Recruiting for your company/ team is a time consuming and costly exercise that I’m sure you’d prefer to avoid. Whether you are recruiting due to replacement or growth, getting the recruitment process right is crucial. A bad recruitment process can see businesses hire the wrong people, miss out on the right people and worst of all, give candidates a bad first impression of your business.
When I first came into recruitment, just over three years ago, my boss kept repeating the same three words to me, “Time Kills Deals”. I initially thought that this was one of those cheesy, motivational management sentences similar to “The early bird catches the worm” and the “more sausage meat put into the machine, the more sausages”. How true all of these sentences are in recruitment… but for the purpose of this post, I will focus primarily on “Time Kills Deals”.
It didn’t take me long to realise how true it is that Time does indeed Kill the Deal and there can be many factors that create this time that you need to be aware of and manage effectively if you want to attract the right people to your business.
- CV Review
- Shortlisting process
- Interview Process
- Offer negotiations
Prior to entering the above stages, you’re likely to have sat down with colleagues to discuss who or what is needed within the business, the role/s and responsibilities, induction, training and development, hours and budget. You will have written a job specification and an advert and may have passed the word around to existing employees to see if they can ‘refer’ someone into the business.
If taking your vacancy out to the wider audience is necessary, which in most cases it is, further decisions need to be made.
- How do you attract suitable Candidates?
- Does your business recruit directly or, do you seek assistance from a recruitment consultant?
There is always going to be a number of roles that are difficult to fill. This can be due to a lack of capable talent and in our world, that can be excellent Financial Advisors/ Investment Managers with a large book of clients with transferable assets and or paraplanners.
It could be that the issues with filling the role are that it’s a high volume, high turnover role whereby you require a constant stream of suitable candidates.; Or, it could be that the role is highly attractive and therefore you receive a high volume of applicants that all need to be reviewed and considered.
Certainly, a niche specialist recruiter will help significantly with all of the above.
When filling a role that is difficult due to the lack of available talent in the industry then the niche recruiter will have the advantage of having contacts within the industry. They’re likely to know who is looking to make a move; will have the ability to approach suitable candidates who are working for competitors who may consider a change as well as be able to push advertisements and target the right market easily.
Any recruiter worth their salt will be fantastic Marketeers and Development Managers and know only to spend time where they believe that they can make placements and ultimately money! Which is why working closely with your chosen recruitment partner is so important. We run our own version of a ‘PSL’ working primarily with clients who converse easily, take time to provide us with a full job brief and specification. When a client on our ‘PSL’ gives us a job brief, we will prioritise their recruitment, ensuring that we have resourced for the role fully and aim to provide either suitable candidates or appropriate feedback. The Clients that make our ‘PSL’ are those that are open to the MI that we provide and make decisions based on that intelligence and who understand the importance of a slick interview process that is co-operative, decisive and constructive.
Businesses that respond quickly will generally successfully snap up that sought-after candidate. The speed and organisation will impress and ‘woo’ the candidate, will not allow competitors that are slow off the mark chance to react; and because they are well informed by their recruitment partner, will be able to pitch at the level that is right for them and hopefully the candidate in order to remove them from the market. An additional note here is that the right pitch may not always be a higher salary, for a lot of candidates that we work with, it’s flexibility and benefits. A good recruitment partner will be able to guide you on this throughout the process.
Businesses that fail to respond in this way will be at risk of losing top talent and suitable candidates to their competitors who are equally on the lookout for similar individuals. A bad result for both recruiter and client.
High volume roles are invariably difficult for businesses to fill and can put a lot of stress on the hiring manager due to the time that it takes to review CV’s, interview, hire, train and develop and then potentially lose a large percentage of their intake to have to go through the whole process again. The results of a poor recruitment process can see understaffed teams feel pressured and stressed, they may feel unsettled due to a large amount of movement and there is likely to be a lack of team dynamics as well as lack of career development.
Again, working with your chosen niche recruiter can have a lasting positive effect on the whole process. When working on large volume roles we will try to stockpile suitable candidates for that role in particular, based on the knowledge gained from previous placements. Having worked on the role previously, we will be fully versed on the interview process, what is expected in the role and of the candidate and therefore will present a selection of strong CV’s on a regular basis.
The only prevention of this process can be when a client instructs too many recruiters to work on the role. The pool of candidates available is only so big and too many recruiters sending out the same message can make the business look desperate. Candidates may get the wrong impression of a business if they believe that the company has a high turnover, and candidates who are being approached by many different Recruiters year on year may see this as a turnover issue.
Working with one or a select number of recruiters who understand the business will see them discuss and dis-spell negative views, tell positive stories and eventually turn a bad reputation into a good reputation with a strong story.
Another issue caused when working with lots of Recruiters on high turnover roles is a high number of applications and duplicate candidates. Recruiters enter into what we call a ‘Bun Fight’, and rather than select candidates specifically for the role, fire out CV’s quickly to gain candidate ownership.
Working with your niche recruiter will see the recruiter spend more time working consultatively with each applicant before sending their application/ CV to you. The client receives fewer but more relevant CV’s.
When I advertise an attractive role, which in our world is anything with Trainee or Home Based written in front of it, we can guarantee a high volume of applications and we are sure that this is not different for you.
Most trainee roles still require candidates to have some level of education or experience, but most applicants will not meet this criteria.
Your niche recruiter can act as a barrier between you and the applicants. The recruiter can quickly sift through The Good, The Bad and the Ugly and only introduce those candidates who would be of genuine interest to your business and who are genuinely interested in your business.
Ultimately, a niche recruiter will be a perfect recruitment partner, an extension of your own business, assisting you with the recruitment for your business. It will be a trusted relationship with great lines of communication between the Recruiter and your Hiring Managers.
Recruit UK are happy to work consultatively with businesses and will add businesses to our ‘PSL’ when we believe that we can work beneficially for and with all involved. it’s not a list that is reviewed annually as we are flexible; we are always looking to grow.
If you are interested in discussing your current recruitment process to see if we can suggest improvements, or if you’d like to implement some changes in order to work with us successfully moving forward then we can come out and meet with you, discuss your recruitment needs for this year and onwards and discuss the current market, the likelihood of filling your recruitment needs as well as discuss our terms.
