Recruitment process for SMBs: Step-by-step guide to hire effectively

How to attract, interview and implement a recruitment process that will boost your business growth. Get step-by-step tips and  tools to enhance every stage of your recruitment process.

Despite the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic, 36% of SMBs in the Asia-Pacific region still have plans to expand their business. A crucial aspect of an expansion plan is identifying and bringing qualified people into the company - fast, which is impossible without having a recruitment process to guide the hiring team.

So how can an SMB create an efficient recruitment process?

In this article, we provide a step-by-step guide on how SMBs can create a hiring blueprint that suits their specific business needs. Implementing these steps can help push your organization towards success because, according to Marc Benioff (Founder, Salesforce),

“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was - and still is - the most important thing we do.” - Marc Benioff (Founder, Salesforce)

What is recruitment?

Recruitment is the overall process of identifying a staffing need, attracting talents, screening, interviewing, selecting, hiring, and onboarding suitable candidates. It requires every step taken to accomplish a hiring need. Depending on the company's size, the HR team or outsourcing agency can be in charge of recruitment.

In modern companies, technology solutions that automate and support recruitment activities have become widespread. These platforms are proven to make the recruitment process better and faster.

The path to getting the best out of your recruitment is designing a proper hiring process. This brings us to the question:

Why is it crucial to implement a well-structured recruitment process?

The way you design your recruitment process could benefit your organization in many ways, such as:

• Increase hiring quality: By structuring every stage of the process, your team gets to know, plan, and execute correctly to achieve the hiring demands. This way, you stand a better chance of getting the right employee.
• Reduce time: A proper recruitment process will cut down the time spent hiring by streamlining all the recruitment steps. This allows the hiring team to achieve a lot in less time and leaves enough time for them to attend to other essential tasks.
• Save cost: The absence of a structured recruitment process maximizes your chances of hiring bad employees who are costly to replace. With a standard procedure in place, you can reduce your turnover rate and save your organization the cost of continually hiring and training new employees.
• Provide a positive candidate experience: 63% of candidates would reject a job offer if they had a bad candidate experience. This shows that nothing defines a company culture to a candidate like its recruitment process. A well-structured process can improve candidates’ perceptions about working in your company.

Factors to consider when creating a recruitment process

The following are important details to ensure you accomplish the desired hiring results from your recruitment process:

• Company size: A 1000-employee organization’s recruitment process should be different from that of a small business. Consider your company’s size and future workforce plans when building your recruitment process. Let's say your organization has plans to expand rapidly; you may want to create a recruitment process that can support many employees’ hiring within a short period.
• Country: Governments have regulations that impact the recruitment practices of companies within them. These regulations guide organizations when creating their recruitment process. For example, some countries have laws that require that the candidate meet specific criteria (e.g., age) before they can be employed.
• Type of business: Your recruitment process has to meet the talent demands of your business vertical. For instance, a company that manufactures attracts a different type of talent, unlike a tech company, where another skill is required.
• Company image: How do you want your organization to be looked at by candidates? Take note of the image you want to portray to candidates during the recruitment process. For example, if you're going to be seen as an international brand, it would be wise to have a recruitment process centered on attracting candidates from different parts of the world.

There are many strategic approaches to create an efficient recruitment process for your business. Below, we present one of the most efficient methods of building a proper recruitment process.

Steps of the recruitment process for SMEs

The A.S.I.O.H Recruitment process

Introducing the A.S.I.O.H. recruitment process:

Step 1: Attracting the top talents

The first step to recruiting is all about letting talents know you need them. You would want to get as many applicants as possible at this recruitment stage. Here are the best practices for drawing large numbers of qualified applicants.

Preparing the perfect job descriptions

Even though you know the talents you want, if you can’t accurately describe the qualities you are looking for in your job description, you will only draw bad candidates. A well-written job description will help prevent this. It should be detailed and concise for effectiveness which includes:

• Job title: Use key phrases that accurately describe the position you want to fill. Avoid the use of ambiguous word choice to prevent distracting or confusing candidates.
• About the company: You should set a section apart to discuss your organizational culture, mission, and goals. Candidates want to know what makes your company stand out to see if they will fit in with your culture.
• Job summary: What is the job all about? Provide candidates with the purpose of the role you seek to fill. Briefly explain the required qualities, the reporting manager, and the working team. Make sure to highlight your selling points.
• Key responsibilities: Let candidates know what duties they will perform in the company if chosen. Touch on the specific tasks and explain how that fits into the company’s overall goals.
• Requirements: What are the educational or technical skills for this position? Also, do not forget to include the professional certifications required (if any) or experience in certain areas.

Creating a detailed job description post from scratch can be time-consuming. That is why we have made awesome job description templates for you. These templates are easily customizable and cater to various jobs such as HR, Marketing, Sales, QA, and Software Engineer.

Top sources to attract new talents 

Established companies use two primary methods to appeal to job seekers. These are:

Internal recruitment sources: This happens when an organization hires from its existing workforce or with close connections to the organization like former employees or referred candidates. It costs less time and money and gives you the added benefit of increasing your retention rate.

There are four common ways to leverage your internal sources:

• Promotion: The promotion of an employee, usually based on their performance, involves upgrading them to a higher position with better pay and more responsibilities. Moving up an employee is cheaper, provides a person already familiar with the job, and motivates employees to grow professionally.
• Former employees: Employees who left the company on good terms are an excellent choice for internal recruitment. As they already understand the organizational culture, it is easier for them to fit back and excel in their role.
• Employee referral program: This recruiting scheme is set up to encourage current employees to refer qualified relatives, friends, and past colleagues for open positions. By implementing an attractive employee referral program, employers are sure to get quality candidates, reduce time-to-hire, and lower hiring costs.
• Transfering: A transfer occurs when an employee is laterally moved from one place (i.e., department, branch, or position) to another without a change in responsibility, salary, and status. Companies usually take this step to reduce employee monotony or boredom. Transferring can help increase job satisfaction and increase employee morale if properly applied.

External recruitment sources: This type of recruitment ensues when employers use outside channels to fill vacant positions. External sources of recruiting are the ideal way to go if you want to reach many candidates.

This process allows you to get passive candidates, advertise to a specific job seekers section, and build a talent pool for later use.

• Job posting sites: These are websites where employers advertise their vacancies to potential employees. They serve as a bridge between employers and job seekers. Job posting sites may be classified by niche, payment plan, or by region.
• Social media platforms: 73% of millennials found their last position through social media. This makes Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram great places to connect employers and candidates, especially younger talents. Posting videos, creating content, or building attractive company profiles are effective tactics to stand out from the crowd.
• Headhunting companies: Headhunters are organizations that provide recruitment services to businesses. Their job is to find and locate quality candidates based on a company’s specifications. They are a popular go-to solution for many companies seeking to hire management/senior roles.
• Campus recruitment: Campus recruitment allows employers to sell their career opportunities to a large body of students. This approach is especially useful for hiring entry-level employees as it will connect with top-notch university graduates.

3 tools that enhance your talents attraction

There are many tools designed to help you catch the attention of candidates. Some of them are:

Buffer is a social media management tool that can be used to schedule job posting in various social media platform to attract job seekers

Adobe spark is a social video-making platform that employers can use to create catchy and stunning job post videos to engage job seekers on social media

Erinapp is an employee referral tool that boosts employee participation in referrals with features like mobile referrals, bonus tracking, referral recommendations, and many more

Step 2: Screening the applied candidates

Attracting a vast pool of talents means your applicant screening process comes with many intricacies. These challenges come in the form of unqualified applicants, false information on resumes, and many more. Having a comprehensive screening process helps you solve these problems.

Dos and don'ts when screening candidate profiles

Here is a simple guideline on the screening process top practices:

These are the most important things to note when screening. Disregarding any of these do’s and don'ts can lead to a biased and ineffective screening process.

3 tools to speed up your screening process

Oracle Taleo is a cloud-based ATS that allows recruiters to modify their screening of applicants based on the need of their business

SmartRecruiters is a recruiting software platform that offers talent sourcing and screening functions for recruiters as add-on features.

Jobhopin is a screening tool powered by AI/ML technology, which automates the sourcing process and helps the recruitment happen faster, easier, smarter.

Step 3: Interviewing the shortlisted candidates

With a smaller pool of candidates left after screening, the interviewing stage allows you to evaluate, ask questions, and decide if they are the right fit. There are two methods of interview, namely online interviews, and face-to-face interviews. The use of these interview methods mainly depends on the circumstances involved.

Best practices to conduct face-to-face interviews

Face-to-face interviews work best for on-site positions. Using this method allows you to physically evaluate the candidate and make the candidate feel what the company looks like in person. To get the best out of your face-to-face interviews, you should:

• Prepare the interview questions: Are you looking for a culture-fit candidate, or do you want to evaluate a candidate based on their past behavior? Regardless of your choice, set the necessary interview questions and provide the hiring team with a copy before the D-day.
• Define the top criteria: Determine how candidates are to be judged beforehand to curb bias. You can use an interview evaluation form to ensure your candidates are objectively scored based on set criteria during the interview.
• Set up a good environment: Use a well-ventilated and clean room for your interview. You can also provide candidates with comfort by having a pen, paper, and water available.

Best practices to conduct online interviews

Online interviews are best-suited for remote positions to save your candidates the cost of traveling long distances. To take full advantage of your online interview sessions, you should:

• Use a video interview tool: For better efficiency, your online interview should be done via video call. Using the right video interview tool will provide your candidates with positive interview experience while allowing you to assess their skills properly.
• Schedule right: One major challenge with online interviews is scheduling. Counter this by taking note of your candidates' time zone before scheduling. You can also make use of a scheduling app to help you get the best time and remind both parties of the interview before the day.
• Test your technology: Get familiar with how your internet connection, camera, sound, and every other tech works before the day of the interview. You can decide to test them again a few hours before the interview.

Assessment & Evaluation

Preliminary assessment of candidates can be conducted before or after the interview. Candidates should be assessed based on their skills, knowledge, and abilities displayed, especially during the interview.

Assessment here could be job knowledge tests and skills assessment tests. Other kinds of testing you may conduct for candidates include; integrity tests, cognitive ability tests, personality tests, and emotional intelligence tests.

3 tools to make interviewing easy

A video interview tool offers a unique solution, especially for organizations interested in remote candidates. Tools like Skype, Zoom, and Jobvite serve to reduce cost-per-hire, time-for-hire, and provide candidates with a pleasant interview experience.

Google Calendar is an app for scheduling interviews. It has access to a wide range of users, allowing the hiring team to collaborate and schedule interviews with candidates.

Calendly is a scheduling app that allows candidates to check and book the available time slot in your schedule.

Step 4: Giving the job offer

Before making the final decision, ensure to do a reference check on the preferred candidate. This step should be compulsory for critical positions, yet optional for entry-level jobs. If everything is verified, let's make the job offer.

First, you have to clearly understand the salary, benefits, and expectations of the position before putting a call to the candidate. This knowledge will help you properly sell the job to the candidate.

While selling the job, don’t forget to highlight the company’s values, vision, and culture. Ensure you emphasize that the role is not just a job, but a career with future growth opportunities abound. However, avoid misleading the candidate by touching on the options you can provide them, and the ones cannot.

Be their career consultant, not recruiter.

For example, will they get managerial training? Or will they be allowed to go for educational career courses? Lastly, after the phone call, send a well-crafted offer letter and closely follow up with the candidate.

Step 5: Hiring and onboarding your new employee

Tips to onboard your new hires

Once a candidate accepts your job offer, the next step is to bring them into your workforce. However, hiring an employee is not the end of the recruitment process - onboarding is. Onboarding is the process of integrating a new hire into your organization. 58% of new employees will stay longer at an organization if they are properly onboarded. Therefore, take your time to create an onboarding strategy that engages new hires.

Here are five tips on how to build an onboarding experience that would increase your retention rate:

• Start before the first day: To properly onboard your new hires, start before their first day. Using an onboarding checklist as a guide, you can send new employees an email containing the Employee Handbook, introducing the company’s culture and product history.
• Make their day one count: Create an exciting first day to ease your new hire feeling of discomfort. For example, you may assign an employee to them on their first day to serve as their guide and show them around the office.
• Assign a mentor: Help your new hires integrate into your organization faster by assigning a mentor. These mentors will guide the employees to reach their full potential by training and supporting them when needed.
• Hold an orientation: Organize an employee orientation event to help employees know more about your company. It will provide them with a chance to meet their colleagues and other new hires. An event-like gathering can be put together, where employees will learn the organizational mission, vision, perks, etc.
• Leverage the use of technology: Manual process of onboarding is prone to human errors and can be an unpleasant experience for everyone. This can be solved by adopting the use of an HRIS to allow companies to run a seamless onboarding process that will positively affect the employee experience.

3 tools to onboard your new hires seamlessly

Grove HR is an HRIS platform that allows you to set up customized workflow and track progress with automated reminders. Employees can also self-onboard using the mobile app.

Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization software that enables unlimited storage, collaboration, and data sharing among team members during the onboarding process.

Zenefits is an HR software that enables online onboarding with self-onboarding features for employees.

It's time to review and optimize your recruitment process

Having achieved your hiring needs, you have to evaluate your process to know how to improve it. The steps to take to accomplish this are:

• Review the result: There are three critical factors to consider when evaluating your recruitment process. These are quality, cost, and time. Compare this to your past recruitment process results to know what needs improvement.
• Identify the challenges: Note and list out the problems that affected the hiring team and candidates during the recruitment process. Ask candidates, new hires, and hiring team members for feedback about your hiring process. Ask questions like: What can be done to improve the interview schedule? Or what part of the process is most challenging or easiest for them? Knowing these challenges exist is the first step to proffering solutions for them.
• Implement solutions: Haven identified the bottlenecks in your recruitment process and made the necessary improvements by applying them. Is it a tool that needs to be adopted to make the interview scheduling easier, or is there a need for more frequent communication between the hiring team and candidates? Quickly make these necessary adjustments to optimize your process.

After reviewing your recruitment process, you may also choose to get ahead by practicing up to date recruitment practices.

Important metrics to measure your recruitment effectiveness

Knowing your recruitment key performance indicators (KPI) will provide you with insights on what worked in your recruitment process and what needs to be improved. Here are the essential numbers you need to include in your report:

• Time to hire: This metric helps track the time spent hiring candidates during the recruitment process. It starts with identifying the need to fill and ends at onboarding. To know your time to hire, combine all the time it took you to fill each role (e.g., a month or a quarter) then divide it by the employees you hired in that period. That is,

• Cost per hire: How much does it cost you to fill an open position? Measuring the cost per hire can help you know if you are spending too much or little on getting new talents onboard. To calculate your cost per hire, add up all your cost for hire, divide it by the number of hires made during that time frame. That is

• Source of hire: This metric identifies the most effective source you get your talents from. Is it the job boards, social media platforms or internal referral? Knowing this metric will help you accurately target your next job posts.
• Quality of hire: Assessing the quality of hire is essential when determining your recruitment process’s success. This metric provides data on the average employee value to the organization. The best way to calculate your quality of hire is by knowing your human capital ROI. To do this, use the formula:

Looking for an all-in-one platform to streamline your recruitment process?

From attracting, screening, interviewing, offering to hiring, Grove HR's end-to-end platform ensures you get the best out of your recruitment process. Integrated in one system, candidate information will automatically sync up with employee records so you can start onboarding and setting your new hires up to success easily and quickly. 

Make your recruitment a breeze today with Grove HR. Sign up now to enjoy our free forever program only available in 2020.