Top 14 objectives of recruitment and selection

When organizations onboard the best candidates for hard-to-fill positions, they make business processes more streamlined and centered on employee growth and development. Recruitment objectives enable organizations to recruit top talent and build high-performance teams. Practical recruitment objectives align a company’s hiring requirements with its long-term goals.

This blog details the nuances of recruitment objectives and elaborates on the intricacies surrounding the hiring objectives of an organization.

Recruitment objectives are goals that help recruiters or businesses ensure they hire the most suitable candidates for given positions. Of course, the foremost recruitment objective of any organization is to select the right talent, but different companies may have other goals to address in their recruitment processes. The recruitment process, in recent times, has been geared toward prioritizing the applicants’ preferences and requirements, and accordingly, the goals have been reflecting this change.

Before defining your recruitment goals, you must understand why you need them in the first place. Gaining clarity on your objectives pays off eventually because it saves you the hassles of going through trials and errors. Furthermore, it streamlines your hiring process. Well-defined recruitment objectives are conducive to creating an effective hiring strategy. Moreover, having clarity in goals will help you save time, cost, energy and resources, thereby helping you create an efficient hiring strategy.

Start with listing your requirements

How many employees are you aiming to recruit? What positions do you want to hire for, and what jobs do you plan to make available in the future? Getting clarity about these basic requirements will help you allocate your time and energy in the right direction.

Take your average turnover rate into account

Factoring the average turnover rate into your hiring equation goes a long way in defining your goals. The turnover rate represents the number of people hired in place of those who have taken exit over a certain period. This crucial HR KPI indicates the organization’s current state and stability. Usually, the turnover rate is defined through workforce data collected over the entire year.

Analyze the staffing requirement for each department

After considering the turnover rate, you need to decide what level of recruiting intervention you need. Analyze each department you currently recruit for and assess whether it is working at total capacity. Chances are there may even be some vacancies that require your attention.

Forethought always comes in useful

Let us assume you want 15 sales professionals by the end of this year. You currently have a sales team of 10 professionals, and you are also aware that an average of two sales professionals always leave the organization each year. It implies that instead of planning to onboard five new employees, you would want to hire seven salespeople. This example underscores the need to prepare beforehand at the recruiter’s end. It is not feasible to prioritize growth-focused hiring over turnover; both must be the recruiter’s top priority.

Focus on quality, not quantity

You should always be selective in your approach when planning to hire employees. When recruiting employees, you aim to hire top talent who will add immense value. Therefore, focusing on employee quality is vital. What competencies do they have? How will they perform their duties? What underlying personality traits do they have? Engage in professional deliberations with your team to outline what qualities you want in employees, stick with those preferences as you engage new hires and grow your organization.

Which stage are you at currently?

Your recruitment objectives are dependent on your stage at present. Your workforce needs will differ from a legacy enterprise if you are a budding startup. Your goals and preferences change as you advance through the following stages of your business, and you need a wide range of diverse individuals to accommodate your changing needs.

Build a successful talent pipeline

By understanding your recruitment objectives, you can create a talent pipeline framework. Your defined recruitment goals are the building blocks of developing a talent pipeline. It helps you understand the needs of your prospective employees and allows you to tailor your offerings to suit their needs. It would be a win-win for both the recruiter and the jobseeker.

Are your goals attuned to your recruitment needs? Are they specific, relevant, measurable, time-critical, and attainable? Asking the right questions is crucial for approaching your goals strategically. Gleaning insights from reviewing your current recruitment efforts and prioritizing mission-critical KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are equally helpful in setting attainable goals.

Thoughtful goals prioritization based on business objectives and unwavering support from the leadership team are crucial for ensuring that your approach is aligned to the organization’s broader strategy. Also, make it a point to track your performance and KPIs regularly, be it monthly or quarterly. Finally, if you continually achieve your benchmarks, take your objectives up a notch.

Setting recruitment objectives is about implementing new strategies and tracking your efforts to stay relevant in a competitive talent-driven landscape. But before setting a goal, it is essential to keep a close eye on some crucial metrics to have a better sense of your recruitment goals:

Now, let us discuss what objectives you should set as a talent acquisition expert. To ensure the selection and recruitment process is smooth and efficient, here are fourteen recruitment objectives that will help in your pursuit of top talent.

Improving the quality of the hire is regarded as one of the most crucial objectives of recruitment and selection. You would not want to lose an employee who would be an asset to your organization. While hiring, for some, may appear like a run-of-the-mill process, finding the best talent that is a perfect match for the job position and company culture is easier said than done. Therefore, you can leverage pre-employment assessment tools and structured interviews to filter out your candidates.

By narrowing down the talent pool and condensing it to the most suitable options, you can spend more time focusing on the most viable candidates. This significantly reduces the possibility of overlooking a person’s exceptional credentials and helps refine hire quality.

While the all-pervasive impact of social media has been substantial, its impact on your recruitment goals is also significant. Expanding your networking and socializing horizon can also help you create your brand image that will resonate among your targeted talent pool, attesting to the authenticity and reliability of your organization. This approach will direct the right talent toward your company. Integrating your recruitment tools to social media channels will help you reach a far more significant number of candidates and stay prepared throughout the recruitment process.

Your network is instrumental in helping you find the best talent from more diverse backgrounds. Your colleagues, other recruitment partners, ex-employees or other professionals in your industry are also an integral part of your network. They can provide you with valuable referrals or help you find the most qualified candidates for job openings. You can also conduct HR conferences or marketing events to expand your network and reach for sourcing top talent.

Although you have recruitment goals at the forefront, it is likewise essential to assess aspirants on multiple criteria, such as:

You cannot vouch for the accuracy of your hiring decision if you have not followed a balanced evaluation approach to evaluate candidates on these distinct aspects. Therefore pre-employment assessments play a pivotal role in measuring critical traits and skills. You can put pre-employment tools to good use as they can measure candidates’ core traits and acquired skills. Generally, these suites of tools offer a wide range of scalable and customizable assessments, such as personality, cognitive, behavioral, communication skills, technical, and coding assessments.

Recruitment marketing efforts aim to attract, engage and onboard the best talent for an organization. Recruitment is not a one-off affair but a continual process that your organization can be deeply invested in year-round, even when it is not hiring. Creating a remarkable brand image, adopting the right talent assessment tools, participating in recruitment events, and building connections are some measures that can constitute the core of your talent strategy. Through such endeavors, you can level up your recruitment marketing strategy.

Turnover is an inevitable part of an employee’s life. Companies have already reckoned with the after-effects of turnover, but a higher turnover rate is considered a cause of concern for organizations. Thus, monitoring the employee turnover rate becomes one of the critical recruitment objectives. Talent acquisition experts need to monitor and analyze the turnover rate to form a robust talent pipeline before any job opportunity arises.

A talent community is a means to keep active talent pipelines for future considerations. It is a cohort of individuals who would be an ideal fit for your organization, but present circumstances keep them from joining the company. Building a talent community can come in handy, especially when you have some positions to fill without impairing the quality of hire.

The importance of employer brand value is greatly acknowledged because it provides ample benefits to the organization, so it can be considered one of the critical recruitment objectives. A LinkedIn survey revealed that 72% of recruiting leaders realized a strong employer brand’s impact on hiring. These stats underscore that the company cannot overlook this vital aspect.

The employer’s reputation as a workplace and the offered employee value proposition matter most to the job seekers. A powerful employer brand easily draws the candidates’ attention, directly corresponds to a surge in applications, increases the quantity of the talent pool, and simplifies the process of talent acquisition.

As a recruiter, lowering the cost-per-hire rate of hiring initiatives can be an excellent and worth considering goal. The cost-per-hire ratio means the amount of capital invested in recruitment efforts over a period divided by the number of newly hired employees during that period. It is an excellent metric to manage your hiring budget more effectively. It would be best to analyze which marketing initiatives and channels of communications could work best to attract and engage prospective hires, then use those substantiated methods more often to expand your network and control the cost-per-hire rate.

Organizations should aim to develop and deploy a seamless recruitment and selection process. Streamlining the process begins right from pre-screening, which involves collecting necessary information about the candidate. Organizations can choose to employ technology in the HR processes, whether for screening, interviewing or shortlisting. Sifting through a hefty pile of resumes is one of the more tedious aspects of hiring because HRs are bound to receive a few incompatible applications.

An automated pre-employment testing platform could significantly streamline the first stage of hiring. It can help determine which candidates’ potential and experience match the critical job requirements, helping hiring managers shortlist candidates for the next interview round.

Helping new hires in an unknown professional environment will go a long way in ensuring high employee engagement. Many recruiters feel their main task is complete once employees get the job; however, you can go the extra mile to assist new hires from preboarding to the onboarding process and even post that. This gesture would encourage new hires to develop an unwavering bond with the organization, thus creating a more positive and trustworthy environment.

An increase in new hire failure rates can be highly concerning, so addressing it can be a crucial recruitment objective. Generally, finding the right talent seems downright simple when your only criterion of onboarding is based on a résumé and cover letter. Yet, finding the best-fit talent through shuffling resumes is not feasible. While most recruiting leaders emphasize the hiring quality, not many realize the best ways to measure it.

This is where the role of digital recruitment tools comes into play. A recent Aberdeen Group study revealed that organizations with necessary provisions for pre-hire screening were able to lower their turnover rate. The results of a holistic pre-hiring assessment help understand a candidate’s skills, personality, interests, etc. Of course, an underlying uncertainty is inherent and inevitable in hiring. But if there are the right tools and methods to help you avoid hiring blunders, why wouldn’t you think about using them?

Nowadays, companies prioritize having a dedicated job opening/hiring page on their website. Therefore, it would be best to make it a point to update yours regularly. A professional job posting page is easily navigable by applicants if it is clutter-free, visually balanced, and allows candidates to register their details and connect with you conveniently. In addition, keeping the hiring page of the organization’s website updated will help interested candidates stay abreast of the available jobs, helping them do more research and contact you without a hassle.

Cultural fit assessment is a deciding factor in onboarding candidates who will thrive or excel. A cultural fit is someone integral to the growth of an organization and is closely aligned with the broader organizational vision. Therefore, talent experts must zero in on candidates that will adhere to the company’s work culture. This can be achieved by using psychometric personality assessments and other related tools to identify people who are most likely to fit well in your workplace’s culture and environment.

Potential candidates are more likely to associate with an organization that offers them ample growth opportunities. Encouraging professional development can be pinned as a crucial recruitment goal which may include discussing career objectives with each candidate, familiarizing them with the company’s mission and vision, and enlightening them on future growth opportunities. Companies that champion employee development by understanding their capabilities and strengths and providing them with many avenues to grow in their careers have a high retention rate.

Now that you have covered much ground, gaining clarity on recruitment goals, the time is right to prioritize your goals and build your essential talent pipeline. Setting relevant goals will help you streamline your recruiting process better and attract quality candidates to fill existing job openings. However, it’s crucial to build and maintain your talent pipeline even if there aren’t any current job openings.

Understanding your recruitment objectives will make a positive impact on your organization’s offer acceptance rate, reinforcing your employer branding. This would eventually translate to a streamlined selection process and healthy hiring practices that work wonders for the company’s growth.