Organizations use several different types of recruitment methods to attract top talent in the competitive talent market. Every role has a different requirement, and every company has a different set of responsibilities and tasks. That means employers have to use innovative hiring tactics that match their environment as well as appeal to their desired candidates.
What is Recruitment?
Recruitment is a procedure of finding and captivating the potential resources for engaging the unfilled positions in an organization. It sources the employees with the skills and attitude, which are needed for accomplishing the objectives of an organization.
This is a process of identifying the jobs vacancies, evaluating the job requirements, reviewing applications, background screening, shortlisting the candidates and selecting the right employee. Some companies also outsource recruitment to dedicated recruitment agencies.
2 Types of Recruitment
Various types of recruiting processes can be deployed within the same business, depending on the role and the department. Selecting the right alternative can speed up the recruitment process and find the ideal candidate for your organization. There are two types of recruitment internal and external
Internal Recruitment
Internal recruitment is a type of recruitment in which you source candidates to fill a role from within your existing workforce or organization. Internal sources of recruitment are easily available to an organization.
Internal recruitment saves a lot of recruiters’ time, money, and effort as there isn’t a formal interview and onboarding process. Internal recruitment may lead to an increase in employee productivity as their motivation level increases.
The drawback of internal recruitment is that it refrains the organization to employ motivated blood. This can hinder new ideas, innovation, and diversity that a fresh talent might have brought along.
Types of Internal Recruitment
The talent market is becoming competitive day by day. Organizations deploy various effective techniques and advanced ways for talent acquisition. Many companies are employing internal recruitment strategies to save time and money.
It also allows the organization to refrain from troublesome and lengthy recruitment processes. Following are the types of Internal recruitment
Employee referrals
An easy way to find trustworthy and competent candidates is to ask employees for referrals. Employee referrals are a combination of internal and external recruitment types. Existing staff are encouraged to refer people they know for job vacancies.
Generally, hires from employee referrals improve the quality of candidates, increase retention rate, reduce time and costs of hiring, etc
You could offer an incentive for doing so to encourage more employees to participate. More benefits of hiring from employee referrals are:
- Reduces Recruitment Cost Significantly
- New hire already knows about your organization’s goals and targets.
- Better Employee Retention Rate
- Improves Quality of Hire.
- Easily Find Candidates For Hard To Fill Roles
- Boost Employer Branding.
- Improves The Scope of Employee Engagement.
Promotions and transfers
Promotions and transfers aren’t quite the same things, but the concept is the same. Promotion is the transfer of an employee from one position to another position with a higher pay grade, responsibilities, and salary.
Transfer is more of a horizontal move as it involves the transfer of an employee from one position to another position at the same pay grade level or similar salary. It doesn’t usually involve greater responsibilities.
Staff can be transferred to the same role in another branch or region. Or they can also take on a similar position in a different department or division.
Boomerang employees
Rehiring former employees who worked well in your company but then quit for personal reasons, professional reasons, or some combination of both is Known as boomerang employees.
Bringing a boomerang employee back on board has many pros
- They already understand the company and the culture.
- Rehiring former employees costs less.
- Reduces time to hire.
- Eliminates the risk of a bad hire
- You know what you’re getting
External Recruitment
External recruitment is when you recruit an employee from outside of your company whom you have never met before to fill a position. External recruitment brings in new energy, innovative ideas, and a fresh approach. But it is a costly and time-consuming process. Candidates are typically sourced, interviewed, assessed, and verified before making a hiring decision.
Types of External Recruitment
With more and more people engaging in social networking sites many companies have started using social media recruitment platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for manpower staffing. Professional candidates also choose the company to work with that they have a positive candidate experience with. They also consider the companies having effective job marketing and talent acquisition strategies.
Nowadays, many companies are extensively using social media for developing marketing and sales strategies. They are increasing brand awareness, publicizing their newly formed business, and selling relevant content and blogs, etc.
In the world of social media and the internet, Savvy recruiters know that they must have to employ efficient and effective strategies to advertise and attract top talent in the competitive market. Following are some of the various types of external recruitment strategies employed by the employeers
Talent pool databases
When a new vacancy comes up, search your talent pool for similar skills and experience. As most of the time, there are two or three top candidates to select from for hire. Search through your talent pool databases for applicants and candidates that were not hired previously but were suitable enough to save for next time. This will save you a lot of time and effort.
External advertisment
One effective way to attract top applicants is through employer branding. Placing job ads on your careers site, job boards, social media pages, and industry publications enhances your employer branding. It also boosts your company’s reputation. The drawback is that external advertising can be very expensive.
Accurate placement of the ads is mandatory in this case to avoid attracting unsuitable applicants.
Recruitment agencies
One of the most effective types of recruitment process is outsourcing your hiring process to a recruitment agency.
As the competition in the labor market is fierce and it can be difficult to find qualified and potential employees from a swarm of candidates. Therefore, the procedure of finding the right and suitable candidate with the right skill sets can take weeks or months for a company.
The process of reviewing CVs, interviews, processing applications, and screening procedures can be very time-consuming and complicated for HR staff. Therefore, recruitment agencies liberate the HR staff to focus on their company’s internal tasks rather than spending time on recruitment procedures.
Recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) involves an employer transferring all or part of the recruitment process of finding potential candidates over to a third-party service provider.
Recruitment process outsourcing is specifically used by medium and large-sized companies. It is often a popular choice for employers who are looking to acquire skilled talent in specialized, hard-to-fill positions or technical areas in their company.
Professional employer organizations
When you need to fill a highly skilled position, professional organizations can be an excellent source of candidates.
A PEO or professional employer organization is an all-inclusive outsourcing option also known as co-payment. In this arrangement, the PEO performs your various time-consuming HR, and administrative functions, such as compensation and payroll administration, worker’s compensation, employment taxes, employee benefits, etc on the behalf of a business. This allows the PEO to share and manage many employee-related responsibilities and liabilities
Partnering with these associations and organizations can also put you in touch with top talent. When you join a PEO, it becomes the professional employer of the clients currently existing workforce, providing services and benefits.
Internships and apprenticeships
Offering internships and apprenticeships is one of the effective ways to get to know the strengths of individuals. Through offering internships, hiring managers can detect and evaluate the potential in the interns and apprentices who can be upskilled and developed to fill future roles.
A Well managed and effective internship and apprenticeship programs are fertile ground for recognizing and nourishing future talent and leaders.
Related: What Is an Apprenticeship?
Recruitment events
For big organizations, or companies planning expansion, exhibitions and recruitment events are perfect for attracting fresh and qualified talent from a competitive talent market.
Events can be arranged like job fairs or graduate recruitment drives on campus. Although these events can be costly they are an excellent source of knowing a candidate personally.
Job shadowing
It is another great way to identify potential candidates. Job shadowing is a type of on-the-job training that allows an interested employee to follow and closely observe another employee performing the role.
By engaging in job shadowing individuals are able to:
- Gain insight into the roles and responsibilities of employees.
- Reflect and learn from the experiences of their colleagues.
- See how other staff and teams work.
This type of learning is usually used to onboard new employees into an organization or into a new role. It’s also an excellent way of promoting your employer brand and letting people know that your company supports new graduates and developing talent.
Word of mouth
Word-of-mouth recruitment is an excellent way to promote your company as well as to find qualified candidates. It is a process where employees spread the word about their company to others.
Big brands and multinationals can easily use word-of-mouth methods for headhunting. As their employer brand is already well-known and established, so they’re recognized as an employer of choice. All they need to do is put the word out that they’re hiring and they will get a queue of talented candidates.
People trust brands that have a strong audience engagement and reputation. This will attract candidates looking for job opportunities. With a robust social media presence and advertising new positions and openings on social media, an open position becomes a word of mouth.
