11 Steps to Developing a Scalable Hiring Plan [2021]

A strategic hiring plan should include the positions you should be hiring for, a hiring calendar, budget information, tracking and assessment tools, and other important details about how you will manage your hiring efforts.

Steps to create a successful hiring plan

It’s clear that developing a hiring strategy is the best way to rethink and improve your hiring practices, but many companies don’t plan accordingly.

Here are 11 steps to help you navigate the planning process.

1. Analyze hiring needs and skills gaps.

The first step in creating a hiring plan is to identify your hiring needs and identify skill gaps that your existing talent cannot fill.

Start by analyzing your business growth, taking into account important factors such as employee turnover and expected promotions, as they will affect your hiring needs.

Assess which departments and roles will need to be strengthened and why. Is a key member of the team leaving? Will you start a new project?

By learning what skills your team will be lacking and which ones you’ll need to tackle future workloads, you can take a proactive approach that better aligns hiring with talent needs.

2. Create a hiring plan and a hiring calendar.

You can then put your analysis into practice and estimate how many people each department will need and roughly when they will be needed. This will help you plan ahead and anticipate future needs in time to prepare for them. For example, if you need to fill a position in the third quarter, you may need to start preparing in the second quarter to fill the vacancy on time.

With this information, you can create a complete recruitment calendar for the year. This should include the positions you will need to hire for the quarter, the total headcount for each department, and the hiring schedule for when each round of hiring begins. Here’s how you can visualize your hiring plan so you are on top of your hiring efforts at all times.

3. Determine the tools needed for a scalable hiring process.

Now that you have your hiring calendar and hiring plan, you can determine the tools you will need to complete your plan. Some of the most critical decisions for your technology hiring are the Applicant Tracking System (ATS), accounts on various online job boards, pre-hire assessment and verification tools, and business analytics or analytics software. for decision making.

These tools will help your team organize and optimize your recruiting efforts by automating time-consuming tasks and improving the recruiting process. The Harver platform, for example, automates most initial hiring processes, from candidate selection to interview scheduling. With our recruiting software, you can get rid of repetitive tasks like reading resumes and further promoting candidates in the process.

Additionally, you can optimize your talent pool by collecting candidate profile data and comparing it to top-performing employees. With our evaluation tool, you can easily view applicants’ score matching and get an idea of ​​your entire hiring funnel.

4. Determine the requirements for each position.

With a clear idea of ​​the positions you are hiring for, you can begin to define the requirements for each position.

What characteristics and skills should candidates for the vacancy have? What will your daily responsibilities be? And your goals?

To make sure everything is on the same page and shorten your hiring time, you should meet with your hiring managers and discuss this step together. This will help you fully understand each role and what is required to perform it effectively.

For example, if you are hiring for a contact center, you can hire people with transferable skills if you need to transfer employees from a chat to the role of a phone agent.

To do this effectively and at scale, you need to look beyond your current jobs and think about your company culture and general skills that need to be adapted to. So instead of hiring people who are only suitable for a particular job, you screen candidates for their skills and characteristics and then assign them to the jobs that best suit their abilities.

5. Make a budget for hiring.

Based on your past hiring costs, you can estimate how much your hiring costs will be worth for the next year. Consider the various costs associated with the hiring process that you will need to factor in in your budget.

Some of the common hiring costs include:

• Advertising on job boards and social networks.
• Job fairs and campus hiring costs
• Technology contracting costs
• Employer branding costs
• Own wages and benefits of those involved
• Background checks and drug tests
• Recruitment travel expenses

Once you are done with these general steps in your hiring plan, you can move on to the role-specific plan by following these steps.

6. Start with a compelling job description.

Attracting the best candidates begins with a clear job description. However, many companies are taking the wrong approach. They list specific job requirements and expectations but say nothing about what the company has to offer, which can discourage job seekers from applying.

Avoid this mistake and instead, try writing compelling and meaningful job descriptions that appeal to job seekers. They should include information about your company’s mission and values, as well as job details.

Don’t be afraid to show your personality; Remember that job descriptions are an opportunity to sell a position to potential candidates.

7. Establish a process for selecting candidates.

Then you should think about how you are going to cope with the overwhelming task of selecting candidates. We have covered this topic in detail in our e-book below.
Be clear about how the whole process will work by specifying how many rounds of interviews you will have and who will be tasked with interviewing and selecting candidates.

However, you should not use a one-size-fits-all selection process to select candidates. Rather, you should look for different ways to personalize the experience for each candidate. You can do this by thinking about the questions, needs, or concerns they may have during the interview and selection process and addressing them in advance.

The pre-hire assessment is a great resource for early screening of qualified candidates and moving them through the selection process. There are many different types of assessments, from measuring skills and personality to assessing cognitive ability and cultural fit. With a customizable pre-hire assessment tool, you can create fun online tests to help you select and recruit a candidate.

Check out Harver’s experience with Netflix online apps and consider how this shortlisting method can help with the application process.

8. Conduct background and reference checks.

Once you have selected a candidate, you should run a background check if necessary. This may not always be necessary, depending on the company policy and the position you are hiring for.

Determine if background checks will be required in advance, as this will help avoid potential delays in the process in the future. You should definitely check the guidelines, which are a way to assess the suitability of the organization and confirm your qualifications. In essence, they help validate your internal assessment of whether a candidate is a good fit for your organization.

As you review the recommendations, try asking open-ended questions about performance, accomplishments, and challenges so that you can learn as much as possible from the guide.

9. Make an offer to the selected candidate.

As part of your overall hiring plan, you should determine who will make the offer and continue negotiating with the selected candidate. By deciding in advance how it will work, you can ensure a more fluid interaction with the candidate.

First, you need to call or email your ideal candidate and offer them a job. After receiving confirmation that your candidate will accept the position, you usually need to send a formal offer letter that sets out the agreement in writing.

10. Determine what happens after the assignment is accepted.

This is the last step of the plan, right? Incorrect! The best hiring plans don’t stop at the offer letter. As you complete your plan, determine what happens after the job is accepted.

Who takes care of the pre-shipment and customization? If you answer these questions ahead of time and have a plan, you can move seamlessly from candidate to employee.

11. Study and optimize your plan as you go.

Finally, you should use new hiring feedback and analytics to inform your hiring plan and optimize accordingly. Submit an anonymous survey to collect feedback from new hires. How was the interview and selection process?

You can also use recruitment analytics effectively. Examine key hiring metrics such as time to hire, quality of hire, early employee turnover, and cost of hiring. Then, look for ways to improve the hiring process based on these ideas. And don’t forget that, on average, up to 250 job seekers can apply for a corporate vacancy.

Final thought

The hiring plan should be the ultimate guide for your hiring efforts. Creation can take time and effort; however, do not assume this is the final version when you are done. You must adapt and optimize your plan based on business needs and fluctuations over time.