Recruiting Team Structure and Strategy Guide

What is the recruiting team?

Talent acquisition isn’t complete without the recruitment team. After all, it is their job to find, attract, and choose the best prospects. This post delves into the appropriate size and design of the recruitment team. We will also examine Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) and the situations in which it might be a viable choice. Alright, let’s get started!

Choosing an appropriate recruiting team size

That a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) won’t require a huge recruiting crew is obvious. In a same vein, a medium-sized business in an industry with low turnover probably doesn’t require the same number of recruiters as a similar business in an industry with high turnover, like retail or hospitality.

There are a lot of factors to consider when determining the optimal size of your recruitment team and the specific responsibilities each member should have. Among them are:

An undersupply of qualified candidates from the demographic in question. The more options you provide for potential employees, the more likely it is that you will have an easier time finding, attracting, and hiring the best ones. But it doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be a method to ensure you’re hiring the most qualified candidates for the position and the company as a whole.

On the flip side, industries including wholesale trade, financial services, and education and health have a hard time filling positions in the United States. The role of software developer is another example of an occupation that is notoriously difficult to fill.

The ratio of active vs passive jobseekers. Generally speaking, it is easier to find, entice, and choose active job applicants than inactive ones. The second group usually isn’t actively seeking a new position, but is content with what they have and would consider a change if the opportunity presented itself. Those unmotivated job searchers frequently appear to be the perfect fit for your open positions… It takes more work to find them and persuade them to work for your organization, though, as you might expect.

Whether you handle the hiring in-house or hire outside help. Simply put, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) is the practice of contracting out some or all of your company’s recruitment functions. Hiring a third party to handle all of your company’s recruiting needs is a smart move if your in-house recruiting team isn’t up to the task. Later on in this piece, we will go deeper into RPO.

The level of automation in your recruitment process. The level of automation in your process determines the number and composition of your recruitment team. Recruiters may reclaim valuable time thanks to the abundance of (AI-powered) technologies available to streamline the talent acquisition process.

How much sourcing is required, and is it done in-house or not? This is conditional on a number of factors, including the availability of the target demographic and the proportion of people actively seeking employment as opposed to those who are just browsing the market.

It becomes more challenging to source when candidates are sparse.

If you need a lot of help finding potential candidates, you have two options: either employ a sourcer in-house or outsource the task altogether.

The precise figures. We haven’t seen any hard figures for your recruitment team size just yet, but we have seen some of the factors that go into it. There is no universally correct response because so many variables are at play, but we can provide you with a ballpark estimate. Depending on the industry and company size, the average number of available employment positions per recruiter in the United States ranges from thirty to forty, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s Knowledge Center. While large volume recruiters may be able to handle between 80 and 100 vacancies at a time, recruiters who concentrate on high-level roles may find that filling three or four roles each month is a great outcome.

Organization of the recruitment team

Although there is no set formula for a recruitment team, we will go over some common arrangements for businesses of varying sizes.

Businesses in their early stages: up to ten openings annually

Even without a full-time HR department, many smaller companies struggle to find qualified candidates. While an HR specialist or generalist may handle this task, the (founder and) chief executive officer (CEO) of the company is usually heavily involved in the hiring process.

This makes perfect sense for a new company, as making the incorrect hire might spell disaster. The simplest course of action would be to engage a freelance recruiter or agency in the event that the organization is unable to identify a qualified applicant internally.

Medium-sized businesses: 10 to 20 openings annually

There are a number of recruitment paths open to businesses like this.

The company’s current human resources generalist is probably just a one-man or woman show when it comes to hiring new employees. Sourcing, screening, making an offer, and negotiating pay are all things they will handle for you.

In the absence of an HR generalist or due to that individual’s heavy workload, the business has the option of bringing on a freelance or part-time recruiter, or even outsourcing the whole recruitment process to an outside agency.

Companies in the early stages of their growth: anywhere from twenty to eighty openings annually

At this point, you should have a permanent recruiter on staff. Whether it’s a part-time or full-time job depends on the availability of your target demographic and the amount of openings.

A number of choices exist for posting job openings and finding potential candidates. Assuming your HR generalist and recruiter are overloaded or lack the necessary expertise to handle these aspects of the hiring process, you have two options:

• Seek out outside firms or freelancers with the necessary expertise
• Consider bringing in-house talents such as a marketer or copywriter.

Larger companies—80 to 1,000 openings annually

Now, there is a strong need for a real recruitment team. Several recruiters may be necessary, with a team head or recruiting manager overseeing the group and providing management with updates, while also coordinating the use of recruitment tools and conducting data analytics, depending on the actual amount of openings and the scarcity of your target group.

Data analysis also starts to get fascinating at this point. With 500 openings, you already have more than 10,000 applicants (based on the assumption of 20 applicants per opening). This opens up fantastic possibilities for data analysis that yields useful insights.

Simplifying this is essential. For instance, Google Analytics can be a starting point for this kind of research. You may learn more about your website’s users and job openings, like their average session duration, device type, etc., with this information.

Your applicant tracking system is another potential resource. For instance, this can help you track the channels that brought in new employees and applications, which is useful for allocating resources.

Building a team

Currently, our recruitment team includes a data analyst, a recruiting manager, and other recruiters. In addition, it is beneficial to have an individual whose sole purpose is to source candidates, as well as a marketer whose work is to promote open positions through social media, employer branding, and job postings.

Having a recruitment assistant on hand to help out with administrative work, basic candidate queries, and other similar situations would be a huge help to the team right now.

Let’s take a look at the potential makeup of the recruiting team for a company of this size. Potentially, there might be:

• A manager of recruitment
• Several recruiters, adding one full-time equivalent for every forty new hires annually
• A recruiter who sources candidates
• An analyst with expertise in data
• Someone who helps with hiring
• Naturally, this figure increases as the number of openings grows.

Large companies and multinational corporations (MCNs)—1,000 or more job openings every year 

In this case as well, the recruitment team’s precise make-up is contingent upon the availability of your target demographic and the precise amount of openings. Numerous factors, such as the number of branches, global reach, environmental complexity, organizational hierarchy, laws, and multilingualism, may influence bigger businesses.

A VP of talent acquisition (VP-TA) or director is required at this level of organization. Since this strategic position has one-on-one communication with the CHRO, it is a rung below executive management. The TA-lead’s job is to come up with plans and put them into action so that the firm can find and recruit talented people who can help it achieve its objectives.

It may be more prudent to bring in outside experts in the field of recruiting and sourcing after the company reaches a particular size. Some common types, depending on your field and the difficulty of finding qualified candidates, are:

• Sourcing or recruiting on campus
• IT sourcing and recruiting
• Executive-level sourcing and recruiting

What follows is a hypothetical breakdown of the recruitment team composition for a company of this size. There could be:

• Executives in charge of personnel acquisition
• More than one manager in charge of recruiting (or team leader)
• Recruiters (specialists included)
• Sourcers (specialists included)
• Recruitment marketers
• Data scientists
• Help with recruitment

Outsourcing the recruitment team

Managing the whole hiring process in-house isn’t always feasible due to a lack of resources, expertise, or time. This may occur, for example, if your business is experiencing fast expansion or if you are entering new foreign markets.

An option to consider in these cases is Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO), which entails contracting out some or all of your recruitment activities to an outside company.

Among the advantages of RPO are:

• Skilled recruiters know how to find the right candidates quickly using their resources and expertise.
• The RPO delivers a wealth of expertise about the market, as well as proven processes and recruitment tools.
• When recruiters leave, it’s easy and fast to find a replacement.
• Outsourcing the hiring process might have several drawbacks, such as:
  • If you’re concerned about keeping expenses down, make explicit arrangements for the use of junior recruiters on the RPO team. Cooperation and implementation with the RPO party are time-consuming processes.
  • Because of a commonly utilized success-fee structure, certain RPOs may promote average applicants.
  • Various RPOs are available, each with its own unique contract type and scope.

On-request RPO

Our first option is the on-request RPO. An organization’s hiring managers and recruiters are familiar with the favored supplier’s culture and needs, and the supplier has easy access to these people. Put simply, the provider is well-versed in its field.

Organizations with few openings and minimal in-house recruiting expertise often choose this RPO model. Alternatively, businesses whose recruitment workload is highly variable or subject to seasonal or other external factors may use this model.

RPO based on function groups

A second option is the RPO that is based on function groups. When you need to fill open jobs in your company, whether they be in information technology (IT) or finance (Finance), you can turn to this chosen recruiting services supplier that specializes in one or more target groups.

Covering a whole business unit or difficult-to-recruit target groups is an attractive feature of this sort of RPO for bigger firms and MNCs.

Full RPO

Full RPO refers to a situation in which the RPO provider handles every step of the hiring process, from receiving job openings and developing the job description to screening resumes and conducting interviews, all the way to the employment conditions interview. In order to get as personal as possible, the provider will often work out of your offices. It is unlikely that candidates or hiring managers will realize their hiring process is being outsourced.

Companies and MNCs with a larger workforce that like to concentrate on what they do best may find this RPO model appealing.

Now the question is: when is it a good time to start looking into outsourcing some or all of your recruitment processes? You may wish to give RPO some thought if you can answer yes to several of the following questions but do not anticipate immediate, substantial improvements:

• No one working for the company has any training or experience in marketing or recruitment. Expertise and understanding of the most recent industry trends are necessities in this field due to the rapid pace of improvements.
• You aren’t making use of cutting-edge technology that could help you reach niche audiences or streamline your hiring procedures.
• In a short amount of time, you strive to provide senior management, HR, candidates, and hiring managers with a far greater degree of service.
• After much deliberation, the company has decided to focus on its core competencies while outsourcing all other, less important tasks.
• Too much money is going into each hire.
• Hiring quality is lacking
• It takes too much time to complete.

It may be possible to execute partial RPO and then develop the necessary in-house capabilities in due course. Bringing in outside expertise in this way will help with immediate issues and lay the groundwork for future recruitment success.

To wrap things up

In order to find, attract, and choose the best individuals, the recruitment team is crucial. Several aspects should be considered when determining the optimal team size, including the number of open positions, the level of automation in your process, and the scarcity of qualified individuals. In most cases, it will also depend on how big your business is.

It may be prudent to outsource your recruitment process in certain situations; for example, if you do not possess the resources, expertise, or knowledge necessary to conduct efficient and effective recruitment.