The cost of making compromises on recruitment candidates

Will Dolby of recruitment firm, Hiring Hub, highlights a growing problem with companies finding quality candidates.

Hiring the right person to the right role should, in theory, be easier than it’s ever been. We’re no longer reliant on newspaper adverts, networking or knowing the right person to source candidates. And what’s more, we can manage the whole process online. Easy, right?!

So why have employers recently admitted that one in three new employees aren’t suitable for the role they’re in? That’s one third of the workforce. Take a minute to let that sink in.

Email, Google and social media now dominate recruiters’ lives and has sped the recruitment process up significantly, creating more and more opportunities along the way. And when LinkedIn came along in 2003, recruiters and business leaders thought their numbers had come up on the lottery. All of a sudden they could target candidates and businesses with the click of a button.

Move on 12 years since its launch and we still see 91% of businesses are compromising on candidate quality, according to a recent report. But why is this?

Do tools like LinkedIn only serve to muddy the approach? With so many tricks and tools to hand, business owners are either being smothered by the process or they’re missing out on talent to competitors who have embraced the latest technology to source candidates.

Either way, let’s be clear – the quality of a candidate is something that should never be compromised. Ever. Because, as we all know, it’s expensive hiring a professional, but it’s even more expensive hiring the wrong person.

So how do you get it right, first time, every time? Following research conducted by Hiring Hub, there are three changes you can make immediately.

Spend your time wisely

52% of business leaders and HR directors spend more time vetting CVs and identifying/briefing recruitment agencies than they do actually getting to know the candidates. This can contribute towards recruitment becoming one of the most significant HR costs for businesses. If you want to hire the right person, you need to spend less time shuffling CVs around your desk and speaking to recruiters, and more time interviewing your candidates.

Develop compromise thresholds

So maybe we were being slightly dramatic by saying you should NEVER compromise on candidate quality. It’s very unlikely you’re going to hire the perfect candidate every time. But that isn’t to say you should go beyond a level of compromise that you’re comfortable with. Having clear thresholds relating to how flexible appointment quality can be will ensure your company’s expectations are always met. This could be as simple as a basic statement or benchmark which you take time to review regularly.

Regularly evaluate partners

If you’ve been using recruitment agencies for a while now, it might be time to stop and think “are they providing the sort of service we require”? If the answer is no, then it could be time to re-evaluate. After all the mentality of “we’ve always done it this way” is one of the most damaging for businesses and strangles growth. Getting out of this mindset, and scheduling regular reviews of your recruitment partners will re-affirm relationships and ensure you’re getting what you need out of them.

Innovation, not improvisation

We’re living in a digital age, so it’s time HR professionals started embracing this. Current recruitment processes are convoluted and inefficient. There’s tons of innovative tools and techniques available to make HR teams more efficient and competitive. It’s time to start using them. That way you can spend more time focusing on interviewing and getting to know the candidate, rather than shuffling papers.

If there continues to be a lack of investment in the right tools and solutions to improve the recruitment process, businesses will continue being forced to make recruitment compromises. Only by adopting innovative HR technologies to alleviate pressures will we see the shift in behaviour that is needed and more time invested in getting to know the candidate. So don’t just sit there content at the way things have been done for the last 20 years; it’s time to innovate or risk getting left behind.

How effective recruitment contributes to business success

8 alternative recruitment strategies for finding your next employee