Talent shortage remains one of the top challenges the recruitment industry faces today. The main struggle is finding the right people and retaining them for a long time. So, who’s to blame for our situation? The traditional recruitment practices! They’re more intuition-based and focused on filling up a position on the go. As a result, recruiters end up hiring unsuitable candidates or knowingly (or unknowingly) conducting biased recruitment.
The solution? A 360 recruitment approach built around skill-based and data-driven hiring practices.
360 recruiting covers end-to-end hiring processes and gives you complete control over each sub-process. You’ll be able to source the right fit (even for impromptu requirements) while reducing the costs of hiring.
What Is A 360 Recruitment Process?
A 360 recruitment process is a hiring strategy that takes care of every minuscule factor in a hiring process, maximising the output in each stage. It’s usually used by recruitment agencies that deal with bulk hiring for similar candidate profiles.
How Does 360 Recruiting Benefit Recruitment Agencies?
- 360 recruitment reduces the hiring time; many repeatable processes are optimised to get better results.
- You hire better quality candidates who match the job requirement and possess the exact skillset for the role.
- You can follow recruitment compliance more closely due to a systematic and streamlined recruitment approach.
- 360 recruiting helps you create personalised hiring and onboarding experiences for candidates, influencing their decision to join your client’s company.
- It helps you develop long-lasting relationships with your clients since you cover every aspect of their recruitment cycle.
When Is A 360 Recruiting Model Effective?
A 360 recruiting model benefits recruitment agencies dealing with all recruitment phases, including sourcing, screening, interviewing, hiring, onboarding, etc.
The process helps them cover all touchpoints to gather candidate data, store it and use it whenever required. This helps save a lot of in-house recruitment time and reduce costs.
However, it’s more effective for agencies that hire for similar roles as the process requires a deep understanding of candidates’ persona and skillset.
What Makes A Good 360 Recruiter?
A good 360 recruiter:
- Knows their clients and candidates inside out.
- Is well-organised and manages time efficiently.
- Prioritises skills over any other attributes.
- Has people skills and knows how to connect with candidates at every recruitment stage.
What Is The 360 Recruitment Experience?
The 360 recruitment experience is when a recruiter is responsible for the candidate’s experience throughout all aspects of the hiring process, from sourcing to onboarding. The 360 approach allows for a more streamlined and personalized recruitment experience, with a single point of contact for both the client and candidate.
Stages Of A 360-Degree Recruitment Cycle
Typically there are six stages in a 360-degree recruitment cycle:
- Preparing
- Sourcing
- Screening
- Selection
- Hiring
- Onboarding
Stage 1: Preparing – Defining The Ideal Candidate
Create a candidate’s persona showcasing your ideal candidate’s qualities, traits, and values.
Once you have all this information planned out, write a bias-free and gender-neutral job description that includes the following details:
- Employer’s brand—what they do and why the company is a great workplace.
- Role – Talk about the job role in detail and its daily responsibilities.
- Benefits – Mention the perks and benefits the job offers.
- Future – Talk about the company’s values and vision.
Stage 2: Sourcing Candidates From Different Channels
Instead of being a one-off effort, sourcing candidates is a continuous process recruiters need to conduct to build a pool of potential candidates.
Some of the top channels to source suitable candidates include:
- Job platforms where candidates actively looking for jobs upload their profiles
- Employer brands highlighted on social media through employee advocacy
- Your recruitment database
- Cross-department hires or promotions among existing employees
- Stimulating employee referral programs
Stage 3: Screening Applications In A 360 Recruitment Process
Screening hundreds of applications for a role can be hectic if you haven’t worked out a system.
A smart screening process helps you narrow down your list to fewer candidates faster, especially when recruiting in high volumes.
- Use a resume parsing tool such as Allsorter to process multiple resumes at once and reformat them with your agency branding before forwarding them to your client.
- Save days and weeks of interviewing time by developing a pre-screening assessment to help you shortlist candidates faster.
- Protect candidates’ sensitive data and standardise their resumes to avoid bias. (Allsorter helps anonymise certain information in a candidate’s profile.)
Stage 4: Selecting Candidates
Once you have a sorted list of top candidates, follow these practices to select the best fit:
- Do not seek any information irrelevant to the job description to avoid bias.
- Prepare a list of questions and the interview structure beforehand to avoid any unpleasantries or slip-of-the-tongue during the interview.
- Assess your top candidates based on various skills—technical skills, soft skills and their values.
Stage 5: Hiring The Best Fit With 360 Recruiting
In the final selection, you need to revisit candidates’ data and select the one ticking all the boxes—skills, personality, problem-solving, experience, attitude, etc.
To make the decision-making easier, conduct background checks on shortlisted candidates and contact their references to gather more information about their potential company culture fit.
Stage 6: Onboarding The New Hire
Now that you’ve hired your perfect employee for your client, it’s time to welcome them with a bang!
An ideal onboarding process begins at least a week before joining and lasts for at least a few months after joining. However, only 37% of organisations run their onboarding program for over a month, which greatly impacts the retention rate.
Here are some onboarding best practices you should follow:
- Speed up the overall recruitment process—don’t have candidates waiting too long to hear from you.
- Apart from paperwork and orientation, give new hires a walkthrough of the organisation’s culture, work ethics, and history.
- Assign them work buddies to help them adjust to the new environment.
Software That Supports 360 Recruitment
- Applicant tracking tool: To manage all things recruitment, from job postings to applications.
- Resume formatting tool: To quickly process hundreds of applications with your agency’s branding and coversheet. (Allsorter)
Automate resume reformatting and boost your agency’s brand with Allsorter
- Recruitment database system: To organise candidates’ data (both past and new) and source them as needed.
- Onboarding software: To streamline all onboarding processes, including offer letters, orientation, knowledge transfers, office tours, etc.
Hire The Best Candidates With The 360 Recruiting Model
Employing a 360 recruitment model leaves you with better chances of finding the right fit for a role.
And when you complement these practices with advanced AI-powered recruitment tools, you’re on your way to making data-backed decisions and getting even more referrals for companies that need to find top talent!
Did you enjoy this post? Here are some more recruitment topics you might be interested in:
- How to reduce time to hire
- Guide to high volume recruiting
- How to address biases in recruitment
- Top 5 high-volume hiring strategies