The People Bulletin

OK - we all see the headlines.

Inevitably for most HR Departments recruitment activity has significantly declined. So this might be an opportunity to invest some time and effort in reviewing your approaches to recruitment in the light of current economic conditions. It is also an opportunity to look again at how you use recruitment suppliers. Ideally you want to be in a position to:

a) Get best value from any recruitment during the downturn.
b) Be ahead of the game for the inevitable upturn.

Let’s look at some practical areas.

Tactical actions - recruiting now.

Oddly, the news may be full of redundancy stories, but this does not necessarily make recruitment any easier.

Barriers to moving

This is not a time when high quality candidates are tempted to voluntarily put themselves on the market. Lemmings don’t have mortgages.
Have you repositioned your offering to overcome this potential objection (‘risk of moving’). For example, is your business still churning out the old contracts with ‘one week’s notice during six months’ probation’. A year ago nobody read the small print of contracts. They will now. That clause will mean there is limited chance of extracting a top-quality person from another employer, irrespective of the base salary.

Application overload

This is a problem for employers (advertising directly) and agency suppliers alike. How do you cope with several hundred applications? Do you lose the will to live having glanced at number 150 who is yet another clearly unsuitable candidate?  There are a few ways round this. In particular, be very direct and specific in any advertising. Let’s take an HR example.

‘Applicants must be able to demonstrate all of the following. Please give evidence about these requirements in a covering letter or e-mail.

• Chartered MCIPD or FCIPD.
• At least 10 years HR experience in a professional services environment, e.g. accountancy, law firm, chartered surveyors.
• BPS Level B intermediate or full.
• Recent (last 3 years) experience of personally managing TUPE situations.
• At least 3 years in a management role with direct responsibility for HR staff based outside the UK.
• Direct personal experience of managing facilities services including catering and successful re/negotiation of contracts.’

OK,  a pretty weird candidate specification. But you get the picture. It will reduce irrelevant applications. Now is not a time to be making ‘team player’ ‘self starter’ or any other platitudes part of a specification.

But more importantly … I mentioned candidate number 150. This could well be the person who presents you with a discrimination claim 12 weeks after rejection and do you have the records? A very tight ‘must’ list (which means ticking the boxes for each candidate and keeping it to hand) is a robust defence. The alternative is just paying up or paying lawyers.

Work with your suppliers

When jobs were difficult to fill, perhaps it seemed sensible to give requirements to several agencies. But at the moment, it almost seems as if there are more agencies than vacancies. It can become very easy when HR departments are receiving umpteen calls a day from agencies to tell them all about any vacancy.
This is doomed.  One of the biggest mistakes HR recruiters can make is to create a ‘CV race’. The supplier cannot afford to take the risk of conducting an assignment properly for you. You will just find your fax and inbox filled with ‘what you think’ CVs.

So you should:

a) Really define what you want from your recruitment supplier.
b) If they can deliver this, give them the space to provide the service.

If you brief several agencies at the same time, none of them are likely to invest the professional resource to give you what you really need. Choose the best, specify the service expected, then give them at least three weeks to deliver without cluttering up the Internet with competing advertisements for the same job.
Oddly, this will save HR time. It’s less and you get a better quality outcome.

Which takes us to:

Strategic actions - where do you want to be.

Let’s start with supplier services and relationships.  There are many really good recruitment professionals. But there are also lots of less impressive businesses who in the past five or more years have seen recruitment as a path to easy money. I personally hope the former thrive and survive.  A professional recruitment service should be providing you with, for instance:

• Support in drafting job description & candidate specification.
• Briefing materials for applicants.
• Both advertising and as appropriate search techniques to find candidates.
• Comprehensive screening/interviewing processes.
• As relevant, psychometric assessment.
• Full candidate liaison and contact management.
• Documented presentation of recommended short list.
• Involvement if required with interviewing or selection process design.
• If required, reference checking.

This may seem a long list, but why not? Good recruitment businesses want to deliver quality professional services. Have the debate. Think value rather than cost.  Then critically evaluate the candidate experience. Do you truly come over as a professional, organised ‘joined up’ organisation when it comes to recruitment? Consider:

a) Your recruitment materials. What do you send to applicants, what are you saying on your website?
b) Employer branding is important. But it takes time. It is not just what you say, it is what you do. Talking about employees being valued, employee communications being at the heart of the business, but actually delivering a selection process akin to a badly organised police investigation does nothing for image.
c) Rejection. In the current environment, you will be turning down many applicants. How do you handle this, how will it leave them feeling about your organisation? Would they ever apply again (they may be excellent - you just do not have the current vacancy).

The most common reason for losing quality applicants is time taken in the selection process. You can’t afford to mess them about. Review the processes, look at key metrics, and do some benchmarking.  The next most frequent reason for recruitment failure is line management competence or lack of it when interviewing. Do you know what materials and training they have before you let managers loose on the candidates?

In summary, the chances are in a year or two the time will not be available to consider re-engineering your recruitment processes. There may be at the moment, so seize the opportunity and, to use a phrase that is being bandied around at the moment ‘never waste a good crisis’; the investment could pay back handsomely.