Recruiters focus on more than just hiring—but we can’t deny that it is a key part of the job. And in order to be an effective recruiter, you want to have an effective hiring plan that includes both quantitative considerations like budget and headcount and qualitative considerations like how those ladder up to company-wide goals. Keep reading for tips on building a hiring plan that helps your organization reach its goals.
What Is A Hiring Plan And Why Do You Need One?
A hiring plan is also sometimes called a recruitment plan. Whatever name you call it, the goal stays the same: effectively noting the headcount that you plan to hire across the business, broken down by various departments. Often this comes in the form of a spreadsheet with any accompanying budgetary considerations.
An important thing to remember when it comes to building a hiring plan is that you want to be proactive and not just reactive. It’s also important to remember that while headcount/budget is the main metric of a hiring plan, having a plan in place serves more than as simply a counter for new employees. It is a valuable moment to align across the company on organizational goals and how your talent can—or can’t yet—help you meet those goals.
Ways To Build An Effective Hiring Plan
Now that you understand a bit about the strategic importance of a hiring plan, let’s get into some of the real-world tactics you should employ when you begin to build your own.
Get everyone in the room and aligned
Ensure all the proper stakeholders are in the room (or on the Zoom call) to discuss the main points of your hiring plan. This is also a good time to understand if you have skill gaps to fill, either from employee turnover or simply company growth and new team creation. You don’t want to present a plan only to be told it doesn’t address the needs of certain teams.
Understand company goals and budget
Your budget will help determine headcount. And company goals will help determine how exactly to allocate budget and headcount across teams. Budget may also affect your ability to recruit top-tier or highly experienced candidates, depending on if you can give them a competitive offer or not. It’s important to be realistic about these considerations when building your hiring plan. You shouldn’t expect to hire a greater number of employees than your budget can reasonably cover.
Ask questions
As you’re building your hiring plan, these are some questions to keep in mind:
- What are our company goals for this year and the next year?
- What are our strategic initiatives? Do we have the skill to support these?
- If not, when should we fill these roles?
- Do we have the budget for the level we want/need?
Questions like these will help you determine the timeline of your hiring plan.
Decide on the tools you will use (and how you will use them)
Once you have your headcount goals, you can begin to determine the strategy that will help you fulfill your hiring plan. Often this includes the utilization of modern hiring tools and technology. Whether you’re hiring a handful of highly specialized roles or for a large number of less technical positions, programmatic recruitment software can help you be efficient and effective in finding your ideal candidates. pandoIQ, for example, will automatically place and allocate funds to your job ads across top online job boards. It’s an efficient way to ensure your hiring plan stays on track.