Recruiting The Right Candidate For The Job
I run several companies and also consulted for a few recruitment agencies. One major problem I encounter is getting the RIGHT staff for some companies. Here I will share what went wrong in the recruitment process. I will segment it into 3 broad areas: 1) Attracting, 2) Filtering & 3) Selling.
1) Attracting: 1st we need to attract the correct pool of people to apply. There are so many other methods of attracting besides the normal daily newspaper. Even for putting up ads in the dailies, which section, which day, frequency and what text to write? We do not want too many people applying nor too few. Some companies have a web page that needs more than 30-45 minutes which put off some candidates. I personally prefer to have a big pool of candidates than a few. I remember there was once that I needed about 30 staff for a project and we interviewed about 350 applicants. On another occasion, one of the company wanted to recruit models and the ads is not attracting enough candidates, I suggested street interview/recruitment. A finance company had some similar problems in attracting candidates and we proposed setting up booth at the university etc. These examples are just suggestions that there are many ways in recruitment, BUT within each method, there are again many different techniques or ways that will increase the number of applicants.
I will discuss the street interview here as advertising has too many variables: The manager & her team went down to a particular road on a particular day & time. Was not successful and then decided to change the location & time. The numbers when up. This means that changing some variables, it helps. The manager wanted to know if there are better ways, I suggested an unconventional way of recruitment i.e. running a contest. Numbers went up by 8-10 times.
A point to note is that is there is no easy way in recruiting and at times we need to poach or “head hunt”. This is true not only for senior management positions but also for other staffs including production workers.
2) Filtering: After attracting a group of candidates, the next thing is to narrow down to a few for the final decision. We can use various filtering methods like skill test and psychometric test to assist us. Remember, a good methodology will help speed up our work. For example, whilst consulting for a recruitment agency, in the past, one day, they can interview about 150 candidates in China. Using a combination of techniques, I could possibly increase it to max 1,000 without significant increase in interviewers. We have to take note of the following or some common problems company face (or rather the HR department):
Job specs not correctly defined - especially submitted by other departments.
Currently there is no such skill set available. The candidate needs further training.
The remuneration package is not attractive or below “market rate”
Candidates from is located overseas
The interview process is too long
3) Selling: I believe that even recruitment is 2 way. Companies have a choice, candidates too have a choice. So convincing the RIGHT candidate this is the right job for him/her may be necessary.