Attracting the best talent

recruitment

Companies spend so much time interviewing and are so fed up by the time they see their tenth or twentieth applicant, who really is not going to be any good and they know this after the first 5 minutes of the interview!

A strict screening process can really help you make sure you don’t waste your time. In today’s market there are a lot of individuals looking for jobs and many of them will have the right kind of cv, but remember this does not make them the right kind of person!! And you can seriously regret giving them the interview a few moments after you have started. Your process needs to have lots of elements to identify not only that they have the right hard skill set along the way, but also the softer skills you are no doubt looking for, those interpersonal skills making sure this individual fits in with your current employees and your customers. Make your process robust and systemised which will work for you and for them.

The right Applicant for the job is always more attracted to an organisation with a structured process, this gives them faith that they company knows what they are doing and are determined to get the right people. Applicants need to be made to work for the opportunity and where they have worked for it, they desire it more. Those that don’t want to work for it won’t and this is a win-win as we haven’t wasted too much of our time.

The following structure works exceptionally well for our Recruitment Agencies Clients:

The Agency CV Screen
The Agency Telephone Screen (3 – 5 minutes)
The Agency Telephone Interview (20 minutes)
The Agency Face to Face Meeting (30 – 45 minutes)
The Company 1st Face to Face interview
The Company Necessary Testing & Second Interview (presentation recommended at this stage)
The Agency Rejections/ Offers

Where a company is doing their own recruitment we recommend that all stages except the agency face to face interview are kept in place. You will not lose a good candidate through operating a structured recruitment process as long as it is not elongated in terms of time. All of the above can happen over the period of 1 week to 10 days.

So you have the process once you have attracted the candidate, but lets talk about candidate attraction.

The best candidates at the moment are in demand as there are so few of them, therefore you as an organisation need to be positioning yourself in your market if not as a market leader, certainly as an employer of choice within your sector. To do this you need to ensure you are sending the right message to the market about what you are doing.Applicants will research organisations through the web, therefore know what is out there about you once you have advertised.

Think about your advertising and where your previous employees found you. What is the right medium and media to use to attract the your future employees? Once you know this, make sure your advert will be as broad as possible to attract the right candidates. And finally an advert is only one channel to market. You need to be networking both face to face and online to again, be approaching individuals or letting them approach you. Are there agencies in your market who are likely to find the right people for you, again another channel? The more time you invest in your recruitment process the more likely you are to not have wasted longer time interviewing. There isn’t a tried and tested method of where to find the best applicant, it is like trying to find the best customer, without trying all the channels (as long as those channels are where your market is) you never know which one they will come from.

Candidate Attraction

1 Write an advert which really talks about your company and why you are good to work for, what you offer and the expectation of the role.
2. Think about the channels as to where to place this advert:

  • Local websites to attract the local market if this is important
  • General Job boards
  • Niche Job boards
  • Local Networks
  • LinkedIn Searching
  • LinkedIn Advertising
  • General Agencies
  • Niche Agencies

3. Set yourself up to be found across the Net – Blogging, Twitter, Social Media in general – when an applicant finds you, do they like what they see?
4. Be ready to take response from whatever source you decide, email, phone calls, web applications
5. Make sure everyone in your company knows you are recruiting and no matter who takes the first call or email the perception they give about your organisation is first class. This is important when your potential Applicants come into be interviewed also.

Recruitment is an expensive process to get wrong and in a small company the effects are detrimental as there is very little resource spare to pick up the workload if any. Invest at the outset in a robust process, set your recruitment structure and networks in place and you will succeed first time round. Remember you are dealing with people and we are a very contrary bunch, so wheedle out the most contrary who will not be right for your business.