The hiring process: life hacks

Labour quality and capability continues to be a major concern for business leaders. According to the Institute of Directors annual director sentiment survey, this was the second highest rated risk facing organisations.

While an increasing number of businesses are utilising the resources of an external recruitment consultancy to deliver on their talent requirements, others coordinate this function internally.

Below are some top tips on managing the hire process in your business.

Here’s what we’ve found:

Because of the ease, and in some cases low or no cost, associated with posting job vacancies online there has been an increase in phantom jobs – supposed job openings that are not open at all. There are a range of reasons for this for example, the public job posting is a mere formality, the posting may persist after the job has ceased to be open, or maybe you’re advertising roles before openings emerge to secure a pipeline of qualified candidates. Regardless, they are a cause of ongoing frustration for many job seekers and don’t reflect well on your employer brand.

Make sure you have a really clear picture of what the role will deliver and what capabilities are required of the successful candidate. Avoid creating overly detailed position descriptions with lengthy criteria that realistically, no applicant will ever be able to fill. You may not have the resources to be able to use an external recruitment consultancy to help you craft a well thought out role brief but make sure you utilise your internal HR teams to help you to clearly describe the business need. The temptation for hiring managers to overload position descriptions is real.

As professional recruiters it is our job to track down candidates for roles. There is a long-standing perception that our focus is purely on passive candidates i.e., people who are not currently looking to change roles. Research from online professional networking site LinkedIn shows that passive job seekers are motivated by money whereas active job seekers are looking for better work and career opportunities. According to the research, active job seekers are more passionate about their work, engaged in improving their skills and reasonably satisfied with their current jobs – all very admirable qualities!

Employee referrals are becoming a popular strategy for finding candidates – utilising the networks of your workforce to source new talent. Anecdotally there is evidence to support their success in terms of resulting in quality hires. However, it’s also likely that some of that success may in fact be due to the support they receive during their onboarding from their refereer. Plus, there are some real challenges around restricting diversity initiatives in your organisation as you are essentially hiring people that are like people already in the business.

At the end of the day, for most roles, you only need one candidate. Spend less time encouraging people to apply for the role and focus more of your energy on having the right people apply. Recruitment can be time-consuming and if you are following a best practice approach then even redirecting unsuitable candidates will take a lot of time and effort. Being clear about what you need in the right candidate and then communicating this (including the challenges of the role) means you’ll have a better matched applicant pool.

The interviewing stage is not without its challenges. In order to get it right, you need to have a consistent approach (including questions) for all candidates. Stick to a script otherwise you will find it challenging to assess each applicant fairly. Again, utilise the skills of your internal HR team. They will bring a different perspective to the process and involving them in the interview stage means they can also challenge your (unconscious) bias.

Decipher Group have their finger on the pulse of changing trends in the recruitment and people space. If you are looking for direction and assistance on unearthing and retaining the right talent for your business, get in touch with us.

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