Recruitment fails and why they matter

October 11th, 2018 | Industry News

A recent study produced by University College Dublin reveals that companies that give candidates a poor experience may actually be helping their rivals to succeed.

It’s related to a psychological phenomenon called The Immutable Law of the Ex, which is the process in which footballers outperform their usual standards when they are playing against their former club. So what does this mean for employers?

People who feel badly treated or overlooked by a potential employer are twice as likely to share that information online as those who have a good experience – not only that, but then they go all out be a total winner in the next job they do get, to prove the ‘bad’ employer wrong. The recruitment industry is barely aware of this phenomenon, but it’s likely to have a huge social impact on the reputation of both employers and recruitment agencies. When assessing what makes a ‘bad experience’ in recruitment, three key issues stand out:

1. failure to keep in touch – a problem easily addressed by effective recruitment CRM software
2. poor data capture – leading to candidates being offered inappropriate positions or not being offered appropriate ones, another problem that recruiting software can easily resolve, as long as it’s sufficiently sophisticated to nuance data and robust enough to parse it successfully
3. chop and change contact – this results from being handed from consultant to consultant or dropped completely when the position for which they were initially contacted is filled. Good recruitment database software helps busy recruitment agencies manage their contact with candidates sensitively so they retain the loyalty of candidates even if they don’t place them first time.

UK logistics in crisis

With 77% of haulage firms failing to fill all their positions in 2017, and e-commerce creating a 45% increase in vacancies in 2018, and with a hard Brexit looming, and its impact on drivers, this is the top concern for all UK hauliers at present. One suggestion has been to train many more teenagers to drive HGVs, which has caused concern to several unions who, much as they wish to encourage UK teens into employment, are concerned that such young employees won’t have the driving experience to be able to handle UK roads, let alone European ones.

Recruiting agencies need to help haulage firms find skilled candidates who aren’t actively seeking work whilst not increasing the cost and effort that hard-pressed hauliers are required to put into managing their recruitment and retention processes. One way to do this is to use SAAS recruitment agencies who can use their 24/7 online power to reach drivers wherever and whenever they are available.