How to Create a Recruitment Strategy Plan for 2025
A few months ago, my team met with a client who had landed a massive new business contract. The company needed to double its account team within two months.
When we asked what steps they’d taken ahead of time to prepare for the potential new contract, we were met with blank stares. While they’d obviously hoped to win the contract, they hadn’t factored the possibility into their recruitment strategy at all. As a result, they were scrambling to find and recruit qualified people in a competitive market ahead of the looming contract start date.
My team was happy to step in and help–that’s what we’re here for. However, I couldn’t help but think of all the stress the company leaders could have avoided had they created a contingency plan for how a big new client might affect their staffing. If they’d come to us sooner, we could have built a talent pipeline so that qualified candidates were primed and ready to interview when the contract was inked.
Having a recruitment strategy plan helps ensure that your organization is ready for whatever comes its way and that the time and money you dedicate to recruitment efforts are well spent. In this article, we’ll help you learn how to build a 2025 recruitment strategy that will help you attract strong talent, fulfill your organization’s staffing needs, and achieve your business goals in the year ahead.
What Is a Recruitment Strategy?
A recruitment strategy details how an organization will find, assess, and hire candidates to meet its staffing needs. It should be customized based on factors unique to the company, such as its operational goals, size, growth plans, skills needs, and budget.
A good recruitment strategy outlines the ‘how’ of attracting candidates and the ‘why.’ Having a thorough understanding of your organization’s needs and what drives them will better position you to create recruiting campaigns that achieve the results you’re looking for.
How to Create an Effective Recruitment Strategy Plan
To create your 2025 recruitment strategy, follow these steps:
1. Review organizational goals
The company’s overarching goals should be the primary factors driving your recruiting efforts. Management should clearly define these goals. They might include things like growing revenue by a certain percentage, strengthening brand awareness, investing in research and development, or moving into new markets.
The organization’s goals spell out its direction. Once defined, it’s much easier to identify the roles necessary to achieve those goals.
2. Define recruitment goals
Next, strategize how to use recruitment to achieve the company goals you identified. For example, if the company intends to expand its research and development initiatives, it will require a push to recruit talented scientists, engineers, and project managers. If the company expands into a new geographic market, you’ll create campaigns targeting people in those new cities.
You may also define recruitment goals to enhance your overall recruiting capabilities, like strengthening your employer brand or improving diversity and inclusion. While these aren’t necessarily tied to specific operational goals, they improve your ability to attract and retain top talent, which will advance any mission the business is trying to achieve.
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3. Assess current situation
Take a closer look at the company’s current position regarding skills and experience to identify talent shortfalls. A skills gap analysis can be useful here. It will reveal which skills the existing workforce lacks that will be necessary in the near future.
In addition to analyzing skills needs, look at workforce KPIs like turnover, absenteeism, and employee engagement. These metrics can highlight areas of your recruitment strategy that require attention.
For example, if you’re experiencing high turnover in a certain role, it could indicate that you haven’t perfected the hiring criteria for that position and, thus, aren’t putting candidates in a position to succeed. If you’re seeing high levels of absenteeism, it could be a sign that current staffers are overworked and you need to hire someone to provide additional support.
4. Identify key openings
Most of the time, the above-mentioned analysis will reveal several obvious hiring needs. These are your low-hanging fruit: the positions you know you definitely need to hire for. If you want to grow your client base by 20%, you need more salespeople. If your financial situation got a lot more complex in the last year, you might need a CFO, and so on.
You can begin drafting job descriptions and sourcing candidates for these roles immediately.
5. Predict likely needs
Next, address the hiring needs that might not be so obvious or urgent. Technology can be a great asset here.
Machine learning models can layer your historical hiring data on top of your growth projections to accurately predict your imminent staffing needs. It can even recommend critical skills to look for and aid in candidate matching when you’re ready to begin hiring.
Also, consider succession planning. Look ahead to predict likely vacancies that will be occurring in the year ahead, like seasoned team members who will be retiring. Strategize how you’ll fill these vacancies and whether they will create new openings you need to incorporate into your recruitment plan. Having an org chart can help with this. It lets you easily see how roles relate to one another and visualize which current employees might make sense to move into key openings.
6. Define your budget
It’s a hefty question: how much money do you have to accomplish your recruiting goals? What funds are in hand now, and how much will be allocated for the rest of the year? Based on this information, you can build your recruiting budget.
Your recruiting budget should cover every activity involved in sourcing, assessing, hiring, and onboarding candidates. Here’s a basic list of line items to consider:
- In-house recruiter salaries
- Third-party recruiter fees
- Job board memberships/posting fees
- Website maintenance
- Content creation/photography/videography
- Social media advertising
- Traditional advertising
- Recruiting events
- Recruiting technology/ATS
- Assessment and screening services
- Background checks/drug testing
- Candidate travel and relocation expenses
- Referral bonuses
Your budget from last year is a good starting point. Even if your needs have changed significantly in the last 12 months, it will give you an idea of how scaling your efforts up or down could impact costs.
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7. Select a staffing partner
Working with a staffing partner like a reputable headhunting firm can accelerate your hiring speed, increase the quality of candidates you attract, and provide internal staff with more time to devote to operational duties. A staffing partner can also aid in building your recruitment plan.
My team works closely with every client to understand organizational goals and develop a multi-part strategy to leverage staffing to meet those goals. We help companies take advantage of the latest recruiting technology, utilize the most effective sourcing methods, connect with candidates meaningfully, and craft compelling job offers, all of which enhance hiring.
Your staffing partner can make or break your hiring success, so choosing the right one is important. Look for a firm with a proven track record, expertise in your industry, a communication style that’s aligned with yours, and the ability to work within your budget.
Related: How to Choose a Recruitment Agency
8. Outline sourcing strategies
Aside from defining your hiring needs, this is arguably the most essential step in your recruitment strategy. How will you get qualified candidates into your pipeline? You can’t hire without qualified applicants, so it pays to devote a significant amount of your planning time to strategizing where candidates will come from.
It’s not just about getting people to apply–it’s about reaching the right people. Your sourcing tactics should be tailored to the list of positions you need to hire for.
If you need to hire many seasonal sales associates, job boards like Indeed may yield many viable applicants. On the other hand, if you need specialized tech talent, posting to a laundry list of general interest job boards probably isn’t going to reach those people. Instead, you may need to utilize strategies like posting to niche forums or poaching talent from competitors.
Consider both inbound recruiting and outbound sourcing strategies. Here are some of the top recruiting channels to consider as you create your plan:
- Job boards
- Social media
- Company careers page
- Referrals
- Recruitment agencies
- Professional networks
- Career fairs and other events
- Colleges and universities
- Internship programs
- Community/government employment agencies
- Freelance marketplaces
These posts will also give you a variety of creative sourcing ideas:
9. Incorporate AI and automation
AI and automation are playing a growing role in successful recruiting, enhancing accuracy and efficiency. So, you should spend some time considering how you’ll incorporate them into your plan.
AI tools can automate repetitive tasks like candidate sourcing, resume screening, and interview scheduling, allowing recruiters to focus on more strategic and human-centric activities. For instance, AI chatbots can engage with prospective candidates in real time, answering questions and guiding them through the application process. This improves engagement and reduces drop-off rates.
AI also has the power to analyze large amounts of data and predict candidate success, allowing you to make more informed hiring decisions. By assessing factors like skills, experience, and cultural fit and comparing them against historic data, AI helps match candidates to roles in which they’re most likely to thrive. This reduces turnover and improves new hire satisfaction.
10. Refine your selection process
Outline the series of actions that will occur once a candidate enters your pipeline. This may include things like phone screenings and video screenings to qualify applicants before scheduling an interview, pre-employment assessments that can increase hiring accuracy, the interview process, and the messaging you’ll send to candidates throughout the candidate journey.
Define your process for developing and selecting interview questions, decide which interview style you’ll use, consider how you’ll train interviewers, and identify the process that will be used to score candidates.
Having a clearly defined selection process saves a lot of time and keeps your talent pipeline moving smoothly, allowing you to hire swiftly and accurately.
11. Perfect your value proposition
Boosting your offer acceptance rate can significantly improve the overall quality of your workforce. Strategize how you’ll get candidates to say yes. It should be easy for a candidate to understand what they stand to gain by joining your team.
Research similar companies in the market and compare your salaries to ensure they’re competitive. Assess your benefits package and identify areas that could be optimized. Collect employee feedback to find out how you can further improve your offers.
Additionally, enhancing the candidate experience throughout the recruiting process can make a substantial difference in attracting top talent and increasing your offer acceptance rate.
Related: How to Create a Winning Employee Value Proposition
12. Optimize your employer brand
A strong employer brand helps attract suitable candidates while reducing hiring costs. Your employer brand encapsulates your company’s reputation as a workplace and influences how would-be applicants perceive your company culture, values, and work environment.
To optimize your employer brand, go back to the employee value proposition we just mentioned. What makes your company a great place to work? Highlight aspects like growth opportunities, work-life balance, unique perks, and company mission and showcase them in social media posts, videos, and on your Careers page.
Your employer brand should be top-of-mind any time you’re creating candidate-facing recruitment content–anything you put out there should be in alignment with it.
13. Consider the candidate experience
Ensure that you’re providing a positive candidate experience from application to onboarding. With the client I mentioned at the start of this post, we discovered that their urgent hiring needs were contributing to a candidate experience that felt rushed and chaotic. They were desperate to hire, and candidates could tell. Though hiring quickly was important, it was necessary to slow things down and take the time for meaningful conversations and thoughtful assessments in order to make candidates feel welcomed and valued.
Some of the ways you can provide a positive candidate experience include responding promptly to inquiries, communicating consistently with applicants, and maintaining transparency about the hiring process. By actively managing the candidate experience, you’ll have a greater percentage of people who are ready to give an enthusiastic “yes” when it comes time to make an offer.
14. Enhance your onboarding
As we always say, recruitment doesn’t end when a candidate accepts your offer. A smooth and enjoyable onboarding process is crucial to retain the talent you’ve worked so hard to attract and bring them to full productivity in their new role.
Things like scheduling technology set up ahead of the candidate’s first day, providing virtual materials they can peruse at their leisure, and using interactive media to communicate key information can greatly enhance the new hire experience. Learn more about creating a positive onboarding experience.
15. Review and refine
Don’t put the finishing touches on your recruitment strategy without setting regular check-in dates on the calendar. Review your recruitment metrics and KPIs monthly or quarterly to assess the effectiveness of your strategy.
Here are some of the top KPIs to look at:
- Cost per hire. Monitoring cost per hire keeps you within budget and can help you decide which type of staffing–i.e., full-time, part-time, or contract–is most appropriate.
- Time to hire. Time to hire can reveal bottlenecks in your recruiting process and may indicate the need for more specialized recruiting assistance.
- Sourcing channel effectiveness. Tells you which channels deliver the best results so you can focus more of your efforts there.
- The number of qualified candidates helps you understand how many candidates you need to contact to create a suitable talent pool.
- Application completion rate. This indicates whether you’re clearly communicating the role and your employee value proposition, and whether you’re attracting the right viewers to your job postings.
- The submit-to-interview ratio provides insight into the quality of applicants. If it is low, better screening and sourcing may be required.
- Offer acceptance rate. Informs you on the quality of your offers and competitiveness in the market.
- Candidate net promoter score. Candidate net promoter score, or cNPS, is a simple and effective metric for assessing the candidate experience.
- New hire retention tells you whether you’re hiring candidates who are a strong fit and also helps assess the effectiveness of your onboarding process.
As you work to refine your recruitment strategy, seek input from hiring managers and recruiters and gather data from candidate feedback surveys.
By making data-driven adjustments on an ongoing basis, you’ll continuously improve the efficiency and success of your recruitment process and ensure that all the hard work you put into building a recruiting strategy pays off.
Recruitment Strategy Plan Template
| Organizational Goals | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| Recruitment Goals | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| Current Staffing Position | Skills Gaps: Hiring Challenges: Competitors: | Notes |
| Key Openings | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| Likely Needs | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| Budget | In-house recruiter salaries | |
| Third-party recruiter fees | ||
| Job board memberships/posting fees | ||
| Website maintenance | ||
| Content creation/photography/videography | ||
| Social media advertising | ||
| Traditional advertising | ||
| Recruiting events | ||
| Recruiting technology/ATS | ||
| Assessment and screening services | ||
| Background checks/drug testing | ||
| Candidate travel and relocation expenses | ||
| Referral bonuses | ||
| TOTAL | ||
| Staffing Partner | Option 1. Option 2. Option 3. | Notes |
| Sourcing Strategies | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| AI and Automation Tools | 1. 2. 3. | Notes |
| Selection Process | Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. | Notes |
| Employee Value Proposition | Benefit 1. Benefit 2. Benefit 3. | Notes |
| Employer Brand | Values: Mission: Company Culture: Work Environment: | Notes |
| Candidate Experience | Communication Channels: Communication Frequency: | Notes |
| Onboarding | Step 1. Step 2. Step 3. | Notes |
| Recruitment KPIs | KPI 1. KPI 2. KPI 3. |
