15 Best Methods of Recruitment for HR to Use

Businesses struggle with talent shortages and high turnover rates. Why? More often than not, it is due to ineffective hiring practices. A report by SHRM states that an organization that lacks a standardized interview procedure is five times more likely to hire a bad candidate than those who do. This is why choosing the right methods of recruitment is necessary for an organization. 

So, let’s level up our brain game and explore the different methods of recruitment, which include internal, external, direct, indirect, and modern approaches.

1. Tapping into Talent from Within

You know what they say, “Why go outside when you have food at home?” That’s exactly what internal recruiting is all about. 

This method doesn’t take up your onboarding time, the candidate is already a cultural fit, and it improves employee morale. Internal recruitment includes promotions, transfers, employee referrals, and job postings. But like everything else, it has its downsides, which come from a limited talent pool and potential internal conflicts or bias.

2. Casting a Wider Net

When internal recruitment doesn’t work out, you have external recruitment. With external recruitment, you outsource candidates because you have to bring in new ideas, gather insightful perspectives, and expertise to broaden your horizons. Some methods of external recruitment include online job portals, campus recruitment, and recruitment agencies. 

The advantages of external recruitment are broader reach, new ideas, and skill sets, but its downside is that it’s more expensive, has a slower onboarding process, and there are cultural misalignment risks.

According to statistics, internal recruitment takes an average of 20 days to fill a position, while external recruitment can take up to 49 days.

3. Reaching Out Proactively

“Will you be my employee?” In the direct method of recruitment you just bypass the middlemen and ask your candidate directly through job fairs, walk-in interviews, company career events, or campus drives.

This recruitment method helps you interact with a large pool of candidates in a quick and efficient manner. It is a method suitable for entry-level positions or if you’re hiring at scale.

4. Letting Your Brand Do the Work

In this method, you build awareness and attract candidates over time. This passive method of recruitment is a long-term strategy and often includes marketing efforts.

Social media hiring campaigns, website career pages, and the point of purchase recruitment method are all part of the indirect method of recruitment. This method builds long-term talent pipelines and attracts passive candidates. However, it is also slower and less targeted, and the ROI is hard to measure.

5. Outsourcing Your Hiring Smartly

The option of a third-party method of recruitment is opted for to simplify the hiring process when time, expertise, or resources are limited in a company. Some common third-party approaches are recruitment agencies, headhunters, RPO (Recruitment Process Outsourcing), and staffing agencies.

This method saves time, utilizes expert networks, and scales fast. The downside to it is that it costs more and has less control over candidate selection. In an article by RemoFirst, it is stated that companies that use RPO providers can reduce their time-to-hire by as much as 40%.

6. Leveraging Technology to Find Top Talent

Modern problems require modern solutions. To improve the hiring process, HR departments now rely on tech-based methods of recruitment. Some examples include the Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), AI-based screening tools, video interviews and assessments, and predictive analytics. These tools prove their worth when it comes to hiring at scale or across geographies.

An article by Codeaid reports that 55% of companies have increased their investments in recruitment automation in recent years.

7. Fill Roles Fast and Efficiently

Tasks have halted when they shouldn’t because a useful resource left, and you need to fill up that space now? Well, an active method of recruitment is your way to go. This approach looks for candidates actively seeking jobs; its main focus is speed, visibility, and direct engagement. Some common active recruitment methods are job board posting, PPC job ads, open interviews, and direct outreach.

8. Build a Long-Term Talent Pipeline

According to HR Cloud, 73% of job seekers are passive candidates. The candidates who aren’t actively seeking jobs but wouldn’t mind if the right opportunity came their way are the target audience of the passive recruitment method. This strategy is long-term and looks out for high-quality and difficult to find candidates.

Common passive methods of recruitment include talent pool database mining, sourcing and headhunting, and hosting webinars and meetups. This approach matters because these candidates aren’t applying elsewhere, it builds a sustainable hiring funnel with time, and it strengthens your employer brand in the market.

9. The Hybrid Recruitment Approach

The hybrid approach combines both active and passive methods of recruitment. This approach focuses on immediate hiring needs and also focuses on future workforce planning. It uses job boards and ads while sourcing from online job platforms, builds a talent pool while attending job fairs, and automates email nurtures for passive candidates while actively interviewing the active ones.

This approach is effective because it reduces the time-to-hire and improves the quality of hiring. It also enables flexibility across roles and industries and builds a recruitment engine for the present and future.

10. Building Inclusive Workforces

According to McKinsey, companies in the top quartile for ethnic and gender diversity have a financial advantage of over 27%.

We all agree that diversity brings new ideas and perspectives to life, making everything more efficient and resourceful. In the diversity recruitment strategies, companies hire people without discrimination. 

Through diversity hiring, companies make better decisions with innovation and improved performance. So, building a diverse workforce isn’t just good ethics but good business, too.

Some techniques for inclusive hiring are creating inclusive job descriptions, screening resumes mindlessly, conducting bias training for hiring teams, and outreaching to underrepresented groups.

11. Turning Your Team Into Talent Scouts

Employee referral programs involve asking your employees if they know someone whom they can recommend for the recently opened position. Then, the employees refer the people they know, and the company rewards them if their recommended employee is hired. This method can be both a part of the direct method of recruitment and a high-trust channel.

To hire faster and cheaper while also maintaining the quality of the hiring process, employee referral programs are your way to go. One disadvantage of this approach is that it can limit diversity if the employees refer similar candidates.

According to Forbes, 55% of the employees hired through the referral process stay in the company for four years or longer, while only 25% of those sourced from job boards remain for two years or longer.

12. Attracting Talent Before You Post the Job

The first impression is the last. This holds in recruitment too because top candidates don’t just apply to a company, they make that decision after thoroughly analyzing and judging the company. Providing such candidates a compelling brand story can be the deciding factor.

A strong employer brand matters because it can attract passive candidates, increase referral rates, and enhance candidate experience. A research by IBM found that companies with a strong employer brand experience 50% more qualified candidates and 28% less turnover rate.

13. Rehiring Former Employees

Those employees who have left but come back are called boomerang employees. 

Boomerang hiring is a strategic tool in modern HR. These people already understand everything about you, including your culture, systems, and expectations. From their experience outside the company, they bring fresh perspectives. You already know them, so hiring them again reduces the process of onboarding and recruitment risk.

14. Leveraging Talent Pool Databases for Efficient Hiring

A talent pool database is a curated repository of potential candidates who have previously engaged with your organization or identified as suitable for future opportunities. Maintaining such a database allows recruiters to proactively address staffing needs, reducing the time and cost of sourcing new candidates.​

15. Utilizing Employment Exchanges for Workforce Acquisition

Employment exchanges, typically run by the government, bring employers and job seekers together and help identify candidates for entry-level or high-volume jobs. In employment exchanges, recruiters have access to a broad talent pool, the recruitment process is cost-effective, and there is support for workforce planning.

You can implement employment exchanges by collaborating with local agencies, clearly defining job requirements, and participating in job fairs.

Conclusion

A modern recruitment strategy combines direct recruitment for immediate outcomes, passive recruitment for long-term pipelines, third-party arrangements such as agencies and RPOs, and innovative approaches such as point-of-purchase recruitment in retail or field positions.

Assess your hiring practices against your company’s size, objectives, and culture. Most importantly, track effectiveness.