Mastering the 360 approach to recruitment

What is 360 recruitment?

Erika describes her view of the 360 recruitment process as full cycle, end-to-end recruitment. In other words, having an understanding and hand in every part of the recruitment process from beginning to end, including some of the following:

• Preparations for the job role
• Getting an understanding of what you’re hiring for
• Making sure you have the candidate pool that you need
• Sourcing candidates
• Screening and selecting candidates
• Evaluating candidates
• Negotiating
• Hiring

Erika even stresses the importance of being involved all the way to onboarding and looking after the candidates once they’ve joined and making sure they’re settling in, rather than just handing them off straight away.

What skills are needed?

Being involved in every step of the recruitment process is beneficial, but naturally requires quite a bit more work and a development of some skills to be successful.

Erika encourages curiosity as an essential part of this process. Having curiosity in the latest hiring trends as well as any regulations coming about. Also, having curiosity in the commercial side of the process and how it strategically benefits the business. All of this can give you a deeper understanding of what you’re hiring for and why the position is important. People are the most important assets to a company, so understanding the business will give you a better view of the why.

Putting on multiple hats is also a useful skill for this kind of strategy. A marketing approach is useful when looking at what channels get you the best traffic so you can work on getting inbound candidates and building up your passive talent pool. Alternatively, sales skills might be needed to actually pitch the company to the candidate and understand the opportunity that’s being presented to them.

Lastly, Erika encourages time management skills to be able to structure your work load. If you’re having involvement with every stage of the process, trying to keep up with trends etc, then managing your time wisely is essential.

What tools are useful for building up these skills?

Although we’ve stressed the importance of having a hand in every step of the process, not everyone can be an expert in every single thing. So what do you do if you lack experience in certain areas, like marketing for example?

Erika suggests making use of the network around you and getting inspired by others in the industry. Don’t be afraid to ask questions or admit that you don’t understand a certain aspect of the process. If you’re active on LinkedIn or attending events, talk to those around you who are doing similar things, ask what sourcing tools work, how to get good at LinkedIn reach, what job boards might be best or anything else you’re unsure of.

Additionally, there is no shortage of resources out there for any topic you might be wondering about, so try and find the medium that works best for you to get inspiration from. Whether it be newsletters, podcasts or webinars, find what works and try to dedicate some time to getting inspired and learning new things.

In terms of tools in the more literal sense, Erika stresses the importance of prioritizing a good ATS for your hiring, especially if you’re doing it for multiple roles. Tools within the ATS like automations, AI and integrations can help with your time management as well as getting a good overview of the whole process from start to finish.

What are the benefits and risks of a 360 approach?

There are certainly things to take into account for this kind of approach to recruitment. Since only one person has accountability, that person has more control of the process. This doesn’t necessarily mean that this person is accountable for every single step, but responsible for making sure the process is intact you get the output you want. Because of this, there’s less risk of miscommunication or making mistakes which could lead to a negative candidate experience.

Another beneficial aspect to this style of recruitment is a shorter time-to-hire. The end-to-end process means you’re building a network of great candidates to proceed quicker throughout the process. It also means not having to do such a huge handover between each step because you’re already involved, so you’ll hit your hiring goals much faster.

Alternatively, there’s always things to consider that could pose some potential risks. For one, you’d need to find the right person that has the skills that we’ve mentioned, but also actually enjoys working on the entire process. 

Another consideration is that it can make things slightly more vulnerable in the sense that, when you have one sole person working on it and they end up leaving, there could be a ramp-up period before getting the next person going on the process. Lastly, depending on company size and the amount of hires, it might not be a suitable strategy for all companies, especially if there are any niche recruitment needs to consider.

Takeaways

While the idea of end-to-end recruitment can seem daunting, it’s important to remember that no one can do every single step perfectly. So make sure to give yourself some structure to make it easier on yourself, and don’t be afraid to be vulnerable and ask others for help with areas you’re struggling with.

This style of recruitment also means you’re building up your candidate network and talent pool, which should mean less of a reliance on external agencies in most cases, which will also lead to a reduction in cost-per-hire as everything is done in house.

Erika also talks about how to present this style of recruitment to your management, how to measure results and how to get inspired, so make sure to listen to her episode of ‘Happy Recruiting!’ to dive even further into 360 recruitment.