How to Build a Winning Recruitment Team: The 7 Roles You Need
Picture this: Upper management gives the directive to begin expanding your department. It’s an exciting time because it indicates the company is doing well. But there’s a problem: There are too many vacant roles for you to fill. With job hunting and hiring season fast approaching, how can you expect to find, interview, and onboard every new hire in time?
This situation is familiar to plenty of hiring managers who have to make do with their limited resources and personnel. However, it doesn’t always have to be this way. Most companies recognize that hiring is a collaborative effort, which is why many have strategically built their own talent acquisition teams.
Continue reading the infographic below to learn the fundamentals of how to build your own expert hiring team.
Why Do You Need a Talent Acquisition Team?
A talent acquisition team puts hiring back into the hands of experienced hiring professionals rather than regular managers, executives, or company owners. It’s what allows you to experience the following benefits.
Improved quality of hire
The quality of hire is a measure of how much value an employee brings to your company, and ignoring it can cost you more than you may realize; the cost of a bad hire can be significant, with the turnover costs of entry-level positions reaching 30% of an annual salary at minimum.
Your dedicated talent acquisition team can use a number of hiring tools to prevent such losses. Reference checks are among the most popular hiring tools that allow hiring teams to gather fresh perspectives and verify a candidate’s skills and character.
They can also conduct pre-employment tests to reduce recruitment bias and ensure that the candidate really is the best person for the job.
Better candidate experience
The candidate experience is how an employee feels about your hiring process.
Why does this matter?
Recent statistics show that three out of five (60%) candidates stop their application midway through the hiring process if they believe it’s too long.
Try to put yourself in the candidate’s shoes. If you’re experiencing a hiring process where there are months of interviews, without much feedback from the hiring team, applying to another company can seem like the next logical step.
A talent acquisition team allows you to quickly find more ways to slash your time-to-hire rate, improve your candidate experience, and start onboarding all-stars.
More efficient hiring process
Hiring managers and recruiters can only be so productive on their own.
When you have a great talent acquisition team, it won’t only allow you to distribute the workload, but it also broadens your reach and boosts your productivity. For example, one person manages job posts on social media, another handles interviews, and a third conducts reference checks.
Plus, maintaining a recruitment team helps you prepare for hiring seasons and increases your chances of hiring highly skilled individuals before your competitors.
Less risk of HR burnout
Recruitment can take a toll on your current hiring team, not just operationally but also mentally. Roughly 42% of HR teams feel overwhelmed by their responsibilities, including recruitment.
A key solution to prevent burnout is to lessen an employee’s workload, which an HR team dedicated to hiring can easily provide. Reducing HR burnout allows for a sustainable hiring system that increases the chances of finding the right employee for your company.
How to Determine the Size of Your Acquisition Team
The number of personnel needed for your acquisition team depends on your company’s size and how fast you need to grow your team. Here are a few guidelines you can follow to gauge how many employees you’ll require for the task.
Startup and small businesses
- 1 Recruitment Manager
- 1-2 Recruiters
In a smaller business, it’s common for the CEO to be involved in the hiring team in some capacity, such as conducting the final interview. The ideal employees to hire for small companies tend to be generalists. That way, people can play many roles without feeling like a weak link.
Mid-size companies
- 1 Recruitment Manager
- 3-4 Recruiters
- 1-2 Sourcers
As your company begins to grow, you’ll be able to add more people to the HR team who are dedicated to hiring. Sourcers and extra recruiters allow you to streamline processes more, allowing the team to be more efficient and effective in their search for top talent.
Large firms
- An experienced Recruitment Manager
- 5-6 Recruiters
- 2-3 Sourcers
- 1 Recruitment Coordinator
- At least 1 Recruitment Marketer
When your employee count approaches 250+, establishing a robust talent acquisition team or even forming a dedicated department is the next logical move.
7 Key Roles in a Talent Acquisition Team
A recruitment team is made up of diverse talent to amplify your chances of finding and retaining the best professionals in your industry. Here are the key responsibilities each person on the team should fulfill.
1. Hiring manager
Hiring managers can be defined in two ways. First, it can be the person to whom the new hire reports, such as their direct manager.
But it can also be a recruitment manager who sets the talent acquisition team’s strategy. This could include setting timelines, identifying your candidate persona, and managing your talent pipeline. In this way, the hiring manager is the most knowledgeable about the company’s culture, position requirements, and the legalities of hiring.
2. Recruiter
Recruiters closely work with hiring managers, which is why many tend to use the terms interchangeably. Although plenty of their responsibilities overlap, the person that job candidates may interact with the most is the recruiter.
In a small talent acquisition team, the recruiter handles job descriptions, sourcing, reference checks, and interviews if requested by the hiring manager. You may even authorize recruiters to negotiate the terms and conditions of the role candidates are applying for.
They’re also ideal if you’re hiring for technical roles that require specific skills and knowledge. They can conduct specific tests to gauge the candidate’s skill level. For example, if you’re hiring for a data-centric role, then a Microsoft Excel competency test is excellent for measuring the candidate’s suitability.
Recruiters will often conduct the behavioral interview before sending the candidate to the next round of the process.
3. Sourcer
As the name suggests, the sourcer is responsible for finding prospects and reaching out to them about your vacant position. In contrast with recruiters, sourcers proactively contact possible candidates rather than waiting for interested job seekers to send their applications.
Sourcers, often scouring through online resume databases or job-hunting platforms like Indeed or LinkedIn, specialize in identifying qualified job seekers. They may even look through industry websites to find prospects interested in job opportunities.
4. Recruitment Coordinator
The recruitment coordinator and hiring manager tend to play similar roles regarding how your talent acquisition team operates. They handle logistical aspects like scheduling interviews, managing the applicant tracking system, and facilitating the onboarding process.
Aside from that, they can also collaborate with the recruiter in progressing suitable applicants through the company’s hiring funnel.
5. Recruitment marketer
In a 2023 Content Stadium survey, 72% of respondents mentioned they already had an employer branding strategy in place. That means you’re falling behind if you don’t.
Your employer branding is an unseen but influential factor in how willing job candidates are to work for you. Recruitment marketers are responsible for building your company’s credibility and reputation among job seekers to generate interest in applying for your open roles. Part of their responsibilities could also include lead generation and social media engagement.
6. Human resources manager
HR managers aim to ensure that higher-ups are maximizing the workforce and they align with the company’s larger goals and objectives. Responsible for payroll, benefits, and training, they oversee every new employee, making them a necessary part of your talent acquisition team.
7. CEO
In a typical chain of command, the talent acquisition team would report to the head of HR, who then reports to the CEO or VP of HR. But in small companies, the hiring team works shoulder-to-shoulder with the CEO to expand their workforce.
As the CEO of a small company tends also to be the founder, they’re typically the most knowledgeable about the kind of candidates you should be looking for. While it can take time away from their larger responsibilities, it can also increase early hiring quality in the company’s lifespan.
Effectively Hire the Industry’s Best with a Talent Acquisition Team
The quality of your workforce heavily relies on how effective your hiring process is. Hiring more employees isn’t just about getting more hands on deck to accomplish bigger projects. The right hires improve overall employee performance or provide a unique service for market competitiveness.
It’s why you shouldn’t skimp on hiring the best of the best if you’re interested in capturing the lead position in your category. An essential step in the hiring process is the interview with HR. But how can you be sure the candidate you’re interviewing really is a great fit for your company while also being highly talented and qualified? Consider testing.
EmployTest provides pre-employment assessment tests that are essential tools in your talent acquisition team’s arsenal. Want to learn more? Test out our free sample employment test to see how your team can add it to your improving hiring process.