A lot of the time, we agencies are brought into a recruitment project when the job has been live for a while. Rare, are we involved right at the beginning of the process. What we find as we pick up roles, and delve deeper into the company, and why the role is live, is that a few processes have been missed, 99.9% of the time accidentally
What parts are missed? As we start off on this journey to find the right people, I’ll highlight the areas of the processes that are extremely important. And why they are important not to be missed.
What I am going to cover is everything!
From the moment you decide you have a job live, to the moment you hire someone, each step you take affects the next.
Where to start?
According to the REC (Recruitment & Employment Confederation).
“A poor hire at mid-manager level with a salary of £42,000 can end up costing your business £132,015”
“2 in 5 new hires turn out to be bad within the first 18 months.”
“1 in 3 HR decision-makers says poor hires occur because businesses need to fill positions quickly.”
https://www.rec.uk.com/download_file/2883/6683 you can find more information at the REC website.
The last one is super interesting from a recruiter’s perspective – as most roles, we tend to get on, have the tag of “we need this person yesterday” – which will bring a lot of challenges.
These challenges we face in hiring people can be circumnavigated. And can be pre-planned.
To Start – Below is a checklist.
Which I suggest you use for all roles you are hiring. It doesn’t matter if it is a replacement, new role or just expansion of an existing team. The pre-Job creation is important to get the issues of the day out of the way now.
Why do you need to do pre-Job creation?
It’s important things we need to understand now, prior to advertising, interviewing and hiring.
How to start, like writing a mini business plan –
- Is it a new role?
- Is it a replacement role?
- Who is going to be replaced? And why?
- Did you do an exit interview?
- Have you reviewed where it went wrong?
Why do we need to know these things?
It’s important to know from the beginning, what the purpose of the role is, and why it is Live. For a new role, this is the basis to sell this to a potential candidate. Having the reason now, set and in place, you can build a lot of the job spec, and then job advert (I will go into why they are 2 different things in another part) in place now.
If they’re other people a part of the process of recruitment (like recruitment agencies, HR, Deputies in your business) everyone is on board, and understand what is going on.
You could make it an internal supporting document with each role, a case for the role to put it.
Also understanding the key facts around why the role is open – like – Why did they leave? What could you have done better? was it a training issue? was it a clash of personalities?
Will ultimately help you in the process of finding the replacement, in this process. Every detail is needed. Which I will go into, as we go through the process.
Second Part of your Pre-Job creation Review.
What’s the budget? (Has Salary, bonus, car allowance, Employer NI, Pension – been considered).
I want you to stop a second. An article in 2018, by a Recruitment company – Suggested that “4/5 Offers could have been circumnavigated if the company did a little bit of Salary research before advertising the role”
This can get in-depth. But believe it or not, a few google searches on job boards, and various large recruitment agencies, you can find a salary survey. Which will break down and give you a guide on the market rate. You might find the market has moved on since you last recruited, but I strongly suggest to you, use it as a guide, and budget it roughly in that area.
Have you done your research, SWOT analysis, justification why you need that person in the role? Who is going to manage them? What is the future of that role?
Recruiters can generally tell you who or how the market is for candidates you are seeking, but if you have a good look around yourself. Who is your competitor? and do they have a version of what you are seeking? or does the market have that type of person? if not. What resources have you got, to take a person close to what you are looking for, and train them/Development/Coach them to the right level?
What will they be doing? How will they be doing that?
Well, Duh Mark, I know exactly what they will be doing. Which is great. But you won’t believe how many job specs I get, and have to ask the one question “So, what will they be doing?”. I guess the best way to look at this, is to break the core day to day role down to its simplistic level. Saying “designing cars” for instance is very encompassing of the role. However, “designing the rear end assembly, for high-performance improvement” now we are building a job spec, and a job advert.
What training, coaching and development will you be offering for this role?
What is on offer, I mentioned it earlier. Do you want to bring someone in to do additional training? Sales trainer? or start an NVQ qualification? or do you have a schedule of training? Weekly coaching sessions? Or have you not got one. If not, I will cover this in the retention section of this series, (which may not be out when you read this, but I can chat about if it’s not).
What is the ideal date you want this person in place? Why?
What will the impact be, if this person fails? It’s horrible to think this, we want everyone to succeed, but at least have an idea.
I want to highlight this as its own bullet point, the T in the SWOT, the “Threat” – what will happen if you hire this person, spend time, and money and they don’t succeed. What I am signposting you at here, is some prevention now. How? as you are going through this, be conscious of setting the scene at the beginning, middle and end, of expectations, and then During employment. Don’t let imagination takeover of your expectations of this said person. So, plan the scene, plan it now!
Also, there are secondary threats to new employees too, I could write an entire blog on your current staff. Who will it rub the wrong way if you found a different type of personality to come into the team? Have you got a person in the team right now, you have to use kid gloves with? All businesses have them, some teams work in bubbles and don’t see what you see in your business.
How are you going to sell the company to new people? Why do you work there? Or if you are an owner, what are you passionate about, about your business.
Get marketing to do this? I like you to do this too, why do you work for this company? why is this job important to the company, and why it will benefit the candidate’s career – joining your company. Has this been verbalised now?
Lastly – this is important, your company, its position, reviews, and future. Reflect on this part. You may need to overcome issues that have happened in the past, that may be made public, or poor glass door reviews/google reviews, or word of mouth issues. that might not bring the right people to you. How are you going to combat this?
A Side note to this is, I have worked with companies with terrible reviews and still found great people to them. Because they faced the problems head-on and acknowledged changes were needed. Be prepared for that, even recruiters will ask that question.
Public Perception is extremely important.
That’s the start of this, Part 1 of the review. Part 2 can be found here ->
If you have any questions and like to understand more – you can find me on the below details.
Thanks for following this series!