Full-Cycle Recruiting: The What and How?

What is Full-Cycle Recruiting Process?

Full-Cycle Recruiting is a complete recruitment process, that involves 6 main steps, named: planning, sourcing, screening, selecting, hiring, and onboarding. The process starts from the job opening to the onboarding of the successfully hired candidate. It generally begins, when there is a need to fill an open position within a company with an ideal candidate, the responsible person within the company starts with the planning phase, then start sourcing the candidate, shortlists or filters the sourced candidate, offers the ones that are selected, and at the end onboard the new hire.

Know who's involved

Generally, there is a recruiter who is involved in every stage of the process and is responsible for overseeing the whole process. other than the recruiter, the HR department constituting the whole hiring team, is also involved in the specific stage of the hiring process.

Companies and the Full-Cycle Recruiting Process

The Full-Cycle Recruiting Process depends upon the size of the organization. In larger organizations, there is a whole HR department that is responsible for planning, sourcing, screening, hiring, and onboarding the newly selected candidate. They particularly include a hiring team, where each member is responsible for specific roles, in every stage of the process. On the other hand, in small organizations or startups, a recruiter is involved in bringing in qualified candidates for open positions.

Why should you be doing full-cycle recruiting?

Full life cycle recruiting is an essential part of any organization's success as it helps the organization find the most potential candidates for the company. Generally, the process is carried out by the organization's employees, but companies can, of course, also decide to outsource the entire recruitment process.

The 6 Steps of the Full-Cycle Recruiting Process

The full-cycle recruiting process is divided into the following 6 main steps:

Planning and Preparing

Planning is the initial step of full-cycle recruitment in which the hiring manager and other team members focus on identifying the hiring needs or the needs of onboarding the new employee and then planning accordingly. This involves identifying and analyzing the candidates' requirements, skills, and qualifications, along with the cost and steps involved in the hiring process.

• You start with writing the job description that includes the overall job duties and responsibilities, required skills, education, and experience.
• Then you plan on posting the crafted job description on job boards, different social media platforms, and other sourcing mediums to attract active and passive candidates.
• The next steps include identifying the steps involved in the screening process, for example, to find out which screening type/s are the best to filter out the ideal candidates.
• The last step involves preparing the offer letter and sending it to the qualified candidates and onboarding the ones that are successfully hired.

In short, the planning process includes, identifying the requirements or needs of the recruitment process and taking all the necessary steps to hire quality candidates in a short time and at minimum cost. It includes preparing for every step of the process, even before the start of the stage.

Sourcing candidates

The next step after identifying and planning the hiring needs, is to source candidates. First identify which type of candidates you want to source, depending upon the needs of the job and the company. There are generally 2 types of candidates:

Active job seekers

As the name suggests, these are the job seekers that are actively looking and applying for job opportunities. They keep themselves engaged throughout the recruitment process, attend career fairs, take follow-ups with the hiring managers, keep themselves updated with company career pages, and submit applications for open roles.

Passive job seekers

Passive job seekers are currently employed and are not actively seeking new opportunities, but they may consider a suitable offer if presented to them. They are not actively searching and applying, they are skilled in their current positions but may switch if presented with a good opportunity. Recruiters usually need to target passive job seekers, unlike active job seekers as they don't actively find and apply for the open roles

In order to attract both active and passive job seekers, hiring managers and other members of the hiring team, generally use several sourcing mediums such as the following:

1. Career websites: You can add pictures or short videos showcasing your company culture, to attract candidates, additionally your career website can include a list of open jobs, from where candidates can get information related to job requirements and apply accordingly.
2. Facebook: Facebook can be a useful medium to post job openings and keep candidates updated about current or future job openings, as Facebook has a lot of users, you can also post Facebook ads to grab the attention of job seekers.
3. Linkedin: Linkedin is also called a professional networking platform, as it has millions of users, connects candidates with industry specialists, and assists recruiters find quality candidates, by finding and searching their LinkedIn profiles.
4. Youtube: Make short videos, guiding or providing information to candidates related to how to apply for the open jobs, FAQS, what to avoid in the recruitment process, and several other information. This helps the job seekers and keeps them engaged.
5. Job boards: There are a large number of job boards out there, such as Indeed, Glassdoor, CareerBuilder, ZipRecruiter, Naukri, and many other that helps recruiters to advertise job openings, to reach a wide audience of applicants. These platforms are visited by a great number of job candidates, from different industries, increasing the chances of presenting your organization as an attractive employer, and ultimately creating a positive impression of your company.
6. Employee referral programs: Employee referrals are the most effective medium to attract maximum talent. In employee referral programs, companies ask their employees to provide talented candidates for open roles, as employees are aware of the company culture, they refer candidates that they find suitable for the job opening. The companies encourage employees to refer candidates and as a result, if their selected candidates get hired, they are offered employee referral bonuses such as cash prizes, appreciation, bonuses, vacations, trips, and much more.
7. Career fairs: Meeting people face-to-face can help both recruiters and job seekers as it can help recruiters assess the technical skills and communication skills of a large number of candidates, in a single place and they can briefly evaluate the applicants, in a very short time. On the other hand, applicants get to meet industry professionals, explore and get insights about the companies, and details about the job openings and apply to multiple job openings that match their skill set with the job requirements, at a single place.
8. Staffing agencies: Sometimes recruiters, hiring managers, or other employers seek help from recruitment agencies to fill open positions with the ideal candidates in their organizations. These hiring agencies are called staffing agencies, that act as intermediaries between applicants and employers to help them fill job openings. These agencies are known to save a lot of company time and effort as these agencies have in-depth knowledge of the required skills and qualifications depending upon the industry or job sector.

Screening

The third step is to shortlist the applicants by evaluating their applications and CVs and asking them job-related questions, conducting interviews, and then filtering and selecting the top candidates among them.

The screening step includes various methods to evaluate the candidates on different criteria, depending upon the nature of the job role and the requirements of the company.

Following are a few basic but important screening methods that can help you screen candidates depending on your hiring needs:

1. Resume screening: Resume or CV screening includes, the recruiters reviewing the resumes of applicants and checking which candidate's experience, qualifications, education, and skills best match with the job requirements. They also look for the hobbies or interests of candidates to check their cultural fit for the company and check certifications, awards, and other relevant information.

2. Interviews: Interviewing candidates generally means hiring managers or recruiters and having conversations with candidates to check the validity of their mentioned skills, experience, education, and other things in their resume, moreover they are conducted to assess communication skills, personality traits of a candidate and checking their general fit for the open role. There are many types of interviews that can help you screen candidates, list of a few types include:

• Phone interview
• Online interview
• In-person interview
• Group interview
• Panel interview
• Behavioral interview
• Situational interviews
• Technical interview
• Task-based interview
• Stress interview

Note: It completely depends upon the needs of the job and the organization to choose which type/s of interview they want to conduct, in order to assess skills, qualifications, problem-solving abilities, personality, and overall fit for the role and the organization.

3. Assesments and tests: Assesments involve using tools or methods to draft questions related to the skills or personality required for the open job role. These tests include questions, assignments, and exercises to assess technical abilities, behavior, personality, work styles, and other relevant details. The candidates are then evaluated on the basis of their answers to the tests and those with the best results are taken further to the next stages of the process.

4. Background checks: It is very important to verify information provided by candidates in their resumes or job applications to avoid any conflicts in the future. These checks are conducted to validate the criminal records, qualifications, work history, and other relevant information of the candidate. Additionally, these checks also help employers to make sure that the information provided by the candidate is accurate.

5. Reference check: Reference checks are performed to check the work history, skills, performance, and education of the candidate to gather insights about the applicant's work ethic, teamwork abilities, and overall suitability for the role. They involve contacting and reaching out to the references provided by the candidates in their job applications.

Hiring

After several phases of evaluation, all the relevant information of applicants is gathered and analyzed, and the candidates that match best with the job description are selected or hired for the open role.

The hiring step is critical in the full-cycle recruitment process, as it finalizes the selection of a candidate on the basis of their performance, skills, qualifications, education, and other relevant criteria.

The hiring manager or the recruiter, after finalizing the candidates, contact candidates and congratulate them on making it to the end of the process, their relevant details and information, such as address (if not mentioned in the resume) are taken in order to send them the offer letter.

All the paperwork, including setting the start date of employment of the candidates, guiding their seniors or team leads, and other things are managed in this phase.

Job offer

The hired candidates with the best match are moved forward to the job offer phase. Here the phase includes the planning of the offer letter, organizing the contact information of selected candidates, and other information.

The full-cycle recruiter along with the other members of the hiring team, craft an offer letter and send it to the successful candidates. The offer letter usually composes of:

1. Job title
2. Job Responsibilities
3. Salary
4. Compensation
5. Benefits
6. Working conditions
7. First day of work
8. Instructions for accepting the offer
9. Termination conditions
10. Privacy policies.

The offer letter can vary from company to company and the nature of the open role and is crafted by either the hiring manager, HR, or full-cycle recruiter.

The candidates are given a certain time period to accept the offer and can either accept or reject it, based on their reasons.

Onboarding process

Onboarding is the last step of the process, where you want to start familiarizing hired candidates with your company and team.

This phase can include a formal orientation or a welcome, a lunch, small group activities or games, a tour of the office for the new candidates, and much more.

The new employees are provided with their task lists and training courses, also they are explained their duties and responsibilities. Hiring managers and employees discuss expectations, company culture, aims, and success factors with them.

Pros of full-cycle recruiting

If done efficiently, full-cycle recruiting can have the following advantages:

1. As full-cycle recruiters are full-time engaged with the applicants throughout the process, it can enhance the candidate experience, improving the quality of hire.
2. It can also decrease the time to hire, and reduce the hiring costs.
3. Full-cycle recruiting greatly improves talent acquisition rates.

Cons of full-cycle recruiting

If not properly planned and executed efficiently, full-cycle recruiting can have the following disadvantages:

1. It can be time-consuming if the requirements are not clear and are not properly planned.
2. It can become challenging for small organizations with only one recruiter as the process demands time and effort and it can be difficult for a single person to manage every stage of the whole process.

FAQS

Why is full-cycle Recruiting also called end-to-end recruiting?

Full-cycle recruiting is also called end-to-end recruiting as it is a complete process that manages to find and hire a new employee, from the start to the end. it involves six stages: planning, sourcing, screening, hiring, offer letter, and onboarding.

Who uses full life cycle recruiting?

In smaller organizations, a full-cycle recruiter or department head typically manages the whole full life cycle recruiting process. On the other hand, there is a whole HR department, including the hiring team performs the end-to-end process. Not all members of the hiring team are involved in every stage of the process, rather the respective members, manage different stages of the process.

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