common goal.

Video conferencing interviews: If candidates live far away, first round interviews can be conducted via video conferencing rather than in person to enhance the eye contact we don't have in a regular phone interview.

Face-to-face interviews: These are traditional interviews where a candidate comes to your office to meet with you, a hiring team or their potential new manager. Sometimes several rounds of personal interviews are conducted before the final hire is selected.

When to hire and when to wait?

Because it is so expensive to go through the recruitment and selection process, timing your hiring is important. If you haven't found the perfect candidate, but recruitment resources are running low, you may find that one or two candidates are a good enough fit and can be trained in weaker areas. Conversely, you may be nervous that hiring the wrong person could cost you too much money later. In this case, you can wait with the hiring or look for a freelancer instead. If all goes well, you should actually have some money left at the end of your recruitment and selection process and one or two excellent candidates to choose from who will increase your profit in the long run, rather than emphasize it.

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