Starting from Scratch: Building a Foolproof Hiring Plan for Your Business

Whether you’re a new company or a big company with numerous employees, you should identify how your workforce will grow in the future and whom you are planning to recruit and when. To streamline the hiring process and to ensure that your company can access the right talent, whenever you need, you must develop a comprehensive recruitment plan.

A strategic hiring plan is very important; it helps you fill various vacancies and also helps you make the right hiring decisions. Because poor hiring decisions can prove to be costly for the business. By being proactive and building a recruitment plan in advance, your company will not only save more money and time but will also ensure that your team does not get shorthanded in the future.

The key to this mystery is: how to develop a hiring plan that displays the dynamic landscape of the modern job industry? In a constantly changing job market, how can an employer anticipate future staffing requirements and plan proactively for the future? We will explain this to you in simple steps.

So, let us first understand what a hiring plan is:

Hiring plan

A recruitment plan is much deeper than about preparing to fill in future roles and responsibilities. It is a chance for the company to align its goals and required skills with the hiring process. It is also a chance to create strategic plans for recruitment in the future. A hiring strategy plan must include the recruitment calendar, the positions that you want to hire for, assessment and tracking tools, budget information and various other significant details to effectively manage the hiring process. So, let us look at the steps to create a successful hiring plan.

Analyse your hiring needs and skill shortage

This is an important step in designing an effective hiring plan. Identify your recruitment needs and the skills that your current workforce lacks and you want to fill up. You can begin by interpreting the success of the company, by considering the significant factors like anticipated promotions and employee turnover, as this will influence your recruitment needs.

Evaluate the departments that need strengthening. Will the new project kick-off any time? Is an important employee leaving? Analysing such things and evaluating the skills that your team is lacking will help you proactively plan for your future needs and tackle the workload in the future. This also ensures that you get the right talent when required.

Make a hiring program and calendar

You can then analyse your hiring strategy plan to estimate the number of employees you need for each department, and, make an approximate estimate of when they’ll be needed in the future. This will let you plan by anticipating the future needs and preparing for them in the present. For instance, if you want to recruit for a position in Q3 (third quarter), you must start preparing for it in Q2 or Q1, so that you can fill the vacant job in time.

This information will also help you build a recruitment schedule for the entire year. The calendar should include positions that you will hire per quarter, cumulative staff required in each section, and a timeline to begin each series of the hiring process.

Get the tools that will breathe life into your plans

Once you create a hiring strategy plan and a recruitment calendar, you must then identify the relevant tools to help you execute the plans perfectly. The most crucial tools that will help you execute your plans are pre-employment screening, assessment tools, accounts on online job portals, applicant tracking system (ATS) and other such measures.

These solutions will assist you to streamline and organize your hiring efforts, automate time-consuming assignments, and improve the screening process of the candidates. You should reinvest in the right tools to execute the job properly and also ensure that the employees involved in the recruitment process are trained to access and use these tools.

Determine your requirements

Once you get a clear idea about the roles and responsibilities that you will hire for, you may then determine the requirements of each job availability. What skills and characteristics do you want in an ideal candidate? What will be their goals and daily responsibilities? Having a clear answer to these questions will allow you to finalize the right candidate.

To make sure your recruiters and hiring managers are in line with your plan and thought process, you must explain your process to them in detail. This will ensure that every decision-maker is in line with the requirements of the company, which will decrease the time taken to hire the right candidate.

The job description should be compelling

A powerful job description attracts the most qualified candidates. Many companies, however, take incorrect approaches. They share the expectations and job requirements but decline to share what the organisation has on offer, discouraging worthy candidates from applying for the post.

Try not to make this mistake, rather aim to create an inclusive and compelling description of the job, which will attract the right candidates. You should add information about the values and mission of your company, as well as the skills you want for the position. Don’t shy away from showing some personality. After all, a job description is a chance to market the position to potential job seekers.

Establish a selection process in your hiring strategy plan

Now, think of how you’ll behandling the selection method. You must clearly define the overall selection process in advance by establishing the number of interview rounds a candidate has to undergo. Also, identify who will conduct the interviews and select the candidates.

This doesn’t mean that you will employ a standard selection method to choose candidates for different job roles. You will have to rather customize the process for each applicant, depending on the job role they are applying for. This will help you test their skills and check whether they are worthy for the job role.

Pre-employment screening and assessment is a great way to select the right applicant in advance by subjecting them to the selection method. Assessments can be of different types such as, determining cultural fit and cognitive understanding and checking the personality and measuring their skills. A customized assessment tool will help you select and employ the right candidates.

Conduct reference and background checks

After selecting an applicant, you should perform a background investigation. It may not be necessary for some job profiles, but background checks, depending on the policies of a company and the position the candidate has been hired for, may be necessary. Determine early on if you need a background check or not, this will avoid and delays in the hiring process later on.

You must also check the employee referral you received for an applicant. You must ideate a way to assess the prior work experience of the candidate and confirm their criteria. They will help you ensure whether the candidate is suitable for the job profile or not.

Making the offer

As a part of the hiring plan as well as the employee referral program, you must determine, well in advance, who will offer the job and negotiate further with the selected candidate. This will ensure a smoother recruitment and induction process for the selected candidate.

You should follow a structured process to inform the candidate about their selection. First, email or call the candidate and inform them that they have secured the job. Once you get the confirmation from the candidate about his or her joining, you can follow it up with the formal offer letter, which consists of the written agreement.

Learn from feedback and optimize

Finally, do not shy away from asking for feedback from new hires about your employee referral program. Their feedback will immensely help you in optimizing this aspect of your recruitment process for future hires. Also, seek feedback for and optimize other aspects of the entire hiring strategy plan so that you are ready when it is time to hire your future employees.

In conclusion, a hiring plan is the ultimate strategically designed guide for all recruitment processes. So, make sure you create your hiring plan or employee referral program suits the needs and requirements of your business. It takes time and effort to create a perfect plan, but the results are worth the effort that you put into creating one. Also, do not create a rigid plan. An ideal hiring plan should have enough space to customize and modify according to the changing dynamics of the industry and the recruitment market.

The more customisable your plan is, the more effective and productive it will be at giving you the right results. Also, be open to feedback from your current and new employees. This feedback will help you optimize your hiring plan and make it suitable for the fluctuating job market.