Recruiting is much more than simply posting a job and waiting for applicants. It's a nuanced process with many steps designed to comfortably onboard a new employee. However, most people don't realize that the process is often divided among a variety of professionals that may include HR personnel, recruiters, and company leaders. 

Full cycle recruiting, sometimes called end-to-end recruiting, is the entire recruitment process from start to finish. Professional recruiters who take on job orders for large companies often supply full cycle recruiting services. Essentially, a full-cycle recruiter will start the recruiting process from the beginning and the job will be complete after a qualified candidate is onboarded. Instead of the fragmented approach that splits responsibilities among different professionals, full cycle recruiting allows one person to oversee the whole process. 

The Phases of Full Cycle Recruiting

While full cycle recruiting covers the entire recruit/hire/onboard process, it's still a process that is completed in several phases. Whether it's completed in-house, or outsourced to a third-party recruiting company, you can expect full cycle recruiting to include these basic phases. After identifying the talent gap, the recruiter will create job listings for different platforms to attract a variety of potentially qualified candidates. 

Attraction

The recruitment process begins with a firm understanding of what the company is looking for. To attract top candidates, a recruiter first determines the available positions to fill and the qualities the company seeks in an ideal recruit. After identifying the talent gap, the recruiter will create job listings for different platforms to attract a variety of potentially qualified candidates. It can be helpful to generate different types of job listings, including video job postings, for social media, online job boards, and internal databases. 

Selection

On average, a corporate job post receives 250 resumes. Narrowing down the candidate pool before reaching the interview stage is essential to streamlining the process for both recruiters and qualified candidates. During the selection phase, a recruiter will screen candidates to eliminate those who don't fit the job description or are underqualified. This is where those detailed descriptions of what the company is seeking come in handy.

Screening

A typical company will interview between 6 and 10 people for a position, and some applicants will likely be interviewed 2 - 3 times. During the full cycle recruiting process, the recruiter will perform the interviews or at least play an integral part in them. As a full-cycle recruiter, you may have the responsibility of preparing interview questions, supplying more information to candidates, or sitting in on the interview process. After candidates are interviewed, the recruiter will likely be responsible for conducting reference and background checks, compiling data and maintaining communication with applicants.

Hiring

When a final candidate is selected, the full cycle recruiter can move to the offer phase. This entails extending the company's offer as well as providing essential details about compensation, salary, benefits, etc. This phase might also include negotiations that require the recruiter to serve as a liaison between the candidate and the company. If the chosen candidate accepts the offer, it's time to notify those who didn't make the cut.

Onboarding

While some recruiters complete the process with a successful hiring agreement, many companies are focusing on the retention benefits of a successful onboarding process. 69% of employees are more likely to stay at a company for 3 years if they experience great onboarding. Since a full cycle recruiter serves as the primary point of contact with employees during the hiring process, it makes sense that the new hire would be more comfortable if this communication continue during preboarding and onboarding. During this phase, the recruiter's responsibilities may be limited to occasional check-ins and being available to answer questions that arise.

Who Should be Using Full Cycle Recruiting

While the practice is typically observed in large organizations and among professional recruiting companies, any employer can benefit from full cycle recruiting. By unifying the recruiting and hiring process and providing job seekers with a single point of contact, potential employers may simplify and humanize the process. Both recruiting agencies and in-house recruiters use full cycle recruiting on different scales. 

Small businesses may benefit from full cycle recruiting, but it may not be practical for some startups that lack the team, cash, or recruitment tools to utilize a single recruiter throughout the process. In these situations, a company may prefer to maintain a fragmented approach to recruitment until it has access to the required resources to begin full-cycle recruiting.

Pros and Cons of Full Cycle Recruiting

Whether your company is a booming success or a small growing business, it can be difficult to decide whether changing your hiring process is a good idea. Like every other decision, full cycle recruiting has some advantages and drawbacks that can make it a good choice for some companies and a less attractive one for others. To determine whether full cycle recruiting is the best choice for your unique situation, it helps to weigh the pros and cons to determine how it'll affect your business.

Pros

Full cycle recruiting puts the entire hiring process in the hands of a single recruiter. This can provide benefits for both the company and the candidates going through the hiring experience. 

• Accountability: Whether a single recruiter or designated group is in charge of full cycle recruiting, specific responsibilities are always clearly defined. This transparency can help companies avoid miscommunication and other issues that could result in missing out on the most qualified candidates. 
• Candidate experience: Changing careers is a stressful experience that can be aggravated by lack of communication and a poorly defined process. Full cycle recruitment gives candidates the opportunity to form a relationship with the recruiter and establish a point of contact for ongoing communication. Since the hiring process can often feel stalled, this transparent communication can be a great way to assure qualified candidates they haven't been ghosted.
• Decreased time-to-hire: A fragmented hiring process can pass through the hands of multiple employees with a variety of responsibilities. This can lead to delays and an overall slower process. The average time to hire a new employee from outside of the company is 41 days. However, it can take as long as 49 days for engineering roles. A typical full cycle recruitment process means a single recruiter or small group is consistently focused on the recruiting process and using recruitment tools to streamline the process. The nature of the process is typically faster and more efficient.

Cons

• Demands many skills from recruiters: A company that is accustomed to a large HR department with various employees to handle different aspects of hiring might have difficulty adjusting to the change. Full cycle recruiting requires many different skill sets from a single recruiter, which might require additional training.
• Not suitable for all organizations: A small organization or early start-up may have difficulty assigning an employee to take care of every aspect of recruiting and lack the funds to outsource the process. Larger organizations may struggle with so many applications that a single recruiter can't handle the workload effectively. This can mean that full cycle recruiting is best limited to medium-sized businesses or specialized roles within the organization.
• May require extra tools: Most professional recruiters or recruitment agencies depend on tools to manage the full recruitment life cycle. Such tools help obtain referrals, filter resumes, update schedules, and maintain job postings. For companies hoping to perform full cycle recruiting in-house, obtaining and optimizing the necessary tools can be challenging.

Need Help with Your Recruiting Workflow?

Your recruitment process is an essential part of attracting the right employees to your company and retaining new hires. For some businesses, full cycle recruiting is a great way to improve the recruiting and hiring process to successfully fill vacant roles. Whether you depend on a recruiter or your in-house hiring manager to take care of the process, it's crucial to have the right tools.

In today's competitive hiring market, every part of the recruiting process plays an essential role. This means it's crucial to ensure transparent communication as well as recruitment techniques that attract talent from a variety of sources. At Lumina, we place our focus on streamlining the way to provide engaging information to qualified candidates. Our intuitive platform bridges the gap between HR and marketing with the ability to transform your existing company information into videos that engage and inform prospective employees. The platform is designed for daily use by normal recruiters and marketers. Finally, companies and recruiters can harness the power of video without a Ph.D. in social media or an expensive video crew. To see how HR teams and recruiters use Lumina for improved talent acquisition, sign up for your trial today. 

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