Guide to Recruitment Team Structure: What You Need to Form a Solid Crew

Over the years, the recruitment industry has undergone dynamic shifts and changes which have resulted in fierce competition for HR professionals seeking to stay relevant in the industry. 

The dynamic shift that has already taken place in the past is something that is going to have continuous effects as we move into 2023. As a matter of fact, 2022 saw an increase in hiring by 82% which sets a precedent for shifts in candidate demands as well as the possibility of dealing with cumbersome work in recruiting.
To meet such demands and reduce the workload, recruiters as well as other HR professionals sometimes collaborate together as part of a hiring team.

A hiring team consists of a group of individuals from the industry who undertake various recruitment tasks. While such teams can vary depending on their size, there are 4 key roles that should be regarded as the standard across the board. 

In this article, we will explore the benefit hiring teams can have on improving an organization's chances of sourcing quality candidates as well as how they are a more efficient way of going about recruiting than tackling challenges alone. We will dive deep into the 4 key roles you need to facilitate all aspects of recruitment, specific roles of an organization that complement a hiring team, and how hiring teams can benefit from the assistance of a digital tool such as an Applicant Tracking System and its various features. 

Regardless of how big or small your organization is, the 4 key roles listed in this article are essential for every hiring team. Each role and its respective duties provide a structure for carrying out recruitment processes from the start till the end.

Importance and Benefits of Hiring Teams 

There are many ways in which you can go about recruiting talent, from having individual recruiters working as independent consultants to enlisting the services of a hiring team that consists of various HR professionals. 

When dealing with meeting changing candidate demands and an increase in competition, the importance of hiring teams should not be overlooked. 

When HR professionals such as recruiters, hiring managers, heads of HR, and coordinators come together to work on getting the job done, you’ll come to find that this is a benefit both for yourself and the organization. After all, many hands do make light work.

There are numerous benefits when it comes to having a hiring team handle all your recruitment queries and qualms, but we will be focusing on 2 distinct benefits. 

1. Reduce workload and stress

It can be a daunting task for recruiters who need to compete against one another to secure the best candidates before they get snatched up. Sometimes, recruiters rush to hire such talent and as a result, come to find that they’ve recruited a bad hire.

Securing a bad hire can be a poor reflection on a recruiter's decision-making capabilities, which could ultimately lead to a recruiter losing out on the opportunity to source more candidates. 

HR professionals in this space, apart from having to deal with a cut-throat environment also have a lot on their plate when it comes to handling various recruitment-related tasks. From sourcing candidates to receiving resumes to tracking candidates and providing them with feedback, it can be heavy for one single recruiter to handle. 

Without help from other professionals or even the assistance of digital tools, recruiters could end up feeling overwhelmed which can lead to feelings of stress, demotivation, and eventually burnout. 

Hiring teams are the solution and provide a benefit because a recruiter no longer has to do all the nitty-gritty work by themselves. With a team of dedicated and educated HR professionals, various tasks can be delegated across the group.

2. Company Culture

Company culture goes beyond just talking about and having initiatives to showcase diversity, equality, and inclusion. How a company carries out different functions of its internal and external operations is based on a series of shared values, missions, and goals. Moreover, it also highlights how employees in the organization interact with each other. 

Cultural fit and nailing the company culture down are two challenges that HR professionals seem to have a tough time with. There’s no one size fits all solution to this, as our expectations sometimes don’t end up matching the reality of things. 

How well a candidate fits in with the company culture is dependent on several factors. Hiring managers for starters will make informed decisions on whether the applicant aligns with an organization's vision, mission, goals, or overall culture of the organization. Moreover, heads of HR also have a part to play in whether a company culture is perceived as having a positive or negative impact on a candidate because of the strategies implemented to achieve said goals. 

Hiring teams can provide benefits in showcasing a great company culture because you have many different groups of individuals who are all part of the same industry working together on building a strong culture. A hiring manager might work alongside a head of HR to formulate strategies on how they can best go about showcasing a company's culture. They could also work alongside a recruiter on deciding whether a candidate aligns with the company's mission, vision, goals, and more. 

You can also look at company culture as including DE&I initiatives which are diversity, equality, and inclusivity. Several HR professionals work alongside companies that try to incorporate DE&I initiatives into their culture. Showcasing diversity, equality and inclusivity can help in establishing a strong company culture.

For a hiring team, showcasing diversity, equality and inclusivity has benefits in both internal and external ways. From an internal perspective, when you have a diverse hiring team of individuals from various backgrounds and cultures with different personalities and experiences, you will be exposed to fresh ideas on a daily basis. When speaking from an external standpoint, a diverse hiring team could be the driving force to attract candidates for open positions because that talent might feel like this team understands them, and they feel welcome to apply for a job with this group of HR professionals. 

The positive reflection you get from candidates from an external point of view is a direct reflection of your employer brand. If your hiring team can showcase DE&I initiatives, then you’re on the right path to building a strong company culture.

It’s important to understand company culture because 76% of candidates consider diversity in regard to how diverse a workforce is before they accept an offer. Now, for a hiring team, if your team is diverse and you leave the candidate with a great experience, praise will be given through word of mouth. You’ll soon come to find that more candidates are applying for positions through your hiring team, and in turn, you’re able to build your team's talent pipeline.

You might like this article on how you can improve your company culture through diversity

The 4 Key Roles 

By now you should be well-acquainted with why hiring teams matter in the modern age of recruitment and their key benefits. Now, it’s time to divulge what the 4 key roles are which should be a standard across all teams in the industry. 

Each of the 4 roles mentioned in this article function in a collaborative format with individuals coming together for a single purpose and goal - to improve efficiency and speed in hiring as well as the quality of hires. 

1. Recruiters

Hiring teams consist of a group of individuals who all undertake tasks associated with recruitment. The first obvious member is a recruiter because they’re the ones who recruit candidates. 

The scope of duties for a recruiter goes beyond just scouting for the talents who are the right fit for a job requisition. Besides sourcing, other tasks include scheduling interviews, rejecting candidates before they’re even added to the pipeline, reviewing resumes, and more. 

When recruiters work alone without a team of skilled individuals to back them up, they often come across two main pain points - hiring time and quality of hires. Take too long to hire a candidate and you might find that the competition has snatched them up. On the other hand, if you rush to hire a candidate simply because there’s an urgency, then you might end up having a bad hire on your hands. 

Recruiters who work with a team supporting them can reduce their workload and spend that time focusing on hiring the best talents for all job vacancies that come their way. 

2. Head of Human Resources

A hiring team established for the purpose of carrying out an assortment of recruitment-related tasks isn’t complete without a head of human resources. When you have this individual as part of your group, you’ll have someone a recruiter and hiring manager can rely on to handle the behind-the-scenes work.

Heads of HR have to approve the job requisition put forth by the hiring manager, then only can a recruiter go ahead and actively source candidates. Aside from that, when working in a hiring team, HR heads will also handle documentation such as salary for the new hire, work permits (if applicable), keeping forms organized by ensuring they’re up to date, and various other paperwork. 

They don’t carry out interviews or decide whether an applicant has made the cut or not, but they’re an indispensable member of the hiring team that you shouldn’t forget to include.

3. Hiring Managers 

Any recruitment process for finding candidates begins at the time a hiring manager puts forth a requisition for a job position. Such requisitions can be searching for talent internally by moving people from one department to another or it can include scouting for candidates from a wide talent pool. 

Hiring managers who make multiple requisitions a day without using digital tools might find that they have too much on their plate. As they’re the ones who essentially create an open job position, they not only benefit from the features of an ATS but also gain an advantage by working collaboratively with recruiters and heads of HR in a team structure. 

Even though a hiring manager has to wait for an HR head to grant approval for a job requisition, ultimately the final decision on whether an applicant is the chosen one or is rejected falls on them.

4. Coordinator

Last but not least, we have a coordinator as the fourth role in a hiring team. You might be wondering what does this person do and what are their functions in the group? Well, it refers to an individual who as the name implies, coordinates interviews and pipelines for a recruiter. 

Coordinators bring efficiency to a team because they’re the intermediary of communication between the applicant and the company. Aside from that, they also work on enhancing the team's recruitment strategy by identifying problem points and solutions. 

Your hiring team coordinator can have various scopes and duties which are all dependent on whether you have certain needs or criteria. But, the general idea of this role is that they help coordinate and schedule all matters related to a candidate in the team's pipeline. 

Complementing hiring teams with additional roles 

Every hiring team will have 4 roles as their central roles, but that doesn’t mean they don’t interact with other roles in an organization. There are certain roles in a company that complement them, and further, enhance the recruitment process without being directly involved. 

These roles once again can vary depending on the size and scope of your organization, but generally are fairly the same. 

1. CEOs/Owners 

CEOs/Owners aren’t directly involved in the hiring process of any organization as they don’t do the arduous task of sourcing candidates, conducting interviews, and so forth. 

They do however lay down a structure from the top of an organization, or a gameplan on what they expect to be achieved by HR professionals. CEOs/Owners establish a company's mission, visions, and goals which can then be used by recruiters to find candidates who come into the company and can work in alignment with these directives. 

When speaking of how a CEO/Owner complements a hiring team, we can talk about how they should work alongside hiring managers to ensure that there is the right company culture, by once again establishing clear missions, visions, and goals. Hiring managers might have certain expectations but the reality is the opposite, which is why communication should be clear from the top down. Essentially, when hiring managers and founders work together and are in alignment, they end up becoming cultural champions. 

Listen: All-In Recruitment Podcast on how founders and leaders play a pivotal role in recruitment

2. Team Members

Team members are synonymous with employees in a company because they refer to the individuals a new hire will be working with in the organization. Depending on how long a company’s work-trial period is, a new hire might have short interactions with these individuals or continuous monthly interactions. 

While they’re also not directly involved in the hiring process, they can provide valuable feedback to a hiring team based on their observations with the new employee. If a new hire is just learning the ropes of an organization and is showcasing a lack of knowledge for the work they’ve been tasked with, the team members can provide this feedback to HR professionals and raise questions about whether this employee is the right fit or not. 

It’s beneficial not only to the team members who will have to work with the new hire, but can also improve a hiring team's recruitment processes. They can take the feedback into account and assess whether they’ve made a bad hire or not. If so, then they can see where they went wrong and improve for future job requirements. 

The takeaway is that both CEOs/Owners and team members complement hiring teams where they lay down a framework by establishing missions, visions, and goals. Moreover, they provide vital feedback that the teams can use to further enhance their chances of staying ahead of the competition.

Features of ATS that enhance hiring teams 

Hiring teams can benefit from the numerous features an applicant tracking system has to offer. Such systems have been designed to simplify recruitment processes. But, there are some features that stand out more than others and are ones hiring teams should add to their recruitment toolbox. 

1. Candidate Sourcing 

At the very head of the recruitment process is the sourcing or selection process. It’s one where recruiters when working in a team will work alongside hiring managers, heads of HR, and coordinators to effectively find the right talent for various job positions. 

Manually sourcing candidates by browsing multiple job portals, receiving applications via various channels, and having to parse through resumes can be a tedious task for many. But, with the assistance of a candidate sourcing feature of an applicant tracking system, this action gets streamlined.

A hiring team that is seeking to effectively find the best talent, should consider using Manatal’s ATS with its candidate sourcing feature. Recruiters don’t need to use multiple platforms for finding talents because of the applicant's LinkedIn chrome extension. Automatically import a candidate's profile directly from the platform, and attach their information to the candidate profile that already exists in the ATS. 

If you’re looking to expand your reach when hunting for talent, Manatal’s ATS candidate sourcing feature allows the whole team to share job openings across over 2500 channels. From free channels to premium ones such as LinkedIn, Monster, and JobStreet, the options to build the talent pool are endless. 

Candidate sourcing doesn’t only include posting job openings and finding the right talent, but it also involves the process of receiving and storing resumes. A challenge that recruiters face when they use multiple platforms to receive resumes is consolidating data, parsing data, and storing them on one platform.

With Manatal, a recruiter can import resumes directly to the platform and attach them to a candidate's profile. The resume will then be parsed for data, with data including but not limited to a talent's age, education, experiences, and more. As the information is automatically added, members of the hiring team can search for candidate information through Boolean or even advanced search features. The parsing feature also supports multi-language resume parsing, which can be advantageous for a team that deals with multiple candidates who are from different geographic regions of the world. 

Your hiring team's efforts in sourcing quality candidates can further be enhanced through the platform's AI recommendation features. Based on criteria that any member of your team sets such as the hiring manager or the recruiter, you will be presented with recommended candidates. You can then decide which applicant gets shortlisted based on their skills, academic background, and more. By utilizing the platform's AI recommendations, you’ll hire quality candidates as you’ll be matching the right talent to the right roles and jobs. 

Take your sourcing to new levels with a candidate sourcing feature as an integral feature for your hiring team. 

2. Custom Job Pipelines 

Perhaps you’re a hiring manager who has a vacant position or several vacant positions in a particular industry or department and is looking for a way to manage them. Maybe, you’re a recruiter who is sourcing multiple candidates for one department. Whichever role you have in a hiring team, you can benefit from an applicant tracking system’s custom job pipelines feature.

A custom job pipelines feature is one where recruiters, hiring managers, and more can easily track and monitor candidates according to the stages of their application. The pipelines are created on a job-by-job basis which makes the whole process of tracking smoother. 

With Manatal’s ATS custom job pipeline, a hiring manager can create a pipeline for web developers and create a request to find candidates for multiple vacancies under this scope. This also benefits the recruiter because once the request is made, they can drag and drop candidates onto the pipeline. So if the applicant is still at the interview stage, the candidate should be placed in that stage on the pipeline. 

Managing pipelines and tracking candidate progress has never been easier than with the custom job pipeline feature of an ATS. One that you should definitely incorporate into your hiring team's recruitment strategies. 

3. Candidate Scorecards

Candidate scorecards or interview scorecards are a critical aspect of an ATS feature that is useful for any hiring team wanting to make the right hiring decisions. It is a feature that allows members of the team to create their own interview scorecards which will then be used as an assessment tool. 

When your team carries out reviews of candidates based on their scorecards, you don’t need to use a different platform to monitor which candidate has received what score. Manatal’s feature displays candidate scorecards on the candidate profile, or within the job pipeline in which the candidate is a part.

Overall, the candidate scorecard is a useful tool because it helps your team decide which candidate should be shortlisted for the next stage of the application - the interview. When you’re scoring a candidate, you’re making decisions based on being fair and consistent. Through internal reviews such as assessing to see whether a candidate has received a low score from all members of your team, you can determine whether this candidate will get chosen to be interviewed. Thus, saving you the trouble of dealing with having a bad hire later down the line. 

4. Team Collaboration

The three features that we’ve detailed focus on how digital tools can streamline the recruiting process for hiring teams. Applicant tracking systems aside from making recruitment smoother also assist in helping team members collaborate more effectively with one another. For hiring teams, this is an essential feature whose importance and benefit should not be underestimated. 

When you’re working in a team, you want to ensure that communication, keeping track of notes and templates as well as getting feedback internally are done in a manner that is systematic. You also don’t want to have to rely on multiple platforms and channels to facilitate such communication. 

With Manatal’s ATS team collaboration feature which includes permission management systems, centralized communication and candidate tagging, you have it all.

Permission management systems of this feature can be used to a hiring manager's benefit. For instance, if a hiring manager has created a requisite on the platform, but is still waiting for approval from the head of HR then they can manage permission to ensure that other members of the team aren’t privy to such information. The feature allows you to grant authority on a level basis or role basis. So a recruiter would be given permission based on the information that is useful in helping them source candidates.

When you’re working in such a dynamic team of individuals who come from different backgrounds and cultures, it might be difficult trying to nail communication down. Sometimes, communication isn’t clear across the hiring team because everyone is busy doing their own tasks and doesn’t have the time for constant communication across multiple platforms. The centralized communication as part of a team collaboration feature solves this problem. Divided into two forms of communication, you can guarantee that all team members' communication will be understood. 

Communication can be carried out through the integrated chat feature which also has notes feature built in. If one member of your team has an urgent concern to address, they can use this feature or flag a note for other members to get back to. The second channel of communication is available as part of the centralized communication which focuses on a built-in email inbox. If you have multiple recruiters in your hiring team who have templates or interview questions that work, and they want to share them with the rest of the team then they can do so with this inbox.

You might like to learn more about custom email templates here  

The takeaway of a centralized communication channel of Manatal’s ATS team collaboration feature is to facilitate a smooth flow of communication. For hiring teams, a smooth flow of communication across the key 4 roles will result in a structured team of HR professionals working actively at securing the right candidates. 

If you’re worried that you might lose track of candidates such as name, criteria, or job specifications while you’re collaborating with members of your hiring team then you should also use the tagging feature. It’s beneficial because as you’re working on sourcing candidates, you can tag candidates based on their name or other criteria which makes it easier for you to search for them later down the line. 

Boost your recruitment prospects with a hiring team and an ATS 

While you can go about recruiting the right candidates on your own, in a cut-throat environment it doesn’t hurt to have assistance from a team of well-trained and knowledgeable professionals in the space. 

A hiring team that consists of a recruiter, a head of HR, a hiring manager and a coordinator which is also complemented by other roles of an organization such as CEOs/Owners and team members can work at having a smoother recruitment process. After all, teamwork makes the dream work. 

Your hiring team along with the features of an applicant tracking system can give you the boost you need to ensure that you’re hiring quality candidates and reducing the time it takes to hire them. 

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Manatal’s ATS with its various features can strengthen your hiring team's recruitment strategies, and eliminate the struggle that comes with carrying out manual recruitment tasks. Start your 14-day Free Trial now to explore each robust feature and find out how you can boost your team's success within a few clicks.