hr daily look within for solutions to recruitment challenges
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Look within for solutions to recruitment challenges
17 April 2014 7:19am
Too many organisations are"externalising" and blaming themarket for their inability toattract great candidates, whenreally they need to hone theirrecruitment practices, accordingto the former UK director ofFlight Centre, Mandy Johnson.
She has written a book,Winning the war for talent - How
to attract and keep the people
who make your business
profitable, based on herexperience leading the travelcompany, and as its Australianhead of HR.
Johnson worried at one timethat her travel industry HRexperience might not transferwell to other sectors; sheactually "went undercover",taking a temp HR role in adifferent organisation, to applywhat she'd learned to see if itworked.
As a result, she found recruitment teams needs the right structure – a robust skeleton ofsix "bones" – all of which must be present for the team to be successful:
A positive and proactive corporate attitude towards recruitment.
When there is a disconnect between recruitment and its effect on businessgrowth and profits, the team is doomed. Executives need to see recruitment asjust as important as other divisions of the business, such as sales or accounting,and understand that when challenges arise, they can be overcome throughinternal efforts – they should never externalise the problem and blame a difficultmarket for problems attracting staff, for example.
This "bone" in the skeleton is the most important one, Johnson says, because"without it, a company has almost no chance of improving its recruitment results".
1.
An HR champion with direct access to the company leader.
Recruitment teams need a leader who is positive about hiring and 100 per centfocused on getting and keeping good staff, Johnson says.
"Yet just having a champion isn't enough if that champion doesn't have access tothe business leader to explain how hiring outcomes affect profit goals. They needto have real influence at the top table and get approval for the changes requiredto keep improving this area."
2.
Line manager involvement in the recruitment process.
Line managers must be involved in the hiring process to ensure interviewsadequately cover the technical skills that positions require, and to help ensure aproductive relationship between the recruit and line manager.
"If [the line manager] takes ownership of the new recruit it increases thestatistical chances of retention," Johnson says.
The line manager's role in recruitment can take many forms, but Johnsonsuggests they be involved when deciding on selection criteria and during theinterview and decision-making processes.
3.
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"Involving the manager in some form also increases their recruitment proficiencyand understanding. Once they see the time, effort and skill required to find theright person for a role, they're less likely to treat their new recruit as a disposablecommodity."
Business practices that are aligned with good recruitment outcomes.
Organisations that want to recruit the best people need some flexibility in theirprocedures. Johnson shares the example of a company that only held inductionsevery second Monday, and would have missed out on hiring a great person hadshe not fought to have a one-off induction approved.
Similarly, companies can be too rigid about their pay structures, even though not
hiring someone because of salary limits can have more costly consequencesoverall than simply raising the level for them.
"It's impossible to achieve success in recruitment without the ongoingmodification of business practices," she says. "These have a huge impact onprospective candidates and are often the deciding factor in hiring success.Modifying shift times to make them more family friendly or changing paydaysfrom monthly to fortnightly can be winning factors when it comes to clinching thedeal."
4.
Dedicated, skilled, practised recruiters.
Johnson says great internal recruiters have five key attributes: sales skills,demonstrated high achievement, communication and coaching skills, a people-friendly focus, and a willingness to "practise, practise, practise".
The best recruiters, she says, are highfliers who attract other highfliers. "Theyinspire applicants with the story of their own journey
"Employing high-achieving, motivated recruiters can have more impact on hiringsuccess than just about any other single factor," she says.
5.
Generous, merit-based rewards, and effective measurement.
"Good recruiters hire quickly and efficiently, reduce staff turnover and enable acompany to achieve its business goals. These savings far exceed the cost of anysalary investment," Johnson says.
It's also crucial to measure the effectiveness of recruiters and gather useful datathat helps improve hiring practices and change HR understanding, or risk inertiaand damage to the business.
Among the various metrics Johnson recommends measuring are the: percentagesuccess of recruitment advertising; recruitment conversion rate; speed ofrecruitment from ad placement to job offer; retention of recruits; and profitincrease of increased retention.
6.
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