Like so many other facets of business, the recruitment process has changed considerably in recent years ... and continues to do so. Once upon a time, all you needed to do was place ads in a local newspaper or in a shop window and, like magic, the perfect candidates would appear.
Sure, you may still see an occasional sign in a shop window, but nowadays there are many other forms of recruitment channels – and countless accompanying traps that you, as a recruiter, can fall into.
So how can you make sure you recruit the right person for the role, and what are the most common traps you need to look out for?
Here we provide nine tips on how to improve your own recruitment process.
1. Use competency Based Interviews
These days,
competency based interviews are the norm for many recruiters. By using this approach, you can identify the talent with the right knowledge, skills, attitudes, and personality traits to deliver success for your organization.
You'll already know that comparing existing staff members is difficult enough, and comparing recruitment candidates is even more so! You need to be able to look at the specific qualities of these people in order to compare like for like, otherwise you risk being snared by the first trap - the many biases that we all fall foul of.
2. Understand Your Biases
Make no mistake, we all have our biases. Recruitment experts refer to this as the ‘horns and halo' effect, and it's one of the most common traps we tend to get caught in. Essentially, this involves attributing instinctive positive or negative qualities to each person, based on one salient factor that you either like, or dislike...
For example: let's say you value articulate, well-spoken sales people. When you interview a smooth-talking candidate, you may be tempted to assume they're a great sales person. But of course, this may not be the case. After all, you haven't yet seen their ability to ask the right questions, listen and understand, focus on benefits and address objections – and these are among the most critical abilities they'll need in order to get results.
It's incredibly difficult to overcome this natural psychological bias, because it's a central part of our mental makeup. What you can do, however, is to remain aware of it, and be on the lookout for situations where you're making judgements based on perceptions that aren't job-related.
If you do this, it will take time, but you'll gain awareness of your various recruiting biases, and iron them out. It may sound far-fetched, but even something as simple as preferring Times New Roman font over Arial on a CV could be affecting your judgement and affecting your ability to recruit the best people.
3. Avoid the "Just Like Me" Complex
Another trap that requires special attention is the so-called ‘like me' bias. With this mindset, you tend to recruit people who share the same values as you. To put it simply, you're naturally more likely to want to recruit a person whose thoughts, characteristics, and personal tastes -- maybe even their experiences, too -- are closer to you and what you believe in.
This can be useful in some situations, but not always. You are (almost) certainly not recruiting for your own job role, so avoid the temptation to recruit a "mini-you". Because if you do this, you could recruit someone who is totally unsuited to the actual role you're hiring for.
4. Use Social Media to Your Benefit
Using social media as a part of your recruitment strategy can be very cost-effective.  Many companies are even leveraging employees' existing social networks for recruitment. And by tapping into these ready-made networks, they're able to recruit people with similar experience, goals, ambitions, and competencies.
LinkedIn is probably the most valuable professional social network for this purpose, especially for more "career-based" roles, and should almost definitely play a part in your recruitment process.
5. Get Better at Assessing CVs
When we have many CVs to review, we often fall into the trap of skimming over the ones that look less relevant. But this isn't the best approach. You may recruit someone from a similar industry because of their experience, but they may not have had much success. Instead, it could be better to recruit someone who has a background of success, but in a different industry. Only you can decide your priorities, but fishing in the same pool may miss people who will thrive in the role you're hiring for.
One option is to "practice" by viewing CVs on an online platform. You can do this before the CVs for your own vacancy start to arrive, meaning you already have a feel for what to expect. Most of them are hubs for job seekers and recruiters, and invite applications from both. You can even post your vacancy online and browse potential applicants at the same time.
When we're overloaded with CVs, we tend to develop a simple set of criteria to assess them - maybe just looking at previous job titles and searching for key words that stand out. Instead, take an extra minute to
look carefully at the background and achievements of everyone who applies - you may well end up with a much better candidate list.
6. Understand "Regression to the Mean"
Today's recruiters need to recognize that performance will always "
regress to the mean". This means that just because someone does an outstanding job on one particular task, this doesn't guarantee they'll do as well next time around. It's difficult to predict future job performance from a limited amount of information – candidates may do unusually well or poorly when tested at a single (i.e. the hiring) stage.
So try not to base recruitment judgements on single events. Rather, base your recruiting decisions on the average performance over someone's recent career.
7. Recruit People With Personality
Richard Branson is a big believer in recruiting people with personality. According to him, you can improve pretty well any area of an individual's performance, but you can't change or build their personality.
If you're recruiting for a sales, front of house, or similar customer-facing position, then recruiting people with a personality closely suited to the role is a good way to ensure your organization comes across well, not only to your customers, but also within your industry.
8. Involve Existing Teams
It can be a great idea to introduce potential new employees to the team they will be joining. By doing this, you'll be able to get feedback and opinions from them on the potential new hire. This can be particularly useful when you have a close-knit team that frequently collaborates on tasks. And of course, this will help to build team spirit alongside getting better recruitment decisions.
9. Tailor Your Recruitment to the Organization
No two recruitment processes are the same, so don't get trapped into thinking that there is a "right" and a "wrong" way to do it. Your recruitment process must be tailored to your organization, and for the job roles you're seeking to fill.
This means you need to think strategically about the roles, and make sure you're looking at the right competencies and factors that will drive the kind of performance you want. People are generally -- and often for good reason -- looking at candidates based on their success levels. But sometimes you just need a "steady Eddie" (or Edina...) to do a job and get along with those around them. If you fail to get your hiring criteria right, then your recruitment process itself will fail - no matter how well you execute it.
Effective recruitment is an art form. So if you just treat it as a tick box exercise, you'll be landed with all sorts of problems, and experience will soon tell you that the problems created by recruiting the wrong person far outweigh the benefit of any time or effort you may have saved in the first place.
So the more you can carefully put together a process that accurately selects for job performance, the greater the returns you will see.
And of course, existing staff (and managers) will appreciate your ability to bring excellent new people on board!
