Recruitment – success and failure

July 13th, 2017 | Industry News

One of the biggest risks any business faces goes almost completely unrecognised – the risk of recruitment. To put it in human terms, if you asked somebody to invest a week of their lives in interviewing life partners, then to put between 12-20% of their income into an escrow which that person can draw on, and only then to sit down across the table from their chosen one and establish if they have anything in common, almost nobody except the utterly desperate would do so.

Any recruitment system is – in its essentials – exactly what we’ve just described. Hours of time goes into screening CVs and composing interview questions. Further time is spent interviewing the selected ‘blind dates’ and then, if the employer is lucky, its staffing software will spit out the name of a candidate who can be employed and will make a substantial contribution to the organisation. And that money in escrow? It’s been consumed in screening, selecting, training and introducing new hires to the company. And year in, year out, organisations go through this process, sometimes succeeding in hiring the right person, sometimes failing and losing their investment entirely.

What increases the chances of a successful recruitment?

Several things can reduce risk in this area:

• First, employers need to be clear about their needs and expectations. The best employment software is useless if the candidate profile is skewed, vague or unrealistic.
• Second, companies need to understand their own culture before launching into recruitment. Seeking the ‘right one’ requires knowledge of the self first! Knowing what kind of person fits well into the organisation allows clarity in decision making, although it’s important not to exclude those who don’t immediately fit the parameters – sometimes opposites attract!
• Third, any organisation needs to be prepared to deal with mistakes – keeping the wrong person in the wrong job is not just costly, it can cascade negative effects through the company, into the client base and out into social media. It doesn’t matter how easy to use recruitment software is, a business that lacks the ability to face a mistake is staying in a loveless marriage.

Finally, an organisation needs to be committed to excellence. Even with temporary hires or what might be considered ‘peripheral roles’, having a clear, concise and trustworthy recruitment process that applies at all levels gives the best chance of success.

Enticing the best candidates with recruitment innovations

PR giant Edelman chose a completely new way to conduct its classic entry level recruitment scheme. Instead of the usual process, stands at universities, flyers in goody bags at targeted events etc. They invited communications graduates to participate in an online treasure hunt with clues strewn across social channels. Why would they do this? Because they cannily identified the need to find the candidates who can solve client challenges in the rapidly changing communications landscape.

Perhaps we can’t all indulge in such complex recruitment exercises, but the average applicant tracking system is capable of sophisticated processes and often underused. So if you’re looking for clever ways to simplify your recruitment, one way is to look at what factors your applicants have in common. A simple enough search with Recruit So Simple’s cloud based software will allow you to use those similarities to create exercises and activities that help you, and your candidates, get to know each other rapidly.