What Is Full Cycle Recruiting?

By Tony Mastri

What Is Full Cycle Recruiting?

Recruiting isn’t a simple process. Picking a random person and placing them in a job doesn’t work well. Instead, recruiting includes many steps that sometimes must be repeated. Full cycle recruiting is a great option for finding and placing candidates.

What is full cycle recruiting?

Full cycle recruiting, also known as full life cycle recruiting, encompasses every step of the recruitment process from start to finish. A full cycle recruiter takes part in each aspect of the placement process, from the initial job order to helping onboard the new employee.  

If any step of the recruiting process is outsourced to someone else, it is no longer full cycle recruiting. Even if two recruiters who work together on a recruiter split fee agreement manage the whole recruitment process but do different tasks within the process, they are not full cycle recruiters.

Full cycle recruiting is typically done by third-party recruiters. They work on every part of the recruitment process; they don’t pass off a portion to someone else.

Businesses that do their recruiting internally often pass tasks between people or departments. Having different people complete different tasks can result in delays and missed information.

The full cycle recruiting process

The recruitment life cycle has many steps. Here are the steps in an average full cycle recruiting process.

Step 1: Get the job order

The first step of full cycle recruiting is getting a job order. A client will hire you to fill an open position at their company.

When you get a job order, you should learn about your client’s expectations for the recruitment process. Find out what tasks they want you to do. They might want to add or remove some parts of the full cycle recruiting process. Even if your client wants to remove some steps from your usual process, it might still be considered a full recruitment cycle if steps are simply removed and not outsourced.

During this step, you might draw up a contract saying what services you’ll perform for your client and how much your client will pay you.

Step 2: Identifying the ideal candidate

Your client should give you a job description for the position. The job description should include the job title, position summary, and desired qualifications. If the job description does not contain these things, you might need to rewrite it so you can better attract candidates. Work with your client to write a description that matches their desires and improves your chances of finding the right candidates.  

You might need to focus your client. They might have a long list of qualifications that few people have. Get your client to think about their must-haves and nice-to-haves. Differentiating between the two will help you find more candidates and help you recognize high-quality candidates.

Step 3: Sourcing candidates

Now that you know what your clients want, you can start looking for candidates. There are many ways to find candidates:

• Use your recruiting software. You should have a database of candidates you’ve found in the past. Use items on the job description to filter your database and see if anyone is a match.
• Publish the job description on job boards. You can also create a job board on your recruiter website. Then, people can apply for positions directly on your site. You can also use outside job boards. Try major job boards, industry boards, and regional boards.
• Post your job on social media sites. You can post updates or pay to advertise the position. Encourage people to share the position on their social media accounts.
• Search for passive candidates on the internet. You can use both web searches and social media searches. On social media, use keywords from the job description to find candidates. You can do Google resume searches to find even more information about potential candidates.

Contact any people you’d like to add to your candidate list. Explain the position to them and make sure they are interested in pursuing the job opportunity.

As you find good candidates, add them to your recruiting software. Add as much information as you can about each candidate, including contact information and qualifications.

Step 4: Screening candidates

It’s time for you to narrow down the candidates. You should only send the best candidates to your client.

Screen your candidates. Do phone interviews with them. You might also bring in some candidates for in-person interviews.

As you get to know your candidates, add notes about them in you ATS. This information will help you remember which candidates you think are the best fits.  

After you sort through your candidates, choose the best ones that you want to share with your client. Create candidate profiles about each candidate. The candidate profiles should tell your client about each candidate’s skills and your impressions.

Give the candidate profiles and any other requested information to your client. Have your client review the candidates and choose which ones they want to interview.   

Step 5: Candidate interviews and feedback

Your client might have multiple interview rounds. You might not be present when your client interviews the candidates. But, you should still be involved in the interview process.

You should work as a go-between person for your client and candidates. You will talk to each and set up the interview times.

Help candidates prepare for the interviews. You can coach them through common questions that they might be asked.

You might help your client create interview questions. Talk to them about questions that will help them learn about each candidate’s skills and behaviors.

After each candidate interview, get feedback from your client. The feedback can help you coach candidates for upcoming interviews. You can also use the feedback in case you need to find more candidates.

Sometimes, your client might not be satisfied with any of the candidates. If this happens, you need to go back to sourcing candidates. Find out what your client didn’t like and what else they are looking for. Use this information to find more candidates to source.

Hopefully, your client will want to hire one of your candidates. If this is the case, you can move on to the next step.

Step 6: Offer and negotiations

Once your client finds a candidate they want to hire, it’s time to make an offer. You will be the communicator between the client and candidate.

Have your client give you all the offer details. This might include wages, benefits, expectations, and the start date.

Contact the candidate and tell them about the offer.

If the candidate accepts the offer, tell your client the good news. You, your candidate, and your client can begin coordinating the onboarding process.

If your candidate wants to negotiate the offer, go to your client with the counter offer. Communicate between the two parties until a deal is solidified.

If the candidate rejects the offer, tell your client. If your client has a second choice, they might want to extend an offer to that candidate. If your client doesn’t have a second choice, you’ll have to start the process again by sourcing more candidates.   

Step 7: Onboarding

You should be involved in the new employee’s onboarding. Make sure you communicate the start date and anything the employee needs to bring with them. Your client might want you to share some paperwork with the employee so they can complete it before the first day.

Learn about your client’s onboarding process. Find out what processes and training the employee will go through. Then, explain the process to the employee so they know what to expect.

Make sure the employee has a smooth start. Continue communication with your client and the employee to make sure everyone is satisfied.

Even after the onboarding process, maintain open lines of communication. It’s important that everyone is happy. When the employee is happy, your client is likely happy. And when your client is happy, they will hopefully think positively of their experience working with you. Happy clients mean they might become repeat clients.   

Tips for tracking the recruitment cycle

To keep track of all the steps in the recruitment process, you might want to use a recruitment flowchart. The flowchart will show you the next step to complete so you don’t forget anything.

You can easily manage your full cycle recruiting process with an applicant tracking system (ATS). With an ATS, you can do everything from one place. You can schedule tasks and create reminders, collect candidate information, categorize candidates and jobs, add notes, post to job boards, and more. With everything compiled into the software, you don’t have to search all over for what you need.

 

About the author

Kaylee Riley is a content writer for Patriot Software, LLC and Top Echelon, LLC. Kaylee writes about payroll, accounting, software for recruiters, and other business topics.

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