Recruitment Team Job Descriptions & Roles

There are many different ways to find and hire candidates for your business. In a very small team, the owner or CEO is often the person doing the interviewing and hiring. In a larger team, one employee might handle all the HR tasks including recruiting, possibly with the assistance of an outside agency. If you’ve tried these options, and they’re not working for your company, then it may be time to create your own internal recruitment team.

Bringing your recruiting in-house takes some upfront work, but many large and growing teams find that the benefits are worth it. Here is what you need to know about getting started with your own internal recruitment team.

Read more: 8 Employee Recruitment Strategies to Improve Your Hiring Process

Why Have an Internal Recruitment Team?

If you don’t currently have an internal recruitment team, then you are probably wondering what difference having one would make to your company. For starters, it keeps other employees from spending valuable time on recruiting. For example, it’s common in startups for CEOs or other high-value employees to devote a lot of their time to recruiting, which quickly becomes unsustainable.

Having an internal recruitment process will give your company the people power it needs to hire big and fast during a growth spurt, which is especially important for startups that are taking off. Moving things in-house may also save your business money if you are currently paying an outside agency thousands of dollars a month to recruit for you.

Internal recruiting teams make it easier to find highly specialized talent because the team already knows the ins and outs of your business. This contrasts with outside recruitment agencies, which usually work on multiple different clients at once, so you have to take more time to bring them up to speed on your hiring needs.

In fact, staffing agencies can sometimes even waste your time and money by bringing in a bunch of candidates that don’t really fit your needs. Having an internal recruitment team prevents this problem.

Internal Recruiting Team Roles

An internal recruitment team structure varies depending on the size of the company, your hiring needs, and your budget to staff the various positions. Here are nine positions and titles, along with brief job descriptions, that you need to be familiar with:

• Recruiter: This is a catch-all position that handles all steps of the recruiting process, from sourcing to hiring. It’s common in smaller teams where you need a jack-of-all-trades.
• Sourcer: This role is dedicated solely to sourcing candidates. It’s common in larger teams and high turnover companies when they need to do a lot of sourcing.
• Recruitment Coordinator: This entry-level role assists recruiters and sourcers in posting job listings, scheduling meetings, etc.
• Technical Recruiter: This type of recruiter specializes in filling technical roles in software design, engineering, etc. and is common in companies in these industries.
• Campus Recruiter: This type of recruiter specializes in maintaining recruiting relationships with colleges and business schools to fill entry-level roles. They often travel a lot to the schools to participate in job fairs and conduct interviews.
• Executive Recruiter: This type of recruiter specializes in hiring for C-suite level positions. They usually have a bit more experience and seniority because of the expertise needed to headhunt at this level.
• Recruitment Manager or Hiring Manager: This is a more senior to middle manager role that oversees teams of recruiters and sourcers. It’s common on larger teams where there are multiple recruiters who need a manager to coordinate their work.
• Recruitment Marketing Manager: This role oversees marketing efforts specifically for promoting job openings. The marketing manager can act as a liaison between the marketing team and the recruiting team.
• Head of Recruiting and Head of HR: This is a C-suite level position that reports to the CEO and oversees the big-picture strategy of the recruiting team. Bigger companies usually have a separate head of recruiting, but in smaller companies this duty falls under the head of HR. If there is a separate head of recruiting, they may report directly to the head of HR.

Read more on Small Business Computing: 10 Tips for Building a Strong Recruitment Database

How to Build an Internal Recruiting Team

Determine How Big the Team Needs to Be

The first step to building a recruiting team is deciding how many people you need to hire at a particular time. At the very least you’ll need a recruiter and possibly a hiring manager as well. Remember that you can always hire more people later if you need to. You also need to decide whether you will need specialized recruiters (technical, campus, and/or executive) and tailor your team accordingly.

Consider Company Culture and Values

Look for candidates who have the experience you need who also share your company’s culture and values. A good company culture fit is important because the recruiting team will set the tone for all future hires.

Once you’ve made your first recruitment team hires, onboard your new employees and get them oriented to their new job. Choose what metrics you will use to track your recruiting team’s progress and set up the analytics to do that.

Encourage Building Relationships With Other Departments

Encourage the recruiting team to build relationships with the departments they are recruiting for—after all, these relationships and company knowledge are what give internal recruitment teams the edge over outside agencies. You should also take steps to educate your team on recruiting biases and design systems to help guard against this.

Develop Workload and Professional Development Strategies

Distribute the workload fairly and hire more people if needed. Recruiting teams that are stretched thin often lead to bad hires, which has a ripple effect across the whole organization.

Also, make provisions for professional development, and encourage your recruiting team to constantly improve their skills. Continually assess your team’s way of doing things and make adjustments as needed.

Consider Investing in HR Software

In addition to hiring a recruitment team, you might also want to consider investing in HR software that can speed up the sourcing and recruiting processes.

Recruiting AI programs can automate rote processes such as taking notes during interviews to free up your team’s valuable time. There are also many different recruiting software tools that make it easy to post to multiple job boards and review candidate résumés.

If you are ready to find a new recruiting software to supplement your internal recruiting team, browse our software guides or reach out to one of our technology experts to schedule a free consultation.

Read next: Best Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) Software