We’ve calmed down a bit since our last post bemoaning the fact that many businesses seem not to have a defined recruitment strategy. As a recruitment process outsourcer (RPO), the inevitable opening question we hear when bringing up the topic is “well, why should I have one?” So it seems sensible that this be the first thing we tackle as part of this series on strategic recruitment.

The answer is pretty straightforward actually; if you don’t have one, you risk damaging your business’ ability to achieve sustained growth. A recruitment strategy ideally covers every part of an employee’s journey through a company, from the prediction of future talent gaps through to when the person selected for the job leaves the business.

A defined strategy allows you to link and consolidate each part of your recruitment, providing a stronger employer brand, better candidate experience, more effective internal and external talent management and happier employees.

A strategy should include workforce planning and forecasting, which can more accurately identify potential internal talent shortages and allows you to move decisively and quickly to plug the gap before it appears. Also incorporated is the recruitment process itself, the look and feel of your employer brand and how you wish to be perceived by jobseekers, as well as your ideal sourcing channels, an assessment and selection framework and offer protocol. Despite the recruitment process being independent from core HR functions, there is some crossover: the perfect recruitment strategy will also include protocol for onboarding and induction, employee engagement, succession planning, internal candidate mobility and the tracking of exiting talent.

You might already have some, or even all, of these in place – but having each integrated into an overarching strategy provides clarity and a better co-ordinated, more effective system of recruitment.

Our initial survey results throw up some extremely interesting findings. 60 per cent of respondents have stated that they have a recruitment strategy, but there was widespread disagreement about exactly what this entailed and what it should include. This confusion is consistent with what we’ve seen first-hand.

To participate in our cross-industry research into recruitment strategy, get involved by joining our Strategic Recruitment Forum on LinkedIn and taking the survey now.