What is collaborative recruitment?

Collaborative recruitment refers to the approach of several colleagues working together to recruit and hire new employees. Traditional recruiting leaves most of the work to the human resources department and hiring managers. The collaborative approach gets everyone involved in finding new team members. Rather than casting as wide of a net as possible to attract applicants, it focuses on building relationships with a targeted group of applicants.

Collaborative hiring methods involve several employees in all aspects of the process, including:

• Sourcing candidates

• Referring candidates

• Creating the job description

• Defining the candidate requirements

• Developing interview questions

• Selecting candidates

• Conducting interviews

• Providing feedback on interviewees

• Making hiring decisions

Benefits of collaborative recruiting

Why should your organization consider collaborative recruitment? You could gain several benefits, including:

• Improved candidate experience : When your team focuses on building relationships with candidates, even those who respond to job posts, they may have an improved candidate experience. Since you’re networking with them and recruiting them personally, they may feel a stronger connection. The candidate experience can affect the person’s opinion of your company.

• Effective hiring decisions: Having multiple perspectives can improve the success of your hiring decisions. You get feedback from several sources with viewpoints from people on the team or who’ve done the job before. This could improve employee retention.

• Increased diversity: The different perspectives could also decrease bias and increase workplace diversity. It allows people from various backgrounds to be represented in the recruitment process.

• Shared workload: Recruiters, HR team members and hiring managers handle the bulk of the work in a traditional model. This can cause them to be overworked. Getting everyone involved helps spread out the workload to keep your recruiting processes as efficient as possible.

• Better culture adds: A collaborative approach can result in candidates who add to your company culture effectively. Your current employees understand what works with the existing culture and where you could use some help. They can use that information to refer people they know for positions.

• More welcoming environment: When all employees have a hand in recruiting and hiring team members, they could be more likely to welcome those people to the team. They feel involved in the process and might be more excited to work with the new employee.

• Faster hiring: All colleagues participating could help streamline the hiring process. They understand what type of talent your company needs and can help refer or seek out those skills. You also have multiple people working on the task to get things done faster.

Drawbacks of collaborative hiring

The process comes with some challenges. When you’re aware of these issues, you can often work around them. Things to look out for when collaborating on hiring include the following:

• Lack of recruitment knowledge: HR reps and hiring managers typically have experience with recruiting, interviewing and selecting candidates. Other employees often lack that experience. You might need to provide training to help them be effective.

• Conflicting opinions: Having several people involved could lead to conflicting opinions on what’s important and which direction is ideal. Some people might feel offended if their candidates aren’t chosen or their ideas aren’t implemented. Being transparent and having conflict resolution methods in place can help with this situation.

• Unclear roles: While the whole company can be involved in finding candidates, they don’t all need to participate in every aspect. Many duties are assigned to specific individuals to ensure they’re handled properly. Ensure the roles and expectations are well-defined to keep the recruitment process efficient.

• Lack of awareness: Promoting your collaborative approach and making it clear how everyone can participate can make the program more successful. People can’t participate if they’re not aware of the program.

• Scheduling conflicts: Collaborative recruitment often includes interviewing candidates together. Finding time to work together on various parts of the process can be difficult with busy schedules.

How to get started

Recruitment strategies vary by company. What works well for you might not work well for another organization. Like any approach to finding new candidates, collaborative recruitment should be tailored to your specific needs. These tips can help you implement a collaborative approach to recruiting and hiring.

1. Evaluate your current processes

Look at your current recruitment method to get a baseline for how you approach it. You might already have some elements of collaboration in your process. An employee referral program is one example. It taps into your employees’ personal networks to find candidates who meet your requirements.

2. Identify opportunities for collaboration

Based on what you’re doing now, look at ways you can include more collaboration. Maybe your referral program isn’t very effective and doesn’t get a lot of action. You might revamp the program to make it more appealing to your employees.

You can also look for new ways to incorporate collaboration. You might move to a panel interview approach, for instance. This allows for more perspectives when evaluating candidates for open positions.

3. Create a written plan

Put your collaborative recruitment processes into writing. You might turn them into policies and procedures that all departments can follow. Include the process for each hire, starting with getting approval for the position and recruiting job seekersthrough interviewing candidates and extending a job offer.

4. Define expectations

A clear set of expectations can make the teamwork approach more effective. Employees need to know how they can contribute and what high-quality participation looks like.

5. Use recruitment tools

Applicant tracking software (ATS) can help you manage your collaborative recruitment efforts. It allows you to document details about job seekers and track communication with each candidate. When multiple people are working on the hiring process, this can help everyone stay on the same page.

Software can also help you keep track of the referrals and networks of your employees to better hone in on candidates with the qualifications you need. Perhaps acertain referral wasn’t a match for an original opening, but they might have the skills you need for a new vacancy.

FAQs about collaborative recruitment

How is collaborative recruitment different from traditional recruitment?

Traditional recruitment usually takes a top-down approach, with hiring managers having all the authority. Collaborative methods get people from all levels involved, which can give a more well-rounded view and improved decision-making. It uses the combined networks of all employees to help expand the team.

Who is involved in collaborative recruitment?

The traditional roles, including department heads, hiring managers and HR reps, still play a major role in the collaborative process. They might still handle the administrative side and primary decision-making. However, everyone in the company can contribute with referrals and recruitment efforts. Various team members might serve on the hiring committee to help with interviewing and evaluating candidates.

How can you evaluate the success of your collaborative recruitment program?

Keep detailed records of your activities and outcomes. Recruiting and hiring analytics can help you use numbers to track the success of your new recruiting methods. You can also use individual feedback as an evaluation tool. Talk with the employees who participate and the employees you hire through the program for feedback that can help you improve your efforts.

Does everyone have to participate?

The goal of a collaborative approach is to engage as many networks as possible. However, not everyone wants to participate, at least not actively. Some employees don’t want to actively promote openings or participate in interviews. Encourage employees to participate in a way that works for them without forcing anyone to get involved.