SME's & Recruitment: How a Recruitment Team Can Change The Game

It’s not very common to see startups and SME’s approach recruitment with a dedicated team. The majority maintains the traditional method of senior management handling recruitment and conducting interviews. But some have come to see the various benefits of both in-house recruitment teams and agencies. But first, how exactly can recruitment agencies and in-house teams change the game?

Saving precious time

Anyone who works at the same company long enough will start noticing recruitment patterns after some time. Even if they are not involved in the recruitment process, noticing how long people stay on board and at what frequency paints a vague but accurate picture of where the company stands. However, senior management is a lot more aware, as they are generally directly involved in sourcing and interviewing candidates. Most of the time, SME’s rely on the post-and-pray approach, giving job portals and their listing’s visibility 100% of the recruitment effort. But this method is highly unreliable, time-consuming, depends solely on receiving applications and just doesn’t work as efficiently if you’re recruiting for multiple roles.

An in-house dedicated team or recruitment agency would change this process completely. Since their role relies heavily on networking, communication and sourcing quality candidates on a full-time basis, not only will the candidate picks become much more qualified, there will also be an abundance of potential employees waiting in the pipeline.

Breaking the mold: A high-quality pipeline of candidates

Breaking the mold refers to severing the direct involvement of senior management staff with recruitment. We’re not saying that final approval or review should be abandoned, Startups and SME’s are generally small enough in size to allow that. However, it makes sense to believe that the CEO’s and senior staff should only directly get involved with hiring the core team and approving senior placements.

As a company grows, its need for specific skills and professionals in this or that role grows along with it. Knowledge of intricate development skills or what qualifies a person for that role is best left to a full-time recruiter who has the capacity and knowledge to keep up. An entire team of recruiters can even streamline the company’s placement on all fronts, by dedicating each recruiter to a specific aspect of your business. Over time, this results in hiring professionals that are able to build a database of high caliber candidates that could be a perfect fit at any time over the next few years. Sure, availability and circumstances may affect that, but with a large enough database, the company would have a non-exhaustible pool of high-quality candidates that are kept on file for later or non-urgent placements. A dedicated recruitment team would be able to build a vast network, and source high-quality candidates into the pipeline.

Last but not least, there’s an element of accountability that the traditional senior management recruitment model lacks. With a team focused solely on recruitment as a function, it’s a lot easier to set KPIs, measure performance and generally get a better understanding of the talent market and how it changes. Simply put, it allows CEO’s and senior managers to focus on the bigger picture, with recruitment fading into the daily company operations.

Recruitment as a role

Once recruitment is treated as a role rather than a task, the candidates you are able to source are drawn from a different talent pool. Given full-time attention, the process can be more personal, more direct in targeting specific skillsets and experienced candidates. This is most handy when a company needs immediate placements at any point in time. Beyond the qualifications, recruitment as a role for an entire unit frees up time and effort on the management and senior levels. Hiring is no longer a cumbersome task to get through, but another function handled in-house or outsourced to a recruitment agency.

Beyond the core team

We agree that the CEO’s and senior staff should be directly and personally involved in hiring the core team. This just makes sense as generally speaking, senior staff have an affinity for spotting the talent they want to closely work with. This is what makes certain people excel in business development and company orientation.

However, beyond the core team, when recruiting for junior or specific positions, it’s better to delegate the task entirely. In-house recruiters can handle the process with more finesse and produce results in less time.

Culture & process

The management team runs the show, but the company’s culture is built and maintained by everyone in the office. It can be guided and defined, it can be encouraged, but it ultimately boils down to how your workplace functions.

The core team has a direct influence on this. Every SME develops its process and its atmosphere when it’s at the beginning of its journey. As recruitment accelerates, new hires start adopting and developing that existing culture into something new. It’s a machine, and though it requires oversight, it’s something that builds itself up. Having an in-house recruitment team or working with an agency that understands your company’s needs, can be the difference between sourcing perfect culture fits and lower-tier candidates. The proactive approach that stems from a group of people solely focused on recruitment can increase the company’s chances of growing with an impeccable team. This approach is what we recommend at every turn. In fact, we’ve built Manatal’s recruitment software with the goal of providing these teams with a SaaS that can completely transform their recruitment process.

For the sake of optimizing data management, we’ve ensured that candidate and job information are highly customizable and easily accessible. In order to improve candidate sourcing, we’ve developed a range of features that incorporate social media and job portals for higher reach and transparency. And for a simplified path to success, our AI recommendation engine analyzes, scores, and matches candidates to the right job for excellence in placement.

Optimizing your recruitment begins with dedicating a team fully to the task at hand. In-house recruiters and agencies can turn recruitment into a major influence on company culture and performance.

Check out our blog for more insights and tips on how to improve your recruitment process.