Gone are the days when recruiting was all about the recruiters. Today, recruitment is collaborative – and that’s good! But what is team recruitment and what are its advantages? The answer in this article.
Collaborative recruitment: definition
As its name suggests, collaborative recruitment allows the whole company to be involved in the candidate selection process. HR, managers, operational teams… Everyone is concerned!
With this recruitment method, the HR team works together with the other departments of the company to carry out the recruitment. This is called “team recruitment”.
How do you choose which employees to involve in collaborative recruitment?
It all depends on the position to be filled! Globally, a collaborative recruitment includes the participation of recruiters, managers and potential teammates of the candidates.
What are the advantages of collaborative recruitment?
Whether it’s about improving a company’s employer brand or boosting employee satisfaction, collaborative recruiting has many advantages!
First of all, involving managers and/or operational staff allows you to have the opinion of the people who are on the ground every day. These employees are in the best position to know the specificities of the position to be filled, its requirements… They sometimes have a better view of the qualities and skills needed for the position than the managers themselves, who are more distant from the reality of the job.
But that’s not all! When a company decides to involve several employees (with different roles and statuses) in its hiring process, it sends a clear message. The opinion of its employees counts.
Thus, collaborative recruitment allows to highlight the collaborative culture of a company and the trust it grants to its employees. As a result, this approach has a positive impact on the employer brand. Another important advantage of collaborative recruitment is that it helps avoid recruitment errors. Indeed, multiplying the points of view on the candidates allows to make objective and thoughtful decisions.
💡 Keep in mind that simply assessing a candidate’s technical skills is not enough. Are also essential the candidate’s interpersonal skills, his or her fit with the company’s culture, its values…
In addition, collaborative recruitment offers candidates the possibility to meet their potential manager, their possible teammates… In this way, candidates can evaluate by themselves if they adhere to the company and project themselves easily.
Finally, collaborative recruitment allows employees to be included in the decision-making process. This ultimately boosts their commitment and satisfaction.
Good to know
Airbnb places particular importance on the values of its future recruits. As the company informs us in the FAQ on its Career Page: “We make it a priority for candidates to meet as many people as possible on the current team”.
The goal: to verify that the talent will really thrive within the company. To do this, the potential recruit must possess the four fundamental values of Airbnb: “Champion the Mission”, “Be a Host”, “Be a ‘Cereal’ Entrepreneur”, “Embrace the Adventure”.
How to implement collaborative recruitment in your company?
As you can see, collaborative recruitment means including employees in the recruitment process. Here are the main steps during which it is advisable to involve the employees:
Define the needs as a team
This is the starting point of any recruitment: the definition of the famous needs. The ones we are trying to fill with the position to be filled! To define these needs, recruiters need to talk to managers about the needs of their teams, the skills (technical and behavioral) that they lack, the profile of the ideal candidate, the essential criteria that we look for in candidates, the bonus skills, etc.
This exchange between HR and operational teams is also an opportunity to agree on the job description. Does it correctly summarize the expectations of the teams, the missions that will be entrusted to the future recruit, etc.?
Communicate on job offers
Encourage your employees to spread the word about your job offers (professional and personal social networks, alumni network, etc.)!
Another good approach: set up a cooptation system allowing your employees to recommend talents from their personal/professional circles.
Conduct an initial screening of applications
As mentioned above, the essential criteria for recruitment must be examined as a team. Once these essentials are defined, all that remains is to sort the applications in light of these elements.
💡 An ATS like Jobaffinity can help you streamline your recruiting process – including your application management. Our recruiting tool offers three features that facilitate and optimize collaborative recruiting:
- The discussion module: This allows employees to share their impressions of an application via a discussion module integrated into the software.
- The evaluation module: this function allows everyone to give between 1 and 5 stars to applications. Thus, the team can simply obtain an average evaluation of each application.
- The validation module: thanks to which it is possible to send validation requests to operational managers in one click. The latter only have to click on the link to give their opinion on the application. This opinion is then added to the candidate’s file in our software.
Interviewing as a team
Two opinions are better than one – especially when it comes to hiring. No matter what profile you are looking for, include your employees in the candidate selection process. The right approach: ask employees to assess candidates for a specific skill, based on their core business.
For example:
To evaluate the technical skills of a developer, you can fully trust the expert eye of a CTO (technical manager). On the other hand, to assess a candidate’s soft skills or personality, we can ask the candidate’s potential teammates to step in.
💡 Good to know
Recruiting as a team also helps strengthen the company’s employer brand! In a previous article, you explained that a beautiful career page could be a formidable recruitment lever. Make your employees essential tools of your HR marketing by highlighting their portraits and testimonials. Written testimonials, videos, photos of your internal events… Anything goes.
Team recruitment: a collaborative decision-making process
Once you’ve included the employees concerned by your recruitment in the loop, you still have to involve them in the final decision process, of course.
The right approach: allow each employee to openly express his/her feelings and share his/her opinion without a filter. Remember that the best candidate does not only have the technical skills required for the position. He/she must also share your vision and values and possess some essential behavioral skills.
⚠️ To remember.
Collective decision-making helps avoid certain recruitment biases and overcome your own prejudices.
Implementing a collaborative recruitment process, in a nutshell
As you can see, collaborative recruiting is not lacking in benefits. In addition to improving your employer brand and sending positive signals to your candidates, this recruitment method allows you to involve your employees and reinforce their sense of belonging and usefulness… All this while reducing recruitment errors.
