You'll Be Amazed What HR and Recruitment Can Achieve When They Work Together!

The war for talent rages on as companies battle to find, bring board, and retain top talent. In fact, a study by McKinsey highlights this point when it notes that by 2020 there will be a demand for 166 million to 168 million high-skill workers and a supply of only 150 million high-skill workers.

Although the imagery of war might seem overly dramatic, it is nonetheless accurate since employers are going toe-to-toe in a virtual battle to find suitable job candidates. HR and recruiting can help to achieve this objective if they work closely. While recruiters tend to be focused on bringing aboard the right people to fill positions as they arise, HR professionals tend to be focused on training and keeping talent in the fold to increase ROI. Working together, however, the two departments can help companies to attract and hold onto key talent by shortening the hiring process, developing an onboarding strategy, and building a solid employer reputation:

1. Shortening the Hiring Process

The 2016 Recruiter & Employer Sentiment Study notes that recruiters say that lengthy hiring practices as well as the difficulty in finding suitable talent were two of the key things keeping managers from hiring. Another study says that the best job candidates are taken off of the market within 10 days. Since both HR and recruiting are necessary to getting and keeping new workers, they should both have a role in finding ways to make the recruitment process less cumbersome.

Goals that they can work towards include the following:

• Streamlining procedures so that HR and recruiting have no unnecessary overlap that complicates the process;
• Automating the application component by using applications such as RecruiterBox or Resumator; and
• Recruiting constantly so as to always have a healthy pipeline of skilled workers that can be accessed when employment opportunities open up.

When HR and recruiting are on the same page, they can do what is necessary to make the hiring process more efficient, which will give the company a better opportunity to get top talent.

2. A Consistent Onboarding Strategy

Onboarding is a term that refers to organisational socialisation, which is the way that new workers pick up the skills, attitudes, and behaviours they need to become fully integrated into the company. As it turns out, HR and recruiting can work together on the onboarding front to retain top talent.

While recruiting attracts the talent and HR trains and retains the hirees, the two departments can join forces to ensure that there is no difference in the treatment of people as they move from being applicants to being employees. One source, for instance, says that onboarding marks the transition to HR from recruiting, which suggests that the two departments should work together to ensure that this transition process is as seamless as possible.

A Deloitte study, meanwhile, shows how the lack of a proper onboarding program can have a disastrous impact. According to the report, 4% of new workers quit after a less-than-favourable first day on the job, and 22% of workers quit their jobs within the first 45 days of starting the job. Drawing on feedback from north of 50 providers of human capital management tools, the study states that there are four starting guidelines for retaining workers. They include the following:

• Customise the onboarding program to meet the needs of people in different positions and in various generational groups;
• Be consistent in introducing workers to the company’s culture so that everyone is on the same page;
• Automate the onboarding experience in order to ensure that new workers get a uniform introduction to the business; and
• Begin early so that new workers are immediately introduced to the onboarding experience.

3. A Great Employer Brand

Simply attracting employees is not enough when you consider that 84% of candidates say they would mull over the possibility of leaving their current company if another business with a great reputation made them a job offer. Add to that statistic the fact that around 11% of job hunters say they would reject a job opportunity offered by an employer that had an unfavourable reputation – even if they were without work. If recruiters are responsible for attracting the talent and if HR is responsible for training and retaining talent, then it makes sense for HR and recruiting to work together to ensure that the company has a good reputation that will resonate with workers.

To be sure, managing an employer’s brand is something that can’t be left to HR and recruiting. In fact, one source notes that 76% of respondents say that businesses whose C-level executives and leadership team make use of social media to promote their brand come off as more trustworthy. So HR and recruiting should be part of the process, but it should not be left to them alone.

Conclusion

As many companies continue to struggle to find the talent they need to fill job openings, HR and recruiting will have the opportunity to work together to accomplish corporate objectives. If these two departments work together in shortening the hiring process, developing onboarding strategies, and building corporate reputation, they’ll be better positioned to attract top talent. The war for talent is a long way from over, but companies with a strategy can be victorious.