This article will help you learn how to hire new people easier, you just need a few steps and here is the recipe in a nutshell. Start by defining the job offer and its detailed description, speed up the response time to the candidates’ applications, shorten the entire process to the necessary minimum, focus on acquiring the “sufficient” candidate, instead of the “perfect” one and do not delay hiring more people, hoping that the new tasks will be completed by the current team.
In addition to consulting in the field of sales, marketing and customer service, at Casbeg we also deal with recruitment. We help clients – depending on their needs – to create a job description with matching salary range (it’s not as obvious as it seems!), write outstanding advertisements, collect valuable resumes, assess the competences of candidates, train and onboard them.
The number of services we have provided in this field is so big that I decided to share my conclusions and observations with you. I am sure that once implemented, they will increase the effectiveness of recruitment processes you run in your company. So, how to improve YOUR recruitment process? Let’s see!
Problem 1: Improperly defined job offers
The requirements, budget for the position and scope of responsibilities – very often these three issues do not correlate at all. As a result, the company wants to hire an inexpensive salesperson, who will be able to breathe new life into stale sales by generating leads on their own. And for good measure – follow that by hiring 3 salespeople that he or she will manage on top of other tasks. Or – the recruitment process is meant to end up with finding a versatile marketer with very extensive industry and management experience, who will start from a rank-and-file position without a team and with a small operations budget.
Solution:
The most common solution to this type of problem is dividing the responsibilities into 2-3 positions, as well as lowering the budget and the requirements of each of them. This means that separate job offers will be created, and the scope of duties in each of them will be realistic. Most specialist positions cannot be replaced by a finite number of juniors – but some can and should be.
The vast majority of companies is not as unique as Google, Facebook or NASA and will not attract truly exceptional employees. Therefore, it is worth building the recruitment process and set of responsibilities in such a way that the candidate who is a business equivalent of Superman is not the only option.
Problem 2: Low and poor-quality responsiveness during the recruitment process
Almost everyone who has sent several resumes in their life has encountered an annoying silence on the side of the company, which is said to be looking for a new employee. In many companies, it is still not a rule to send the candidate a reply at the end of the recruitment process, no matter what it is.
Lack of feedback, a month after the interview, can be so annoying for candidates that (although I do not ask them about it) they mention other recruitment processes in which they participate. Sometimes, they even include the names of companies that haven’t informed them about the next steps or the completion of the recruitment process for several weeks.
This is especially surprising when we are talking about candidates for top management positions who will soon have large budgets. It is worth treating them with respect, otherwise these budgets will flow everywhere – but not to a company that disregarded someone like that in the recruitment process.
Many times in Casbeg, as well as with clients, I have seen a situation in which a well-served candidate, who was not hired, became a client a few weeks later. This is a tangible example of “relationship building skills” so broadly mentioned everywhere these days. To see how we helped Tender Hut find top executives click here.
Solution:
Purchasing a simple ATS system or using a project management tool and / or hiring an HR assistant or specialist who can treat each candidate with due care and complete the recruitment process with appropriate feedback.
Problem 3: A lengthy recruitment process
Even when we already have an assistant, ATS system and an HR specialist, the recruitment process may take far too long. Why? One of the reasons there is not enough space in the calendar of people who should be at the interview. Whoever tried to coordinate a conversation that MUST be attended by four board members knows what I am talking about.
The prolonged recruitment process, where the stages do not follow smoothly one after another, makes the excellent candidate choose one of the other offers, which was immediately submitted to him or her. The management of the company that didn’t hesitate proved to be decisive and action-oriented, providing the candidate with another argument in favor of accepting the offer and signing the contract.
This is a particularly acute mistake in a situation where we have high expectations towards the candidates. People who meet very high standards tend to disappear from the labor market very quickly because they are in high demand.
Solution:
What I can say from experience, is that the recruitment processes take less time when the interview on the employer’s side involves only one or two people. If these people treat the recruitment process as a priority, they will free up space in their calendars so that the interview can take place within a reasonable timeframe.
What certainly helps, is raising the bar high enough. If it is too low – we will have a sense of wasted time during an interview with candidates who should not have passed the screening phase in the first place. This challenge, in turn, can be addressed by sending candidates a form with questions or a task, partially verifying the competences described in the resume, even before arranging the proper meeting.
Problem 4: The urge to give everybody equal chances
The world is not a fair place and the recruitment processes are a great example of this. Sometimes managers do not accept this state of affairs. A manifestation of this type of disagreement is a situation in which a candidate meets all the expectations. The only sensible step in this situation is to make a decision to make him/her an offer, because we just found the right person.
Unfortunately, sometimes someone will say, “But why don’t we wait to meet all the candidates?” or “Maybe someone even better will appear?” If this question is taken seriously (usually it should not), there is a high risk that the said candidate will take up an offer that has just been made by another company.
The rest of the candidates we have decided to “give a chance” may turn out to be worse than the one who just escaped us. As a result, we will renew the search for candidates and now all our interlocutors will be compared by the decision makers to the candidate who has decided to accept a competitive offer – and every potential employee will look worse in this comparison.
In this way, you can get into a spiral of increasing the expectations ending up with not employing anyone (fairly) for a year or so.
Solution:
If you see a candidate who is good enough (but not perfect!), hire him or her. The world is not a fair place that offers equal chances to everybody, sometimes, especially while hiring being at the right place at the right time is what matters most. Thus the importance of deadlines – recruitment processes should always have an end date. Without a set timeframe on this project the tasks and following successes will not be completed and the company will develop slower than it could.
Problem 5: Not hiring the necessary people
Charlie Munger once said that “The company that needs a new machine tool, and hasn’t bought it, is already paying for it”. It’s exactly the same with hiring people. How much does it cost to have two salespeople missing, who would soon be able to implement 100% of your sales plans?
It depends on the sales plan – but for the purposes of this conversation, let’s assume it’s a lot. The same applies to the employment of marketers, assistants and operational directors.
Solution:
Being aware of hidden costs should help you make the decision to start recruiting. Hire the people you need to develop and think about who you will need to grow your business not only today and in three months – but also in five and six months.
If you are looking for help in business-related matters such as sales, marketing, customer service, recruitment or e-commerce – we would be glad to have you on board together with hundreds of our other clients, you can contact us by reaching out here: https://casbeg.com/contact/
