Onboarding and Recruitment are NOT the Same – Here’s Why

Onboarding and recruitment serve completely unique purposes. But to ensure high productivity and build a motivated, thriving workforce, it’s crucial to get both of these HR processes right. Get recruitment or onboarding wrong and they’ll drain your time and financial resources, while also impacting new hire engagement. 

Wondering where to start? Keep reading as we explain the differences between onboarding and recruitment, and why both are so crucial to the employee journey.

What is Recruitment?

Recruitment is the process of hiring new employees to fill open roles within your business. Effective hiring also involves successfully attracting and screening individuals with the right skills for the job, who align with your business’s values and mission. 

The stages of a typical recruitment cycle include:

• Planning for the Role: Analyse your current team’s skills and compare them with the business’s goals. This helps to identify gaps and establish key role responsibilities.
• Creating Job Descriptions: 63% of job seekers find vague job descriptions frustrating. That’s why good descriptions should clearly outline the job expectations and reflect your company culture to attract top talent.

• Sourcing Candidates: Find suitable candidates by sharing vacancies on career websites and job boards. You can also reach out directly to prospective candidates online or encourage employee referrals.

• Screening and Shortlisting: Review applicants, including their skills and experience, to select the best candidates for the job. 

• Interviewing: Further screen your shortlisted candidates with relevant questions that evaluate their fit for the role and company.

• Job Offer: Strong job offers should thoroughly discuss all employment terms, from expected working hours to compensation and benefits packages. Provide fast, constructive feedback, even if you’re not making a job offer. 
  

What Does Onboarding Involve?

Onboarding involves integrating new employees into your organisation, from completing paperwork to training. Taking place once recruitment is complete, this process includes four distinct stages:

• Preboarding: This crucial first stage happens after a candidate accepts the job offer. HR teams prepare for the new hire’s first day, including completing essential employment paperwork and technology setup. 
• Onboarding and Orientation: New hires are properly welcomed to the company culture. They’re introduced to colleagues, the workspace, your organisation’s mission and values, and should receive a thoughtful welcome kit to help them settle in.

• Training and Development: Thorough training programs help new hires understand the role’s expectations and ensure they have the right skills for the job. This stage also provides an opportunity to address any queries and receive feedback, helping employees feel supported. 

• Ongoing Integration: Aid a smooth transition into the team by offering regular check-ins to evaluate new hires’ progress. Assign a mentor to resolve any issues early on and provide a consistent point of contact.
  

What is the Difference Between Onboarding and Recruitment?

Here are the key differences between the two hiring processes:

	Recruitment	Onboarding
Purpose	Finding the right candidates for empty roles	Retaining top talent in the long term
Timing	Before the employee joins your organisation	After the job offer acceptance
Time Taken	An average of 30 to 50 days in Australia	An ongoing process
What it Involves	Screening applications and interviewing candidates	Integrating new employees into the company culture
Staff Involved	Hiring managers and recruiters	HR staff and team leaders or line managers
Goal	To successfully hire the right employee for the role	To build a productive, engaged workforce

How to Onboard Effectively: 3 Best Practices

An employee who stays for 90 days is more likely to stay for at least one year, which is why engaging new hires from day one is the best way to onboard effectively. 

However, only 12% of employees agree their organisation does a good job of onboarding. Optimise your onboarding process with the following practices:

1.  Personalise the Onboarding Experience

One of the most effective methods for engaging new hires and demonstrating your commitment to their career development is by tailoring onboarding to their specific needs and goals. Find out what they hope to achieve in their new role and incorporate this into their onboarding journey, creating an action plan to achieve these goals.

Discover their ideal learning styles, too, whether they prefer information delivered online or in person, in large chunks or smaller modules. When employees have influence over what learning options are available and how they’re provided, a Gartner HR Leaders study found that they are:

• 3.2x more likely to have high skills preparedness
• 5.3x more likely to sustain high performance
• 7.9x more likely to have high growth

Effective, personalised learning also improves time-to-productivity. Employees are likely to complete training faster if programs are tailored to how they learn best.

2. Prioritise Connection

94% of employees are more productive when they feel connected to colleagues. They’re also four times more likely to say they’re very satisfied at work, and half as likely to leave within the next year! 

That’s why it’s important to integrate new hires into the company culture early on. Try implementing team-building and icebreaker activities to build a supportive work environment that helps employees form these vital connections, for example.

Send immediate welcome messages from team managers and colleagues, and offer ongoing communication with regular check-in meetings. This also gives new hires chances to share feedback that can help you improve onboarding in the future.

3. Invest in Automated Onboarding

Employees who experience structured onboarding are 58% more likely to stay with a company for up to three years. A great way to achieve this structure is by replacing manual workflows with automated onboarding.

Onboarding software saves time by reducing admin work with: 

• Advanced Contract Creation Tools: Create personalised employment contracts, offer letters, company policies, and more using customisable templates.
• Automated Approvals: Pass completed onboarding and employee documents directly to the relevant departments for review. Automatic review workflows ensure all key details are included, before being sent to a personalised onboarding portal for secure e-signature.

• Mobile Workflows: Onboarding documents are reviewed and candidate communication is maintained from anywhere. No need for HR staff to be at their desks!

• Compliance Features: Automatic compliance updates are applied to all documents. Digital agreements and secure online cloud portals keep all recruitment and onboarding documents in one place, ensuring you’re always audit-ready.

By investing in Onboard Express, for instance, companies in high-volume, complex industries can lower their recruitment and onboarding costs by up to 80%. The purpose-built platform also maintains easy compliance and enhances the new hire experience, helping you retain the top talent you’ve recruited and onboarded in the long term.

Want to see our automated onboarding tools in action? Book your demo today.