“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was - and still is - the most important thing we do.” - Marc Bennioff, Salesforce
Evolving regulatory settings, working models, technologies, and the mindset of individuals are all having a greater impact on the Recruitment and Staffing Industry. The demand for better placement is surging, putting pressure on the staffing agencies or in-house recruiters. Right from onboarding management, pre-hire management, scheduling interviews, candidate management, referral management, and social recruiting to employee satisfaction, the role played by in-house recruiters is much higher compared to any recruiting agency. Running an in-house recruiting facility has its own challenges. The fill rate hit rate, and employee and employer satisfaction plays a more significant role.
This article aims to expand on the points mentioned above, focusing on how a recruiting software can support the in-house recruiting team to help them run the facility efficiently.
What Is In-House Recruiting?
In-house recruiting is when a company applies internal resources and people to fill their job vacancies. In-house recruiters are trained and qualified enough to progress through the entire recruiting process, starting from finding the right people to recruiting them. The in-house recruitment process simply means that the people are hired directly by the company rather than through external staffing agencies, also known as recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).
Staffing agencies and in-house recruiting facilities strive to fill up vacant positions for the companies. Hiring skilled employees in less time requires being proactive in attracting hard-to-find talent and proficient in using different technologies that help automate the recruitment process. Also, they need to be good at building relationships and delivering the best candidate experiences.
Although the tasks of staffing agencies and in-house recruiting facilities are basically the same - finding suitable candidates for vacant job positions. Still, many organizations prefer creating in-house recruitment facilities rather than delegating the hiring tasks to staffing agencies. But why? Let's have a look at the reasons why organizations prefer in-house recruitment facilities.
Why Do Organizations Prefer In-House Recruitment Facilities?
Save Hiring Costs
The in-house recruiting staff doesn't work on commission, so hiring employees with HR software like BrightHR can prove to be less expensive than staffing agencies that charge hefty commissions.
Besides these reasons, the below difference between staffing agencies and in-house recruiting facilities clearly depicts why organizations prefer conducting internal hiring processes.
Staffing Agencies V/S. In-House Recruiting Facility
The comparison mentioned above shows that hiring through in-house recruiting facilities can save costs and help you gain a better control over candidate selection. Yes, it is right that delegating recruiting jobs to the staffing agencies can save your time and lets you concentrate on your core business. But, hiring the right people directly impacts the profitability of your business, and that needs to be done carefully to keep your organization flourishing. Staffing agencies are good at finding candidates with niche qualifications and tight specifications, but what about your organization's culture? How does someone working out of your company know which candidate would fit your company's culture?
Hiring through an in-house recruiting facility allows you to follow a process that is compatible with your organization's budget, resources, and requirements. Having full control over the recruitment process internally helps you portray your brand values and vision to the candidates in a better way. It helps you to gain employee and employer satisfaction, use employee referrals, collaborate effectively, make excellent hiring decisions, and manage the onboarding process that can motivate employees to a great extent.
Thus, creating an in-house recruiting facility can provide many benefits to your company. Let's have a look at some of them.
Benefits of Creating In-House Recruiting Facility
Although there are countless benefits, a few notable benefits are as listed below;
Follow Bespoke Recruiting Process
Every candidate is different, and following a personalized talent acquisition strategy can depict the level of your interest in nurturing a relationship with them. This allows you to represent your brand better and convince the candidates of your choice to accept your job offers confidently.
Choose the Right Attitude
Staffing agencies might be good at choosing candidates with excellent skills and experience. But, what about the attitude? Only you know whether a particular candidate would be able to strengthen your organization in terms of teamwork and fit into its culture or not. Thus, creating an in-house recruiting facility is essential to hiring as per your company's priorities.
Stay Updated with Candidates' Journeys
Every candidate might be at a different stage in their journey with your brand. Keeping yourself updated with the candidates' journey becomes difficult if you rely on staffing agencies for the hiring process. In-house hiring teams using the right recruiting software can stay updated with each candidate's journey and implement nurturing strategies accordingly.
Keep Recruitment Under Your Control
While recruiting, staffing agencies are desperate to close the requirement as soon as possible because they are concerned about their bottom line. Whereas, when an in-house recruiting facility is working on filling up the vacancies, they ensure that the candidates with the right attitude that fit your culture get onboard. This helps keep control of your organization's recruitment drives to avoid pressurized hiring processes, which can harm your business in the long run.
Increase Scope of Learning & Development
Companies these days prefer training their present employees and promoting them to higher positions instead of hiring new ones. This helps keep the employees motivated and encourages them to stay loyal to the organization. In that case, in-house recruiting teams play a significant role in selecting the candidates within the company based on their performance which external staffing agencies are unable to do.
Thus, these are the benefits of relying on in-house recruiting facilities for your organization's hiring needs. Besides that, in-house recruiting facilities can contribute to a great extent in delivering excellent candidate experiences. Let's have a look at how an in-house recruiting facility can help enhance the candidate experience.
How Does In-House Recruiting Facility Help in Enhancing Candidate Experience?
Improved Transparency
Compared to staffing agencies, in-house recruiting facilities are better at maintaining transparency and communication with the candidates throughout the selection process. This allows you to create a positive image of your brand, establishes trust, and builds a strong relationship between the company and candidates.
Quick Decision-Making
In the case of an in-house recruiting facility, whether to hire a candidate or not lies in the hands of internal company staff and thus can be made quickly. There are several rounds of interviews taken which are already time-consuming. If the decision to hire a candidate is delayed, the candidate might get frustrated and never join your company.
Simple Application Process
Usually, in-house recruiting facilities follow a simple application process allowing candidates to send their resumes directly to the hiring company through email and don't have to go through several people to get through the selection process. This enables delivering the best candidate experience and hiring top talent easy for the companies.
Industry Knowledge and Brand Awareness
The in-house recruiters can easily brief the candidates about their industry and brand as they have better knowledge about the same than external staffing agencies. By imparting clear and right knowledge, the candidates can provide better experiences and face the interviews confidently.
Creating an in-house recruiting facility can help you deliver excellent candidate experiences and make better hiring decisions for your business. But, monitoring the performance of in-house recruiting facilities is also important to ensure that the right candidates are being employed at the right time at a minimum cost. Below-mentioned are the recruitment metrics that help you measure the performance of in-house recruiting facilities and ensure that it runs smoothly and helps you gain desired results.
In-House Recruitment Facility Metrics
Cost Per Hire (CPH)
CPH can be calculated by adding internal and external costs spent on hiring candidates divided by the number of candidates recruited. Knowing the cost per hire allows you to control the hiring costs and ensure that a minimum amount is being spent on recruiting employees.
Attrition Rate
Attrition rate helps you analyze whether you are recruiting for business expansion or replacing the current employees. Regardless of why your employees are resigning, if the number of employees being replaced is higher than the employees being recruited to expand the business, then you need to definitely find the root cause of the problem to enhance the performance of your in-house recruiting team.
Retention V/S. Turnover
Retaining staff is challenging for every company these days, and turnover is also not always harmful. But, why employees are resigning from the company needs to be analyzed. Is one manager experiencing more turnovers than the others? Is there a common reason why employees are leaving the company? All these factors need to be analyzed to know the actual ratio of retention and turnover to improvise the efforts of the in-house recruiting and HR team.
Interview to Offer Ratio and Offer to Acceptance Ratio
If you are interviewing many candidates but being able to offer to a few candidates only, then you need to analyze your recruiting process. If your candidates are not accepting offers, then you need to check your company's culture fit and trending expectations of the candidates. You need to consistently monitor why you are losing your candidates to the competitors and find different ways to improve those shortcomings.
Internal v/s. External Recruitments
Externally hiring employees is always beneficial as they bring in new perspectives, but promoting employees to higher positions can motivate them and encourage them to deliver better performance. With the help of workforce management software, you can evaluate whether internal or external hires are more successful. Based on that data, you can plan a successful recruiting strategy.
Based on these metrics, you can analyze whether your recruiting strategy is getting desired results or not and simultaneously measure the performance of your in-house recruiting team. Measuring these metrics is important, but only when you are measuring the right metrics. Having control of your entire recruiting process can seem to be quite overwhelming, especially when you are very busy with your core business processes. Besides these metrics, it is also important to know what candidates are expecting from the employers and what attracts them the most while grabbing job opportunities.
Top Trends Shaping the Future of the Recruiting Industry
It is a known fact that despite the sustainability that several organizations showed during the pandemic movement, there were severe HR-related challenges with the Great Resignation Movement. It has forced organizations to re-plan their hiring and retention strategies. Also, it has made companies realize the importance of understanding candidates’ expectations, revamping company policies, and streamlining their hiring processes can only help in improving their interview-to-offer ratio and offer-to-acceptance ratio.
These transformations in employees' expectations and market demands have impacted the hiring strategies to a greater extent. Let’s have a look at the top trends that will shape the recruiting industry in the future.
As per the above figures, employee experience (EX) is the trend that is most likely to shape the future of the global recruiting industry. Thus, the recruiters these days need to consider two aspects that help in enhancing employee experience and can contribute in gaining success in their hiring process - flexible work is here to stay, and a systematic hiring strategy should be in-place.
There are several challenges that in-house recruiters are facing post covid, let’s have a look at some of them with solutions explained.
Challenges Faced by In-house Recruiting Facility Post Covid: (With Solutions Explained)
Too Many Applicants
Many candidates apply for the same job position, but shortlisting the right ones that suit your company's requirements is tedious and time-consuming. Lack of time can lead to the wrong selection, which can become a significant threat to the company's progress in the future.
Solution: The best method to overcome this challenge is to implement an advanced recruiting software that can automate the process of shortlisting candidates in less time and make your hiring process quick.
Engaging Candidates with Hard-to-Find Skills
Engaging the right candidates becomes tough in this cut-throat competition. There are chances that you lose hard-to-find skilled candidates to your competitors because they are considering many job offers simultaneously.
Solution: It becomes imperative for you to persuade your candidates and give them the reasons to choose your company over your competitors. Consistently communication and social media presence showing positive work culture and other facilities you provide to your employees should be showcased to attract desired candidates to your company.
Filling Vacancies on Time
Taking too long to hire a candidate within a company results in lacking resources leading to the inability to deliver the expected quality and quantity in the form of products and services. This directly obstructs the growth of your company.
Solution: You need to pay attention to your hiring process and streamline it by taking the help of the technology that helps in escalating the hiring process and achieving desired business goals.
Controlling the Recruiting Costs
Cost is always a significant factor in managing in-house recruiting costs. The quicker you recruit, the lower the hiring costs. But, quick hiring can make wrong selection resulting in more costs in the future. Also, there are advertising costs involved to attract the candidates.
Solution: Analyzing the costs involved in hiring and analyzing the issues that trigger higher expenses throughout the recruiting process is required to keep the costs under control. The best recruiting software can help you do that by providing up-to-the-minute information about the costs incurred at every stage of the hiring process.
Lack of Time and Resources
Recruiting is time-consuming, and you might not be able to spare enough time to manage your recruiting process due to your focus on core business processes. This can lead to missing out on skilled and talented people, which can negatively impact your overall organization.
Solution: To handle such a situation, you need to deploy the best recruiting solution that helps you automate your different hiring tasks like sourcing and contacting candidates, scheduling interviews, shortlisting candidates, etc.
It is evident from the above challenges and solutions that technology plays a significant role in making better hiring decisions as it helps recruiters in automating tasks and planning strategically. Smart business owners understand the value of following a systematic approach toward hiring as they know that the profitability and productivity of their organization depend on the people working therein. Moreover, maintaining a peaceful culture within an organization is also essential to ensure its future success and growth.
Finally, let's look at the below 10 critical steps that can help you run your in-house recruiting facility successfully.
10 Top Tips to Run an In-House Recruiting Facility Successfully
#1 Define Your Hiring Goals Clearly
The first step toward managing your in-house recruiting process most efficiently is to define your hiring goals clearly. Setting up the priorities relating to which vacant positions you need to fill first is very important to building a more robust recruiting process. Besides that, every company is different and might focus on diversified goals like reducing time in hiring people, improving diversity in hired employees, increasing employee retention rate, minimizing manual tasks in recruiting process, and many more such goals working towards improved hires, organizational culture, and harmony within the employees.
#2 Carefully Plan Sourcing Strategy
How would you decide the best source to advertise your job requirements among so many job portals and social media channels available? If you are looking forward to attracting only the relevant candidates, you need to go for the right blend of job boards and social media websites. Moreover, if you need to fill the job vacancies urgently, you need to go for even the paid advertising channels for quick results. Employee referrals are considered the best strategy for sourcing candidates these days, as this option proves to be the most cost-effective way of recruiting.
#3 Identify Candidate Personas
What kind of employees can work well with your company? This is the question that puts almost every recruiting team into a dilemma. Identify star performers in your organization and identify the qualities you would like to have in your future employees. Design sophisticated candidate personas accordingly. Mere technical skills and knowledge cannot make perfect recruits; they need to be good at team building and self-motivated to help you grow your company.
#4 Eliminate Bias in Selection Process
Many companies are now planning to implement a blind hiring strategy that includes removing all the information from the applications to eliminate intentional and unintentional bias during the selection process. Also, using AI-based recruiting software that supports automated shortlisting of candidates based on their skills, qualifications, and experience can help in minimizing the bias and giving a fair chance to every applicant.
#5 Predict Future Hiring Needs
Depending on the growth rate of your organization, you can predict the number of employees you are likely to hire over the next 6-12 months. Also, the skill gaps, promotions, and staff turnovers you are facing within your organization can help forecast the hiring needs accurately and make decisions accordingly. An advanced recruiting application with real-time information and staffing details can help you make hiring decisions for the future and empower your organization with proper staff when they are actually required.
#6 Analyze your Company's Unique Selling Point (USP)
What is unique about your company that can motivate the candidates to choose your job offers over your competitors? The answer to this question can make your entire recruiting process extremely successful. You can advertise your company's unique selling point (USP) in your job advertisements to attract applicants and make hard-to-find candidates accept your job offers.
#7 Design Impressive Onboarding Process
The onboarding experience can form your brand's first impression in the minds of your candidates. If you are not following an impressive onboarding process, there are chances that all your time, efforts, and money spent on hiring highly demanded by your competitors will fail. Excellently treat your employees by staying empathetic and following ethical ways of managing and compensating them. The present employees are your referrals who can recommend your company to others. So, to maintain the spectacular reputation of your company, you need to design an impressive onboarding process and religiously follow it to create a unique onboarding process.
#8 Use Advanced Technology Throughout the Hiring Process
The ultimate goal of any in-house recruiting facility is to fill up the vacant positions with the candidates having the right skills, experience, and knowledge. Using advanced screening and analyzing tools like HR software at every step throughout the hiring process can help you reduce the paperwork, improve productivity and efficiency, and help make quick hiring decisions. Advanced tools like recruiting software and applicant tracking software can help the hiring team automate tasks like shortlisting candidates, scheduling interviews, sending interview and appointment letters, and making the entire recruiting process quick and accurate. Also, many companies are using HR bots to deliver personalized experiences with the new working models resulting in better engagement and quick recruitments.
#9 Create Pocket-Friendly Hiring Budget
Creating a pocket-friendly budget will help you control your hiring costs and gain desired returns on investment. Also, it can help you portray and positively position your in-house recruiting team. When you prove that your in-house recruiting facility saves you more money than hiring a staffing agency, it becomes simple to acquire permission from higher authorities to invest more in resources and gain better results.
#10 Be Inclusive
Descrimination and stereotyping still exists in the candidate selection process in many of the organizations. To run an in-house recruiting facility successfully it becomes very important to eliminate discriminatory hiring policies that hinder candidate experience. It is always beneficial for a company to follow a diversified approach towards hiring people. That means you need to ensure that your in-house recruiting facility follows a non discriminatory policy based on nationality, gender, etc. to gain a diversified and talented workforce. Intentionally or unintentionally, humans tend to be discriminative and so using automated tools for applicant selection and recruitment can help in eliminating this issue.
Conclusion
Recruiting is and will always remain to be a critical task for organizations. Having an in-house recruiting facility benefits you in many ways as it gives you the freedom to implement the recruiting strategy based on your business priorities and, at the same time, keep the costs under control. But, to make the most of your in-house recruiting facility, it becomes imperative to ensure that it is being appropriately managed using intelligent technology in the form of the best recruiting system helping your talent acquisition team focus on high-priority recruitments that align well with your organization's goals, needs, and policies.
