Who is a recruitment coordinator and when is this person useful in your organization?

The role of recruitment coordinator (RC) is not widely known in Poland. It is estimated that this profession is carried out by about 700 people, and it is difficult to give more precise figures, since the scope of duties associated with this position largely depends on the internal policies of the company. What do such people do and what can itMatch offer you? If you have asked yourself these questions or are not sure if your organization needs an RC, this article is for you!

Who actually is a recruitment coordinator?

As the title suggests, in his/her work, RC is in charge of coordinating recruitment processes. Staying in constant contact with his/her entire team, he/she supports their work, ensures the highest possible level of candidate satisfaction, regularly processes their profiles and tracks their status in recruitment. The recruitment coordinator's role combines HR, administration and management, although it is recruitment that is the most important part of this job.

The recruiting coordinator, however, is not a manager - rather, consider him as a link between candidates and the hiring manager and the local recruiting team with the rest of the division and sometimes the entire company. The RC also assists recruiters by taking over those tasks that do not directly involve finding and contacting candidates. Such distribution of responsibilities makes the team work more efficiently and the processes run significantly faster. The role I'm describing is characterized by great variety, because in addition to assisting his/her team and managers and taking care of candidates, the recruiting coordinator has to deal with communication and data distribution, both in the form of reports and emails, as well as in meetings.

It's also worth mentioning that this is not a role for beginning recruiters. Due to the large number of tasks and their variety, a lot of professional experience and a number of acquired and innate skills are required, related to negotiating, organizing and quick decision-making, among other things, because all the time, candidates dictate the conditions on the labor market, especially in the technology industry. The ability to plan (especially with the right tools), or analytical skills are essential in organizing recruitment based on market data, and knowledge of the realities of the sector and the technologies used by the client are necessary for smooth cooperation with engineering departments. 

What does the RC do?

The duties of a recruitment coordinator can differ significantly, but I would pinpoint that the most common tasks on the list are:

• Scheduling all stages and elements of recruitment, including interviewing candidates, making appointments and providing feedback to candidates
• Contacting all those involved in the process - recruiters, candidates, hiring managers, HR department, EB department, other recruitment coordinators and sometimes future recruiters
• Gathering and transferring recruitment data, both those related to the market and the processes conducted. The information provided is also used to update the employment offer
• Improving processes, supporting other team members, participating in the creation of job offers
• Taking care of the candidate experience, both during and after the recruitment process. Particularly important here is the speed of response and regular updates on all changes taking place, as well as the next steps in the process
• Providing information and updating data in systems and documents regarding started, completed and suspended recruitment for specific roles, which is particularly important, as many companies have now reduced recruitment, and the situation is changing very rapidly
• Catching defects in the operation of ATS systems or tools and reporting possible improvements
• Conducting internal recruitment, or organizing internship and apprenticeship programs for students
• Representing the company at events and conferences, usually in cooperation with the employer branding department

Of course, the duties of a recruitment coordinator will depend on the specifics of where he/she works and the size of the organization. Sometimes it happens that we are responsible for implementing new ATS systems, testing them in working conditions, adjusting the team to the emerging changes in the organization of activities and determining which tasks are most relevant to recruitment at the moment. It all depends on the expectations of the client or employer and the market situation.

What does your organization gain when it hires a recruitment coordinator?

The RC role, particularly popular in the United States, is obviously dictated by cost-effectiveness for the organization. Coordinators employed by itMatch provide our clients with their expertise on the labor market in Poland, which is highly relevant for companies that are just opening up to our market. Large professional experience and huge amounts of analyzed data also allow us to optimize recruitment processes, and this increases their efficiency. It is also often the case that a recruitment coordinator is able to identify problems in communication between departments or in the organization of the recruitment team.

Comprehensiveness is also very important - the RC takes over some of the responsibilities of recruiters, which allows these people to source more candidates. The specific nature of the coordinator's role also makes communication between departments and offices much more efficient, which is necessary when the company operates in many markets and its operations in different parts of the world depend on each other. Working for Remitly's Polish office, I am in constant contact with branches in Seattle, London, Cork or Manila, and thus I regularly gain information about the situation in other recruitment teams and pass it on to the relevant people. Such a model of cooperation also makes it possible for recruitment coordinators to seamlessly exchange knowledge and implement solutions that have worked well in other cells of the company.

When acquiring a recruitment coordinator from an agency such as itMatch, the work experience in this position brings measurable results for the entire organization. Working in companies with different characteristics, the RC gains knowledge of the effectiveness of particular solutions and practices. For example, a set of tools used in a corporation may not work well in the setting of a startup with two branches, and candidate appointment will depend on company policy or recruiting characteristics. By bringing in a person with extensive experience and an extensive portfolio, your company will avoid learning from its mistakes and experimenting where it is not necessary.

In what model are recruitment coordinators hired?

Recently, we featured a comparison of the success fee model with RPO on our blog. In case of the RC role, in addition to direct hiring within the organization, companies are keen on outsourcing using a recruitment agency, such as itMatch. This is important because working in this position obliges you to maintain constant contact with the entire team and fully focus on one client.

It is also worth mentioning that in some cases, the recruitment coordinator is the only person delegated to the client by itMatch. Of course, there are also companies that create recruitment teams from the very beginning, and in such situations, the RC is simply one of the on-site team members.

Why is this role so important for candidates?

One of the responsibilities of a recruitment coordinator is to ensure a high level of candidate experience. In practice, this is a lot of work we do to ensure that the professionals we contact have the best possible opinion of the client, regardless of the final outcome of the recruitment.

In this aspect, both the quality of communication is key, i.e. short waiting time for a response, flexibility or up-to-date information about possible changes, as well as the approach to a newly hired employee, demonstrated, for example, by a well-conducted onboarding. Finally - the approach to people who have not been hired also matters. As statistics show, feedback to candidates whose application was unsuccessful significantly improves the opinion of the company and increases the chance of a desire for further cooperation, for example, when recruitment for a similar position is renewed.

Summary

As you can see, the role of the recruitment coordinator is important not only in hiring new employees, but also in improving the efficiency of the team. Thanks to him, the entire recruitment process is greatly facilitated, and the image of the company is clearly improved. This is certainly not a role for every recruiter, but if your organization opts for a proven specialist, the results are sure to come.

If you are looking for a recruitment coordinator or recruitment agency, we encourage you to contact us. We will do our best to help you! And if you liked the article and think it contains a lot of interesting and important information, be sure to share it on your Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles! We also encourage you to read other posts you will find on our blog. There you will find a lot of interesting content on recruitment topics 🙂