Recruitment

Most people outside of HR assume recruitment is basically just reviewing CVs and setting up interviews. And sure, that’s part of it. But anyone who’s spent real time in the function knows there’s a lot more happening underneath – and when any of it is done poorly, the consequences follow the company for a long time.

A bad hire costs money. A slow hiring process loses good candidates to faster competitors. A poor candidate experience hurts employer brand. Recruitment done well is what gives a company its best people. Done badly, it produces a revolving door that costs more than most finance teams ever fully account for.

Technically put, recruitment involves identifying, attracting, screening, interviewing and hiring individuals for filling positions. In practice, it combines the concepts of employer branding, workforce planning and sourcing, assessment design, offer negotiation and the smooth integration into onboarding.

The Process From Start to Finish

• Workforce planning: Before a job gets posted, someone should be asking whether the hire is actually needed and why – growth, backfill, new capability, or restructuring.
• Job requisition: The manager formally requests the role, HR approves it. Simple step, but skipping it creates downstream confusion.
• Job description: Defining what the role actually involves, what success looks like, and which qualifications genuinely matter. Poorly written JDs attract the wrong pool from the start.
• Sourcing: Finding candidates through job portals, referrals, agencies, LinkedIn, campus hiring, or internal moves – channel choice depends on the role and level.
• Screening: Shortlisting resumes, running initial assessments, filtering the candidate pool before investing real interview time.
• Interviews: Technical, managerial, and HR rounds – combination varies by role and level.
• Offer management: Getting the compensation right, issuing the letter, and closing before the candidate accepts something else.
• Onboarding handoff: Transitioning from accepted offer to actual employee. More processes drop the ball here than anywhere else.

Which Sourcing Channels Actually Work

• Job portals – Naukri, LinkedIn, Indeed, Foundit: Good for volume. Quality varies a lot depending on how well the JD is written and what level the role is.
• Employee referrals: Consistently the highest-quality source in most companies. People don’t refer candidates they’d be embarrassed to work alongside.
• Campus recruitment: Works well for fresher hiring where raw potential matters more than prior experience.
• Recruitment agencies: Useful when the right person isn’t actively looking on any job board – usually for senior or specialised roles.
• Internal mobility: Filling roles through internal transfers or promotions. Underutilised in most companies and often the fastest route to someone who already understands the culture.

Numbers Worth Tracking

• Time to hire: Days from job posting to offer acceptance. A useful efficiency signal, though faster is only better up to a point.
• Cost per hire: Total recruitment spend divided by number of hires. Helps evaluate whether sourcing investments are returning value.
• Offer acceptance rate: What proportion of offers get accepted? If it’s low, it usually signals a pay problem or a candidate experience problem.
• Source of hire: Which channels are producing actual hires? Drives more intelligent allocation of sourcing budget.
• Quality of hire: How people are performing and retaining 6 to 12 months in. The most important number and the hardest to measure consistently.

Recruitment vs. Talent Acquisition – Not Quite the Same

Recruitment is transactional: a role opens, you fill it. Talent acquisition is the bigger picture – employer brand, talent pipelines, relationships with candidates before roles even exist. In smaller companies one person usually does both from the same desk. In larger ones they’re increasingly treated as different disciplines.

FAQs: Recruitment

What does time to hire typically look like in India?
For most corporate roles, somewhere between 20 and 45 days from posting to offer acceptance. Senior or niche roles routinely take longer – three to four months for leadership hires isn’t unusual at all.

What’s the actual difference between recruitment and selection?
Recruitment is about generating the pool – attracting people and sourcing candidates. Selection is everything that happens after: evaluating that pool and deciding who to hire. One creates the options; the other narrows them down.

What is an ATS and do companies actually need one?
An Applicant Tracking System manages the hiring process – from posting jobs to parsing resumes and scheduling interviews to sending offers, and so on. It’s what makes any company’s hiring process a manageable, spreadsheet + email chain nightmare.

Why do employee referrals tend to produce better hires?
Because the person making the referral has already done an informal vetting. They know the company, they know the candidate, and they’re not going to recommend someone they’d be uncomfortable working alongside. That filter shows up clearly in quality of hire and retention data.