So it might not be rocket science but recruitment is such an important part of your people strategy, it can’t be neglected. Get the basics right first and it’ll become a whole lot easier and more effective.
The basis of recruitment appears simple – finding the best person for the job. However it’s vital that you select the most able person for the role and the most suitable person for your company if your business is going to benefit from the time and money invested in the process. For this reason, recruitment is in fact a complex procedure and today there are many tools at the disposal of recruiting experts to help them with what can often be a difficult decision making process.
The recruitment process begins with finding and engaging with potential new employees. However you source the right talent for your organisation; by building passive talent pools, using online job boards and LinkedIn, partnering with a specialist recruitment firm or using employee referral schemes, the standard application processes still stand. Alternative methods like assessment days are also used by many organisations looking to recruit a number of people or just those keen to assess how people work with others in this kind of environment.
They allow employers to get an insight into the personalities of those attending, as well as their abilities, and is often a great way of selecting a shortlist of potential employees from a group of applicants. However assessment days are also used for retention purposes, used to benchmark employees and aid development on a regular basis.
Some of these tools are specific tests like personality profiling and psychometric testing. Research shows that these recruiting methods are used by around 80% of FTSE 100 companies.
Put simply, these tests ensure that the recipient is the right fit for the job, in terms of personality, ability and aptitude. They can reveal strengths and weaknesses, key motivators and behaviours that enable an employer to gauge potential and predict how the candidate will perform in the job. These insights are vital when choosing a new team member and traditional interviews would not necessarily pick up on many of the attributes that these tests highlight. Using these tools also ensures that all applicants are judged equally – whereas interviews can be subjective and opinions can differ depending on the interviewer, testing produces a set of objective results that can be reviewed by a number of people.
Interviews are, of course, still an essential part of the recruitment process as although tests can provide a useful profile of a candidate, talking to them can reveal just as much. However competency based interviews are being used more and more in order to get as much relevant information from the interviewee as possible. Quite simply, a competency based interview is an interview that aims to judge the candidate based on key attributes needed for the role. Competency based interviews test specific competencies by asking questions that reveal positive behaviours and actions from past work-related situations.
In order to use this technique, employers should decide what combination of knowledge, skills and behaviours are required for the role and devise questions which will provide evidence of those abilities. If leadership is a key part of the role, the interviewer may ask for an example of when the candidate has successfully led a team, for example. These answers not only give evidence of a particular skill or quality, they also provide an insight into the person’s style of working.
Another interviewing method is the panel interview, although these two styles can also be used in tandem. A panel interview, where a candidate is questioned by several members of the organisation, can be effective as it demonstrates to the employer how the candidate handles a pressurised situation. It is also an efficient way for the company to operate as it saves time, allowing all the decision makers to meet the applicant at once and ask all necessary questions.
A common misconception in recruitment interviewing is that by having the candidate attend several separate interviews, commonly two or three and sometimes even more, the company will be able to assess the candidate better. However they often end up being the same interview held by different people which means the organisation is not progressively gaining more in-depth knowledge about the candidate – and the candidate is getting disengaged because they are having to repeat themselves. Each interview should have a different objective and a different set of questions and each interviewer should be fully briefed by the previous one.
Regardless of what recruitment methods a business chooses, all options have the same aim – to help identify and engage with the talent who has the best cultural fit, skills and attitude for your organisation. Getting the right person who will make a positive difference to your company is crucial and choosing and using the right tools can be key to making the right decision.
Fiona Lander is Managing Director of recruitment training and performance development specialists Lander Associates.
