Written by: Talia Knowles
Talia Knowles is an avid reader, writer, and coffee enthusiast, with over five years of experience in writing and editing.
Reviewed by: Keca Ward
As a seasoned HR professional with over 20 years of experience, Keca is an expert in various aspects of Human Resources.
Updated on July 21, 2024
If your business isn’t using a full cycle recruiting approach, it’s probably falling behind the competition.
Full cycle recruiting is a hiring approach that involves attracting, sourcing, screening, and selecting new employees. It requires you to take a proactive and strategic approach to finding and retaining talent.
Taking a full cycle approach can help you identify the best possible candidates for the company’s needs. It also gives you a chance to develop less-experienced candidates’ skills, so they’ll be able to contribute effectively to your organization’s objectives.
In a small fast food restaurant, recruiting could be as simple as posting a “Help Wanted” sign and reading over the resume of the first candidate that walks in. If they seem like a good fit, you might make a hiring decision on the spot.
In contrast, full cycle recruiting is a comprehensive and strategic process that involves analyzing talent gaps, creating job postings, sourcing potential applicants, evaluating resumes, conducting interviews with applicants, making offers, and onboarding new employees.
This proactive approach helps ensure your business hires qualified employees who will make a positive impact. It also allows for more efficient use of recruiters’ time and improves the candidate experience.
The first step in full cycle recruiting is to identify areas of need within your business. You can do this by looking at your company’s available positions, conducting market research, and analyzing industry trends.
To do this step well, it is essential to understand the long-term goals of the company. Consider what you’d like to accomplish in the next five years, and ensure that the hiring strategy is aligned to these business goals.
Start by examining your existing employees’ skill sets and looking for bottlenecks in efficiency or productivity that new hires might fill with specific abilities. This may mean filling gaps between management and operations or resolving labor shortages in certain departments.
Consider what skills or capabilities are needed to achieve business results in the next three to five years, and then identify any talent gaps that could hinder those goals. Sometimes, the talent you need is already in-house!
Look at recent employment trends from reputable sources to gain insight into the current hiring landscape. For instance, you might visit Apple’s career page and learn that the hot new position is an Algorithm Engineer with experience building mathematical models in Python.
This suggests that the massive tech company is working on improving and redesigning its product line, including the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Pencil, and Watch. If your business makes similar products, you might need one of these experts in your company.
With a deeper understanding of the job market, you can determine which types of roles need to be filled and how best to source qualified applicants.
After studying the labor market, you can create job descriptions that accurately reflect the necessary qualifications for each opening. Post these descriptions on your company website, job boards, and social media sites, and let your employees know that you’re open to referrals.
The search for qualified applicants when scouring resumes online can be lengthy, but using applicant tracking systems and advanced filtering to help make the process easier. You can also check referrals from past employees and ask your contacts in relevant industries.
As part of the full cycle recruiting process, craft a strong job description to attract top candidates.
When creating a job description, consider the qualifications needed to perform well in this specific position. A well-crafted job description should contain details about what skills are needed for the role, and an outline of company culture to help attract talent.
Include technical and educational requirements that may be required to perform the role effectively, along with any specific certifications or licensing. Not all companies require a degree, but understanding what is required in your company is essential.
Are there any soft skills that would make a person suitable for the role? This may include communication skills or problem-solving capabilities. Although soft skills can be difficult to measure in traditional resumes and applications, they are essential components of success in your business.
An effective recruitment process should take into account elements such as a candidate’s ability to communicate with clients or colleagues clearly and concisely. This includes verbal communication either face-to-face or remotely through video conferencing calls. It also factors in written communication via emails or social media.
To do full cycle recruiting properly, you’ll have to understand how to identify talent gaps, source potential candidates, screen them based on job criteria, conduct interviews efficiently, use data-driven decision making tools when assessing candidates’ qualifications, and finally select the ideal candidate.
When conducting a first interview with potential hires, come prepared with an outline of topics that will help you determine if the candidate is qualified. Ask questions about the candidate’s background and experience as well as any relevant technical skills.
This is a good opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations in order to get a sense of their communication skills and knowledge.
Ready for the second interview? The next meeting with candidates is critical to the full cycle recruiting process because it allows you to evaluate an applicant’s skills, experience and cultural fit for the role.
To select the ideal candidate at this stage, be sure to communicate clearly what success looks like in the role and which attributes are best suited for it.
Ask thoughtful questions that enable them to assess how well each candidate meets those criteria. Take a look at nonverbal cues from candidates such as body language or facial expressions to gain further insight into their communication style and personality.
After all interviews are complete, assess your options and choose your new employee! Remember to look beyond resumes to determine whether an applicant’s soft skills will contribute positively to your company’s culture and team dynamics.
In rare cases, you may find that your business needs changed during the hiring process. Perhaps a supervisor has left and you now need someone more senior than you’d expected. In situations like this, be sure to notify applicants of the shift in hiring needs to prevent miscommunication.
Full cycle recruiting begins with identifying candidates and ends with making the final hiring decision, but companies should continually evaluate the effectiveness of their recruitment process. Examining each stage can help identify gaps or areas that need improvement.
The goal of full cycle recruiting is to ensure that you recruit the right talent into your business.
Therefore, it’s important to evaluate how effective this process is in terms of retention rate. You can calculate the retention rate by dividing the number of employees remaining at the end of a period by the number of employees you began with during that period.
Retention rate can measure how well the recruitment process works by analyzing how many new hires stay in their positions for at least one year. By tracking employee retention rates, businesses can get an idea of how effective their full cycle recruiting practices are.
Looking at employee retention rates closely can help recruiters identify which employees were a good fit for the company and which weren’t. The average attrition rate between 2021 and 2022 was 24.7%, meaning that nearly a quarter of the workforce left their jobs. How does your business compare?
If your retention rate over one to three years is low, there might be systemic problems within your company that need to be addressed. How well do your supervisors communicate with new hires? Are employees treated fairly and with respect? Improving retention rate often begins with setting the tone at the top.
It’s essential to consider what areas need improvement during recruitment in order to reduce turnover and create a better work environment over time.
You can also evaluate your company’s recruitment process through surveying employees and calculating a net promoter score (NPS). This is a great way to ensure your full cycle recruiting is effective.
NPS gauges satisfaction by asking employees how likely they are to recommend the business as a place to work. It can be used to measure the effectiveness of different stages in the recruitment process, such as initial job postings, interviews, and onboarding experiences.
By analyzing NPS data from current employees who recently went through the recruitment process, companies can identify areas for improvement and develop better strategies for future hiring efforts. You may want to guarantee anonymity so that employees are more likely to give you an accurate response.
Understanding your company’s net promoter score allows you to attract higher quality candidates and create a better work experience for existing employees and potential hires.
Here are some more strategies to help you optimize your full cycle recruiting process and find the right person for each role.
The ideal full cycle recruiter should have strong communication skills, as that person will need to engage with both applicants and hiring managers throughout the recruitment process.
You’ll also need to be organized and detail-oriented when managing multiple applications at once while keeping accurate records throughout each step of recruitment.
Recruiters may want to create social media accounts and use them to find passive candidates. Build a large professional network through alumni associations and industry contacts. When it’s crunch time, you’ll appreciate having these referrals!
During this process, you may find candidates who are not fit for a particular role but have the potential to excel in another position within the company. Keep them on file for later.
Consider asking the candidate if they would be interested in interviewing for a different role, as this can provide access to a pool of diverse professionals with varied skills that can help drive innovation and greater productivity.
If you’re looking to hire the best talent, it’s wise to optimize every stage. From identifying job requirements to onboarding new hires, embracing full cycle recruiting could give your firm the optimal staff.
By leveraging strategic recruitment processes and technologies, you can save your business money, reduce time in filling positions, and improve new hire satisfaction while also boosting productivity.
The first few weeks of starting a new job are critical to employee retention, but many employees don’t experience an effective orientationprog ...
Employee turnover is a natural part of running a business. Though it’s unfortunate to lose employees for any reason, conducting exit interviewscan ...
If you’re a business owner, you’re familiar with the constant effort to optimize your organization, from hiring the right employees toincreasing ...