Recruitment
From Entrepedia: The Entrepreneurship Wiki
More now than ever it is recognized that the success of a company is down to the quality and motivation of its staff: equally many of the problems that a company encounters are a result of poor recruitment or training practices.
Recruitment and selection of your employees is an expensive and time consuming process but done right it will pay huge dividends. Meanwhile Staff Management and Staff Development are just as important and form one of the major ongoing processes that need to be managed well if the business is to grow and flourish.
Finding the Best Employees
Recruitment is significant to every business; a top employee can bring in 5 times more benefit than an average employee. What ever way you look at it recruitment is an expense and when done wrongly can severely hinder a business performance.
So where to begin, start to think about the skills gap that you have in your team / company and then think about what performance outcomes or deliverables your would ideally like to achieve if this gap was filled. Note these outcomes down and you have the starting point for Performance Based Recruitment and new employee profile.
Reaching and Attracting Potential Candidates
This can be done through a number of different channels, Employee Referrals, Suppliers / Customers, Job boards, Internet sites, Employee Referrals, Job Fairs, Networking Groups and Recruitment Consultancies are amongst the most popular and most effective.
- Employee Referrals: Done simply, ask your employees to people they know. On a positive note this can be a very simply way of attracting similar personalities to your company however this can cause issues in itself with attracting too many similar types of people of diversity issuers.
- Suppliers/Customers: Your biggest compliment. This is the market that you are constantly trying to impress and you know you are doing a good job if they express an interest in working for you. However any applications from this segment requires a certain sensitivity. Effective communication and clear reasons if they are not suitable for your vacancies. The last thing that you want is to leave them disappointed, frustrated or not dealt with professionally as could leave then with a very bad impression of your company.
- Job Boards: The internet has changed how people recruit and search for positions. Job boards have made it easier to reach a larger audience and each board has their own market segment, however as more and more recruiters and hirers are using this channel it come down to the quality of your advert proposition to maximize the quality of the response.
- Job Fairs: Such as a university graduate fairs or industry conventions, this can work on two levels it allows you to meet possible candidates face to face as well as raising awareness of your employee brand to large audiences.
- Networking Groups: A company may already be part of a networking group such as ‘we-entrepreneurs’, it can be advantageous in terms of suppliers and buyers as well as potential future employees. Networking is important in terms of passive candidates, those who are currently in work but if the right job appeared they may consider leaving. A good network will allow you to identify where the top proactive talent is located.
- Recruitment Consultancies: A good recruiter will have automatic links to potential passive and active candidates for you beyond your normal reach using. They will be regularly using all the above marketing channels and they will handle all elements of your recruitment process on your behalf. Therefore including Role Profiling, Market Availability, Candidate Marketing, Response Management, Candidate Selection, Behavioral Assessment, Offer Negotiation, and Probationary Management. Good recruiters will provide a guarantee throughout this process and provide full visibility of their work on your behalf.
The Social Networking Approach
With the social networking revolution, companies are beginning to recognize the potential talent in the social networks of their employees. A recent article in the New York times points out that the social networks of good employees are likely to be ripe with talent, owing to the fact that they have already been partly 'screened' by the employee in question[1] . What's more, harnessing the potential of employees' social networks significantly increases the number of potential candidate for applications.
U.S. companies such as Jobvite and Appirio provide services that can help recreiting via social networks. Appirio, for example, works by allowing potential candidates to be identifies via their FaceBook or LinkedIn profiles and then suggested to the company; people can also include the Appirio application in their profile in order to be alerted of potential job offers as they arise.
Should you use a professional recruiter or do it yourself?
The most important questions you have to ask:
- Is your company well known or could you do with a third party promoting your company?
- Do you have the skill and time to construct a realistic winning performance profile and compelling advert?
- Are you confident that money you are spending on employee marketing is reaching the widest audience of active / passive candidates as possible?
- Can you allocate the resource to ensuring every candidate is responded to quickly and professionally?
- Is your management time best spent interviewing unsuitable candidates or is your time better spent interviewing a properly screened short list of interested candidates. (Recruiters on average interview five candidates for one placeable candidate per week)
- How confident are you in your manager’s selection ability in recruiting the right person?
We-entrepreneurs suggestion
- Employ a good Recruitment Consultant (see section below on employing a good Recruiter)
- Hiring normally equals growth, which is an excellent achievement. This in turn therefore can provide an excellent opportunity to promote your company and employer brand the max! So make sure to maximize the opportunity.
- Know who else is hiring or looking for the same skills and make sure you are offing something that can compete (training, benefits, working environment, salary, or career development to name just a few).
- Lastly what ever the outcome of your recruitment process make sure that all the candidates that apply are left with a really good feeling about your company - you never know they could be your next customer, partner or supplier!
Measuring the effectiveness of your recruiter
There are a lot of generic and niche recruitment companies out there and each will have different approaches to client/candidate delivery. However with the average cost ranging from 16% - 25% of the candidate starting salary you will want to make sure you are getting excellent value and access to the best talent.
A good recruitment consultancy will already be networked in your market, your competitors, have access to potential candidates and now the current demand and supply of skills. They will take time to understand your company, future goals and unique offering as this will be the information that they will be using to promote your company.
What you need to know
- The current supply or demand challenges that you may face in the current market place.
- How are they going to reach your ideal candidate and to provide you an over view of the sort of background that this person will come from.
- What sort of recruitment screening, background checking and candidate information will they provide you?
- When was the last time they successfully filled a similar role and can you have a client reference as testimonial to their work.
- To agree a timescale for delivery and complete visibility of how many candidates they have approached on your behalf.
- Lastly what sort of guarantee they will provide you throughout the candidate’s probationary period?
When to take on new people
Key factors:
- The industry you are in: is timing very important in your industry (i.e if you don't expand quickly enough then you will loose your competitive advantage?).
- Can you outsource instead?
- Do you have enough cash? How cashflow is enough? 4 months is enough for some start up companies.
- How long will it take that person to become productive?
- If they are sales people is there any point in taking them on if you have a long sales cycle and you only have cash flow left for 4-6 months
People testing systems/websites
- Expert Rating
- Where to find developers: Odesk
