Whether hiring entry or senior-level personnel, recruiters are always on the front lines of helping a company achieve faster growth through successful talent acquisition strategies. An efficient and well-organized recruitment process will deliver higher quality hirings, reduce costs and time to hire, and provide competitive advantages that directly impact organizational success. Here, the recruiter’s role becomes more proactive. With an organized recruiting roadmap in place, recruiters can avoid costly mistakes and spend less time sourcing and hiring top talent. A hiring roadmap helps the company effectively communicate its needs to recruiters and allow for a thorough recruiting process. In this article, we will explain how to create a detailed recruiting roadmap and provide a few tips to execute it effectively.
“Recruiting is at a crossroads in a lot of ways. Part of that is because it's such a tight labor market that it's harder than ever to attract the best candidates. Figuring out what you will need to do to compete to win quality talent is critical to the organization's success.”
Brian Kropp, group vice president of HR practice at Gartner
What is a Recruiting Roadmap
A recruiting roadmap is an organization-specific plan to find and hire new candidates. The roadmap defines where your talent acquisition team should be and the milestones along the way. It may include plans such as team expansion or adding new roles that didn’t previously exist. The roadmap should always have a time component as it lays out the hiring plans chronologically. We say “organization-specific” because each company has its own approaches to growth — what works well for one company may not work for another. The hiring process steps below will give you some insights on how to plan your recruitment strategies and execute them, but we encourage you to adopt these steps based on your company’s unique culture and needs.
The Importance of Recruiting Roadmaps
HR experts believe that hiring roadmaps are essential for strategic recruitment planning. It helps visualize where the talent acquisition team should be and how to get there. Creating a roadmap can avoid costly mistakes and disruptive surprises that would otherwise prevent companies from achieving their hiring goals. On top of that, it can also allow companies to deal with challenges in a timely manner. Moreover, recruiting roadmaps can give hiring managers a defined long-term plan and create accountability across the whole HR department. In simple words, executing the plan is way more efficient than reacting to it.
“One of the biggest reasons you’d want to develop a road map is that it gives the entire recruiting function, from coordinators and sourcers to recruiters, a deeper meaning behind the goals you set for them. It directly ties what they do day to day into the organization's vision and mission through goal alignment.”
Will Staney, the founder of Proactive Talent
How to Build a Recruiting Roadmap
Access Your Current State
Before mapping the future, experts recommend assessing the current situation of the talent acquisition function. Think about what is working and what needs to be changed. For example, what key responsibilities need to be included in your company to improve its current state? Next, identify what key competencies are needed to fulfill those responsibilities. Look at your current employees, map their competencies and responsibilities, and identify the gaps that new hires, tools, or resources would need to fill. Once you identify your organization's needs, it’s time to define the positions more thoroughly and develop the profile of an ideal candidate. With a solid idea of what type of employee you are looking for, you can save time and eliminate the risk of hiring the wrong person. Below are some of the questions you can ask yourself when developing an ideal candidate profile:
- What are the key responsibilities and duties for the position?
- Based on your company culture, what type of person would be successful in the position you are hiring?
- What personal values would an ideal candidate possess?
- What type of person is generally a good fit for this role?
- What is the background of an ideal candidate (experience, education, hard and soft skills)?
Create a Recruitment Plan
Once you’ve identified the roles you need to fill in, it’s time to prioritize them based on their importance to your organization. Start by listing them out by the target start date for the new hire. Consider positions that will be challenging to hire, have a longer interview process, or require additional testing and make adjustments to your hiring plan accordingly. The more difficult it is to find the right skills for a position, the longer it may take to find a qualified candidate, and thus, the sooner you will need to start the hiring process. Below are some of the tips that may help you create a comprehensive hiring roadmap:Account for turnover — you should always leave some space in your recruitment roadmap for open roles if employees decide to leave your company. Look at your previous data and estimate the number of roles with potential turnovers.
Use data to understand your recruitment process
Review your previous hiring efforts and analyze them in terms of effectiveness, the quality of hire, and the time it took to fill the position. After that, use this data to project the number of days it will take you to find and hire a qualified candidate for each position.
Account for turnover
You should always leave some space in your recruitment roadmap for open roles if employees decide to leave your company. Look at your previous data and estimate the number of roles with potential turnovers.
Once you take all the factors above into account, you can expand your roadmap to include deadlines for posting job openings, conducting pre-employment assessments, starting interviews, coming to a job agreement, and starting the onboarding process.
Assess Your Recruiting Resources
Before you execute your recruitment plan, you need to ensure that your company is prepared to achieve your hiring goals. Below are a few recruiting resources that your company may need in order to achieve your goals:
Employer branding resources — employer branding describes an employer’s reputation as a place to work in and their value proposition to employees. A strong employer brand helps companies recruit better candidates and reduce hiring costs. You can promote your employer brand through your career page, social media, and employee referral programs.
Recruiting team — make sure you have enough people in your HR department to accomplish your hiring goals. If not, make sure you include hiring recruiters in your recruitment roadmap.
Budget — a recruitment budget is an estimate of the total costs of hiring at your organization, including unplanned expenses as a result of employees leaving. Make sure that your recruitment budget aligns with your hiring strategies.