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Evaluating your recruitment process

Written by: Lisette Howlett

Article Overview: Getting recruitment right first time saves money, time and much angst. Continually evaluating your recruitment process is how you will achieve this. This article tell you how.

Evaluating your recruitment process

Recruiting the correct employees for your company is often an expensive task. When recruiting you want to be certain you'll be getting the most from your hard work. The first and most obvious sign will be finding the right person for the available job. That said just because you found the right person the last time doesn't mean there isn’t room for improvement for both now and the future. With careful attention and a some new skills you'll be able to reduce both time and cost, as well as increasing your 'strike rate'; that is finding the best talent for your company.

A straight-forward way of measuring your recruitment process would be to view it as a marketing exercise. In the same way as you hope to attract new customers and clients, when recruiting you'll form a message (job description), use a variety of media sources to communicate that message (job advertisements, online tools, recruitment agencies etc), generate leads to add to your sales process (candidate shortlist and interviews) and eventually employ who you consider to be the best person for the vacant job.

Similar to a marketing campaign you'll want to make sure you get value for money from your chosen media, attract top-quality leads/candidates and improve your business' image somewhat. Give careful consideration to the following three questions:

1. Is your organisation attracting the right types of candidates?

Quantity vs. quality - It would be very tempting to say that finding highly qualified candidates is the point, whether you receive 1 application or 100 - and up to a point that's true of course. That said your recruitment process should be able to deliver consistently on both points. Too many or not enough applications can cause problems:

• Problems with poor quality - homogenous, are the best candidates you choose to shortlist the best possible or the best that actually applied?
• Problems with a high number of low quality candidates - no one is up to the job

How to make a fair judgement?

How to improve on this?

2. Is your process effective financially and in terms of time costs?

Track your responses to find improvements in the following areas

• Your message
• Media chosen

3. How does your recruitment process affect the complete image of your organisation?

You are, in essence, advertising the entire business

• How are you considered within your industry?
• How your company is positioned will affect the likelihood of applicants applying for other vacant jobs in the future
• How are you planning to 'sell' your business to prospective job applicants? Is your message a consistent one?

Disgruntled people (those who feel they have been badly treated in the recruitment process) can easily become a source of negative word of mouth and research has shown that this dissatisfaction easily spreads into consumer behaviour - so it affects the individual as well as their circle as customers.

Just one issue of course, is coming up with hard data, or even experiential evidence to help answer these types of questions about your recruitment process and the partners you choose to work with in that process. The HireScores website goes some way to helping with that problem by allowing you to gain specific feedback regarding both your own company and the experience candidates have had with your recruitment partners - helping you to make more educated decisions in the future.

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  Recruiting effectively: an employer guide to making the recruitment process lean.
  Employers: Using a recruitment agency: the pros and cons!
  Why an Outstanding Resume is Not Enough to Get an Interview: Reason 6

Article Tags: advertisements, business image, candida, careful attention, careful consideration, exercise, job description, last time, li li, low quality, marketing campaign, media sources, online tools, poor quality, recruitment agencies, shortlist, time doesn, top quality, ul, vacant job



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