The Recruiting Blog | People First Recruiting

Attracting talent to meet today’s business needs is one of the top challenges organizations face.  So to help you get started in facing this challenge, here are a few helpful tips from Theresa Bolton, our Sales & Marketing Recruiter.  By keeping these best practices in mind, your business will be well on its way in attracting high quality individuals to meet your needs.

CANDIDATE ATTRACTION AND RECRUITMENT TIPS

By Theresa Bolton

1. Make sure you have an accurate and compelling job description. Clear and concise job descriptions can both attract candidates that are suitable for the job while simultaneously weeding out candidates who aren’t suitable.  Do you have a well written job description?  Is it compelling?  Can someone reading it easily see themselves in that role?  Get others to review it and get their opinion on the impact.
2. Develop a plan on how you are going to recruit. What’s your process for identifying a hiring need to then hiring the best employee possible?  How are you going to get the word out that your organization is hiring?  Through word of mouth, advertising (free or paid), using a career portal on your website, or hiring a Recruiter? 
3. Respect your candidates.  Every candidate is connected and even if they are not the right candidate for this job, they have a network that may contain candidates suitable for your organization. Treat the candidate with respect, no different than how you would treat a customer.  Word of mouth is a powerful tool and people won't hesitate in sharing their experiences with your organization should someone ask.
4. Limit the number of interviews. You will know after the first interview whether or not this candidate has the skills, qualifications, and potentially the work ethic and personality required to fit into your organization.  After that first interview, if you need additional information from the candidate schedule a second interview to explore further. If possible, have another person sit in on the interview to provide additional perspective.  Your time is just as important as the candidate you are interviewing, so respect it. 
5. Don’t lose momentum.  The war for talent is real.  If you have a great candidate you are considering for a role, don't wait too long.  Other companies can recognize talent too and your great candidate won’t be on the market for long.  If you don’t “make” the time to respond quickly you risk losing the candidate, leading to an even longer and more costly process.
6. Demonstrate a rich corporate culture.  Be aware that a good candidate will be evaluating your organization as a fit for them, just as much as you are evaluating whether they are right for you. You need to demonstrate why your organization is a great place to work. What sets you apart from the competition? 
7. Ensure the total compensation package is competitive.  A compensation package isn’t just the base salary, it also includes bonuses, employee benefits, vacation and other perks.  Do you know if your compensation is aligned with industry standards?  Do you know how your benefits compare with other organizations?  Candidates consider Employee Benefits to be almost as important as the compensation itself.  Not only does it provide them with piece of mind to having access should they need it, it creates a feeling that their employer truly cares about them and their family.  Set yourself apart from your competitors and differentiate yourself as an employer by offering varied and comprehensive benefits.  Don’t forget about the non-monetary benefits like technology, the opportunity to work from home, and the flexibility to attend personal functions like your children’s activities.

A couple months ago I wrote a whitepaper called “Maximizing Your Recruiter Relationship”.  It gives companies simple tips for hiring and working with a Recruiter to ensure a successful partnership.  From a company perspective, the big question always is “what's this recruitment going to cost me?” 

Over the next few weeks I will be blogging about recruiting fees.  First up though is a summary of what you, the company, should get from the recruiting fees you are charged. 

The job posting

• A job posting is a tool to advertise the job.  There is an art to writing an effective job profile especially once you consider search optimization and key words.  A Recruiter that understands online search techniques knows how to write job profiles so your ad can be found online.  Finally a well networked Recruiter has the contacts to send the job profile to, as well as a library list of free job boards, associations and industry networks. 

Finding candidates

• Print and online advertising alone does not guarantee you results.  That is the “let’s wait and see what we get” mentality.  Sometimes timing works out perfectly though and you hire a candidate from an ad, but did you get the best candidate?  Unless you conduct a search you really don’t have the answer to that.  Recruiters go to the market and search.  They will identify companies or like companies in your industry where candidates are performing similar jobs.  They will identify competitors.  They will look for industry thought leaders. 

Interviewing

• If the Recruiter isn’t certified in Behavioural Based Interviewing at the very least most will have training.  Behavioural Interviewing is based on the theory that the best predictor of future success is past performance.  This method of interviewing allows for a more structured and fair assessment process and it takes away the “gut feeling”.  Fit is also assessed.  Recruiters interview every single day so they are quite skilled at it. 

Reference checking

• A good reference checker knows how to listen for cues, they don’t accept just any answer.  They know to probe, to ask the individual for more information to get an honest reference.  It’s amazing how many companies don’t do references before hiring an employee.  This step in itself is worth the money.

Simply put you are paying a Recruiter to find a candidate, qualify a candidate and present a short list of candidates.  Stay tuned for more blog posts on exclusive, retained, contingency searches, guarantees, refunds, credits and so on.

One thing is very clear, when you hire a recruitment firm you need a candidate fast, but you also want the best in the market.  Most times you have worked the search on your own and hit a wall so to speak, or you have a highly sensitive replacement search on your hands. 

When you outsource recruitment you expect there to be a database of candidates available immediately and one important question you will ask is, “how long will it take to find my candidate?”  You may be hoping for the answer to be yesterday but the reality is quite different.

I don’t believe there is a recruitment firm out there that doesn’t want to fill an assignment just as quickly as you do.  Recruiters are busy, they have many assignments, candidates and, clients to juggle and remember most work on commission so they are as invested as you in the search.  The question remains then is whether or not you want the search filled quickly with A candidate or with the RIGHT candidate.  This is where your due diligence in finding the right recruiter is most important.

When a position remains vacant your company is losing money and the company stakeholders are hunting you down every day for an update on the search.  I may be stating the obvious but hiring the wrong Recruiter simply to get the job filled will lose you much more than money.

Consider the following domino effect when speed trumps quality: 

• The hired candidate may be leaving a very good job for what they believed was a better one but because of a quick interview process the right questions weren’t asked or important information was not provided.
• Due to the fast turnaround, the appropriate people aren’t involved in the hiring process which means they aren’t available to be a part of those interviews that would allow for such valuable information to be shared with your possible hire.
• You make the offer and the candidate starts.  Now you are spending time and attention evaluating, training, and re-evaluating  the new hire only to realize they may not be the right fit.  You may find yourself reaching the inevitable decision to let them go.  Now you have a replacement search on your hands.
• Sure you are likely to get a replacement search in the fee you paid to the Recruiter but now you might be incurring new costs depending on what’s in the contract.  Regardless, having to start again is in itself a reason to take the time to have a thorough process.

The honest truth is many engagements do take time to complete.  The candidate pool is tight in North America and some candidates are risk adverse right now; they don’t want to take the chance leaving a stable job. 

Here are a few things you can do to ensure the search moves along:

• Provide a job description to the recruiter.  If you don’t have one, put one together.  There are a lot of resources out there that have basic templates.  Or ask for the Recruiter’s help in developing one.
• Meet with the stakeholders in your company to ensure they are in agreement with the job description and criteria.  There is a world of difference between the “must haves” and the “nice to haves”.
• Meet with the Recruiter who will be filling the job and mutually agree upon a timeline.  Try to involve a few people from your company (this might be the Manager of that particular department or HR).  Whenever possible give the Recruiter a tour of your office.  This is great for the Recruiter to get a sense of the environment as the environment and culture is critical to the sourcing of talent.
• Ask for transparency.  By that I mean, rather than an update each week from the Recruiter that goes something like this, “We’re still having some challenges locating candidates, we have interviewed a few this week but they were just not right.  We are continuing the search”, ask these questions:
• Specifically how many candidates have you interviewed this week
• What were their backgrounds and what industry did they come from?
• Why are they not suitable or interested in the role?
• Specifically how many candidates are you interviewing next week
• What are their backgrounds and what industry did they come from?

I think you see where I’m going with this.  If these questions cannot be answered with confidence by the Recruiter then there could be a problem and your search may be longer than the agreed upon deliverables.  At this point you will know whether or not it is time to have a meeting and serious discussion with your partnering Recruiter.