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Recruitment and Selection

Collaborative recruitment within the company

In any personnel selection process, collaborative recruitment can bring great benefits if carried out.

consultor

Marcos Lopez

HR Consultant

collaborative recruitment

12 of March, 2025

Who chooses the team members? Typically, the staff recruitment is handled by the Human Resources team in collaboration with the company’s management. This is what we know as collaborative recruitment, a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly popular.

Collaborative recruitment appeared in Silicon Valley. From California, it spread to the rest of the United States and from there, to the world.

Like many other HR processes, it has undergone significant changes in recent years. We invite you to discover what collaborative recruitment is and how it can help us.

What is collaborative recruitment

It’s a process that involves employees in the selection of new colleagues. Collaborative recruitment aims to carry out higher quality hirings. The fact of involving workers facilitates the affinity of new employees.

In its original conception, it was limited to colleagues from the same team. However, this concept has evolved. Currently, collaborative recruitment benefits from the contribution of different departments in the organization.

Like in any staff selection process, it’s necessary to define the characteristics to look for before proceeding. The roles and tasks of the new employee, the functions that will be performed, and the requirements that must be met.

Examples

To better understand this phenomenon, let’s look at some examples of collaborative recruitment. The most popular is the referral program.

The employees themselves recommend people they know to fill vacancies. They propose candidates who, in their opinion, will fit in the position.

Another example can be the search for a successor within the company. When an employee retires or a vacancy occurs in a leadership position, it must be filled.

Management or HR can meet with this employee and the rest of the leaders in search of a successor, either within or outside of the organization.

Advantages of collaborative recruitment

There are many reasons to opt for collaborative recruitment. It is often emphasized that no one knows the organization’s needs better than its own employees.

And if they know someone who can meet these needs, they will find the suitable candidate. But there are more benefits of collaborative recruitment:

  • Makes adaptation easier. The onboarding process and adaptation will be faster. The new hire will already know some of their colleagues.
  • Avoids surprises. A new worker can be a box of surprises. Will they fit in? Will they meet expectations? When we know the worker, we reduce the risk of surprises.
  • Faster recruitment. It allows to shorten the selection process times. We save ourselves the screening of different types of resumes, and the vacancy will be filled much earlier.
  • Quality candidates. Turning to our own employees should guarantee that the proposed candidates meet the requirements.
  • Feeling of belonging. Involve the team in recruiting new employees makes them feel part of the company.
  • Looking beyond the resume. When we receive a resume, we have a document with information. Our workers offer us a description of the candidate that is infinitely more efficient than the cold resume.

Drawbacks of collaborative recruitment

Finding disadvantages to collaborative recruitment is challenging. One of the most clear is that we can get the opposite result of what was expected.

For instance, when the recommendation is not suitable and HR is unable to detect it. Something that will impact the worker who proposed the candidate.

We can also cause frustration in our employees when we discard their candidates. After all, they have suggested them after discussing it with them, making it a personal wager.

One of its risks is that it restricts the talent management available. We focus exclusively on those candidates proposed by employees. However, there is a lot of talent that will be left out of the process.

Lastly, you should be clear that it does not guarantee success. We may come across a proposal that, on paper, fits perfectly with the position. The candidate will pass all different filters and interviews.

How to apply it step-by-step

There isn’t a unique methodology for applying collaborative recruitment. However, we can find a series of usual steps that will help us implement this strategy.

Here’s how you can apply collaborative recruitment in 4 steps:

  1. Initial contacts. Many times, collaborative recruitment begins with informal conversations. From there, we advance to formal meetings with members of different departments.
  2. Profile and database. We establish the candidate’s profile, and we share it with the employees. Next, we will create a database with the candidacies proposed by our team.
  3. Selection process. Beyond asking for suggestions, we can include team members in interviews. Especially, workers from the department where the vacancy is.
  4. Incentives for collaborators. If you decide to implement collaborative recruitment, incentives for the staff cannot be missing. They will propose the best candidates, and we keep their motivation high

We cannot overlook the fact that collaborative recruitment is compatible with other selection models. As we said, there is a lot of talent outside the radars of our workers, and we cannot close this door.

Having an HR software like Sesame HR will help us better manage these candidate pools. Both those proposed by workers and those that have participated in previous processes. Or those who send their resume sporadically.

Did you find this interesting? On the Sesame HR blog, you’ll find more information about collaborative recruitment and personnel selection.

Cristina Martin

Cristina Martin

People and Talent Director | LinkedIn | | Web | +post

Professional with over 20 years of extensive experience in various areas of Human Resources (Recruitment, Training, Occupational Risk Prevention, and Personnel Management). Experience in the Management Department: Broad understanding of the company and HR.

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