Collaborative recruiting: Definition, Best practices, and Benefits

You will be fully aware of the continuing transition from conventional hiring models to collaborative hiring methods if you work in the talent acquisition industry.

Collaborative recruiting, which is hailed as the finest approach to find the best employees, has fast evolved from a trendy concept to a practical team-based hiring procedure.

However, other teams have had trouble putting the collaborative hiring process into action since they had little more than a vague concept to work with. Redesigning a hiring process can appear to be a risky enterprise because businesses frequently have more urgent HR and recruitment demands.

In this article, we'll give you ten strategies your company may use right away to make collaborative recruiting a standard procedure.

What is collaborative hiring?

Collaborative hiring, also known as collaborative recruiting, is a team-based hiring strategy that organizes your recruitment process to incorporate more coworkers from other departments inside your company.

In contrast to the two or three employees they would typically meet, it "generally involves a multi-stage interview procedure. They even frequently get to meet the majority of the team they'll be working with.

Although coworkers will be involved in a deeper level of collaboration during the screening, evaluation, and eventually selection stages, the collaborative hiring process is most noticeable during the interview process.

Best collaborative recruiting practices

• Put communication first
  Because there are so many people participating in collaborative recruitment, communication skills are crucial. You must prioritize this since the workers you select to be a member of your recruitment team will probably originate from various divisions and sectors inside your business.
  
  For this reason, make sure you communicate with your hiring staff frequently and clearly to prevent misunderstandings regarding important components of virtual hiring, such as VoIP number meaning and security procedures.
• Create a strong hiring funnel
  Recruiting is a cutthroat business, especially for startups. You must be quicker, sharper, and more efficient to hire the best candidates when there are so many small and medium-sized businesses vying for a small pool of talent. A recruiting funnel may assist you in streamlining the whole hiring lifecycle, from attracting prospects to bringing them on board with your business. There are various stages to the hiring process.
  
  By giving you more insight at each stage of the hiring process, a recruitment funnel can improve your collaborative hiring process. Members can therefore provide knowledge to each stage of the recruitment process, help you target the right applicants, and greatly speed up the assessment and interviewing processes.
• Leverage social media
  An interesting and effective technique to modernize your acquisition process is to invite internal employees to participate in the hiring process by advertising open positions on social media. For instance, encouraging staff members who would collaborate closely with the new hire to advertise the position on social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn will allow candidates to get a sense of the team they would be joining and an opportunity to speak with them about the position and the business.
  
  The fact that millions of individuals use these channels every day makes it simple to find the perfect talent at the ideal time.
• Automate your joint hiring procedure
  The collaborative hiring process benefits from automation at several phases. A competent applicant tracking system (ATS) can handle the work for you with little to no manual labor, from filtering hundreds of resumes based on keywords and other important criteria to scheduling panel interviews with various stakeholders.
  
  Additionally, the proper ATS may assist in gathering feedback from all interviewers, reporting candidates' progress in the process, assisting with the distribution of mass rejection emails, distributing offers to qualified prospects, and even digitizing your onboarding procedure.
  
  The use of collaborative hiring software has a variety of advantages, including the elimination of manual errors, freeing up recruiters' time to concentrate on the quality of hires, allowing better input from other team members, decreasing bias, and more.
• Enhancing the application process
  Companies frequently overlook the fact that a candidate is also choosing them, in addition to them. In order to ensure a great candidate experience, a collaborative hiring process is crucial. Employees leaving their jobs within the first six months frequently do so because they are unhappy with the management and overall working environment. The candidate can get to know the other teams and individuals they will work with in the future by employing a collaborative hiring process. This raises retention and sets higher expectations for the candidate from the company.
• Superior cultural fit
  You are more likely to hire workers whose work styles and values align with those of your business if more team members participate in the hiring process. As a result, you have a higher chance of selecting job prospects who will fit into your organization's culture well and produce employees who will succeed in their new positions and eventually save you time and money.
• Higher employee recommendations
  Strong employee referrals can dramatically increase your hiring efficiency because they typically result in candidates who suit your culture better. With collaborative hiring, you can better communicate the type of talent you are seeking to your employees and offer them a far stronger sense of ownership over the hiring process. This increases employee referrals greatly and lowers your hiring expenditures as well.
• Compile each interviewer's comments in a systematic way
  The hiring process should be approached as a team sport. Your panel should be made up of recruiters, HR managers, hiring managers, subject matter experts, and potential future team members in order to find the perfect talent that fits well with your firm. Therefore, for the process to be completed in its entirety, their joint feedback is crucial.
  
  But it's easier said than done. If you're using manual systems or Excel sheets to complete the procedure, it will be exceedingly tiresome. By enabling numerous stakeholders to log their feedback, which can then be easily combined, automation of the interviewing process can quickly do this, providing you a complete picture of the candidate's candidacy and overall standing in relation to other applications. Having a scorecard that is impartial
• Online interviews with candidates
  The next time you have to set up a meeting with a prospective employee, make sure it happens online as part of your virtual onboarding process.
  
  This implies that the best candidate from your collaborative hiring team can join the call from any location and conduct it competently, confidently, and easily.
  
  Do you require two or more employees from your business to conduct or attend the interview? No issue. Digital interviews allow for an unlimited number of virtual participants.
• Writing truthful job descriptions
  Engaging your present employees in the assessment and modification of job description templates is one of the best, yet frequently underutilized collaborative recruiting strategies. The finest information about the actual job requirements, duties, and responsibilities for that particular post at your firm can be obtained from your employees who hold the same position as the one you are attempting to fill.

Benefits of collaborative recruiting

• Money saved: By rethinking your hiring procedure, together with technology like VoiP and WiFi calling, you can drastically reduce business expenditures.
  
  Did you know that recruiting a single person typically costs USD 1,633? Imagine having to assemble a complete squad or even just three individuals. Over time, all of these expenses pile up and become unaffordable.
  
  However, prices will decrease, recruitment timeframes will shorten, and employee engagement rates will rise if the activities and responsibilities integral to the hiring process are divided up.
• Improved Applicant Persona: The second benefit of collaborative recruiting is improved applicant personas. Starting with your current staff members can help you develop your candidate persona, which is a portrayal of the ideal job candidate. To learn more about your top employees, do interviews with them. In this manner, you may make a thorough profile of the individuals you want more of in your business.
• Appealing Job Advert: Writing more appealing job adverts is the third collaborative recruitment benefit. The best job adverts can be created with the assistance of your top employees. Ask your top performers why they enjoy their jobs and what led them to choose your business as their preferred employer. Utilize the information acquired to modify your employee value proposition and use it as a talent magnet!
• Building your corporate brand: You may demonstrate your corporate culture and show that you value your employees' thoughts and experience by outlining your collaborative hiring process. By doing this, you can portray your employer brand as progressive and join organizations like Netflix, Apple, and Google that also use a collaborative recruiting methodology.

Final Thoughts

Recruiting today isn’t just changing. It’s already changed. Gone are the days when companies can rely solely on traditional hiring strategies to find and land top talent. Instead, collaborative hiring has begun as a popular alternative. 

Hiring in collaboration is not the future. It is not a speculative procedure or one that might be the upcoming great thing.

It already exists and is having a significant effect on hiring globally.

We believe you'll agree that while collaborative hiring does require a significant amount of time and work, when done correctly, the rewards are well worth it.