8 Reasons your recruitment process isn’t working out for you

1. Your internal recruitment metrics focus on the wrong KPIs

In our article on the hidden costs of recruitment, we argued that retention was the true metric for successful executive recruitment. Failure to retain employees costs the UK economy over £2billion each year. If your internal recruitment KPIs are based around time to hire, CV to interview ratios and interview to hire ratios... then you’re missing the whole point of a successful recruitment campaign.

2. You think that more recruiters mean better candidates

Using multiple agencies to fill your vacancy does not motivate your recruiter to do a better job. In fact, it has the opposite effect. Recruiters want to dedicate their time to quality work on your behalf.

More agencies give you more CVs.... not better CVs.

You’ll get a representation of the available candidates within easy reach of the recruiters rather than a representation of the best candidates. Contingent recruiters grade your job according to level of “fillability” and a highly competitive job equates to low priority. Your recruiter will do the bare minimum to submit a shortlist once they have finished working on more fillable jobs for other companies.

3. You aren’t incentivising your internal recruiters or your recruitment agencies in the right way

If you demand the best candidates but then incentivise your recruiter by paying a low margin, a lengthy rebate period, massive payment terms and a raft of competition, it’s no wonder your recruiter isn’t providing the service you need. This also goes for your internal recruiters. If you are incentivising them on fill rates or time to hire, then you won’t get the right outcome.

Instead, incentivise your recruiter to deliver the desired outcome. The true value of any recruitment process is to ensure that the person is still in the post in a year, two years or three years later. Get your recruiter focused on the right job.  After all you’ll pay more if you must fill that role twice in the space of six months.

4. Salary and reward structure out of date

This is straightforward. You are offering last year’s salary for this year’s job. Reward structures move so quickly that you need to keep your finger on the pulse. When big pieces of regulation or hot topics hit the market, you need to be aware that salaries go up dramatically and you’ve got to react accordingly. Use your recruitment partners effectively to provide official or unofficial benchmarking. It’s worth investing some money to get a tailored piece of work if you can.

5. Your process doesn’t show that it values applicants

According to Indeed.com, 70% of applicants judge a prospective employer by their recruitment process. Too many recruitment processes are too slow and opaque and fail to move candidates smoothly or quickly through the process. Everyone wants to feel valued by their employer and this applies equally to prospective employers. Waiting for weeks on a response to a CV or feedback for interviews gives a subtle indication that people are applicants rather than valued future colleagues.

6. You aren’t pipelining talent

Your Internal Recruitment teams are under enormous pressure to create ROI by focussing their energy on today’s open requisitions. They don’t have the time or resources to focus on tomorrow’s hires and preparing to meet demand for potential recruitment is so distant that it might as well be next century.
However, this pressure to focus only on today creates a vacuum in some critical talent processes. You don’t recruit for the very best talent. Instead, you recruit for the best available talent. You don’t identify, engage and nurture the talent which creates strategic future growth. You don’t build a rock solid, engaged pipeline for the future. With no succession, you aren’t protected when your best people resign and you are always starting from scratch when any new role is opened.

7. You approach all hiring with the same template

Different jobs require different skills and different behaviours to succeed. Some recruitment processes are so rigid that they apply the same screening, online tests, behavioural assessments and interview questions to every role. Your process should be designed to get the best out of people. Unfortunately, too many processes are designed to “qualify out” rather than “qualify in”.

8. Failure to sell your opportunity

Too often, hiring companies think that candidates should be grateful for the chance to interview with them. That is reflected in speed of process, quality of communication, interview style and even down to your careers site and job descriptions. With the level of choice and competition for in demand skills at an executive level, you’ve got to focus much more on the motivations of prospective employees. You need to design a far less transactional process which identifies the wants and needs of each target audience and individual candidate.

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