One of the most important factors within a company’s
recruitment strategy is the idea of continuity. Continuity contributes greatly
to candidate trust and also makes the administrative side easier too. There is
no real reason for a business not to value continuity other than ignorance of
its importance.
Let’s assume that you have a PSL (preferred supplier list)
and you are farming out the task of tracking down the perfect candidate to
multiple recruiters. That would be a very good guess as the majority of companies
use this method, though not all have a PSL, electing to just contact recruiters
at random whenever the need arises. Specialist recruitment partners are a
pretty new concept so most have not even considered that as a possibility.
Now, nothing stops those multiple recruitment companies from
contacting the same prospects at the same, or similar times, in order to
attract them to the role. Having multiple recruiters working the same
candidates is a failure of your recruitment processes. Firstly, those recruiters
have wasted their time chasing the same person. Recruiters working on a no win,
no fee basis only have so many hours they will spend on a job role before
binning it off in favour of something that may offer a better chance of
payment, and if they are contacting individuals who have already expressed
interest or chosen not to go ahead with the opportunity, it can lead to a lack
of both recruiters and candidates. Secondly, to that candidate, your
organisation appear disorganised. There is no joined-up thinking going on, and
if that is the case, why would they desire to work with you?
As the market for quality candidates heats up, one of the
major factors in securing said candidate is speed. How fast can you find them,
how fast can you screen them and how fast can you secure them? Having more
recruiters on the case should by rights make the task quicker but that is
rarely the case.
Responsive employers are worth their weight in gold and a
few are working out that the way to overcome the stalling within their hiring
is not solely to throw larger money offers at the candidates, but to rethink
how they recruit.
If you were building a house, you would not use more than
one architect at the same time or a few sets of builders, hoping that some how
the plan would coalesce all by itself? In no other industry would this be
classed as normality, yet within recruitment, it is. Perhaps, until now, no one
has offered any alternative.
The frustration a candidate will feel being put forward for
a role, only to find out they are not a good fit, and then to have it happen
all over again, will sour them on your company. Multiple points of contact are
where miscommunication happens and where alienation can occur. There is no
excuse, in this day and age, for this to happen.
Exclusivity is a scary word for organisations looking for
recruiters. This topic comes up again and again. A hiring manager may know they
need to switch up the way they are doing something, for better results, but are
not sure how. Wary of making it so that they have no back-up, they ignore the
parts of their current strategy that are not working or that are causing
headaches.
The added continuity that specialist recruitment partners
bring to the table usually never crosses the mind of someone who is obsessed
with recruiting fast. The false economy of destroying continuity is not an
issue they wish to face. Yet face it they must.
The big question is: how far does it have to go, and how long does it have to go on, before the continuity issue is taken seriously? Next time you make soup in your kitchen, think about that old saying and decide whether you want to invite around a lot more cooks to try and get it done quicker, or if you are better off with just the one.
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One takes you back the way you came, the other takes you on to your future
The transition to a different way of doing things is always
a long and drawn-out affair. Recruitment has not changed in many decades and
yet, is anyone really satisfied with it? Is it free of headaches and false
starts and miscommunication and abandoned jobs?
Specialist Recruitment Partners are a relatively new
concept, born out of the need to guarantee results. As the job market becomes
more and more candidate-driven, generalist recruiters just skimming the job
boards for active job seekers is no longer the guarantee it once was.
Waking up and recognising the benefits of this type of
recruitment will place your company in a great position for the future. Change
is hard. Convincing people that the way they are doing things is not the best
way, even though nearly everyone else is doing it, is part of the challenge.
The generalist recruitment firm will assure you that they
have dedicated departments in the specialist area you need, such as data, AI,
Cloud, etc. but how true is that? Do they have external recruiters called up
just for that job? No matter what is going on, if you need a very niche
candidate, why would you not select a niche recruiter?
Recruitment Partners are a different breed. They are
dedicated to a client and delivering to that client what the client needs, no
matter how difficult. The atmosphere of mutual respect allows the best work to
be done.
Deadlines are important. Using their resources in the best
ways possible to deliver the best results. Finding those hidden gem candidates
is no easy task but, when allowed the freedom to adapt their search until they
find them, Recruitment Partners will hit their targets.
Are generalist recruiters willing to turn away with work to
get your job done? There will be exceptions, of course, as there are to every
rule, but the majority will not turn down work because, and they absolutely
have our sympathy here, they have no choice, always chasing the most stable of
the unstable work, the best bet in the gamble. Exclusivity is not their
priority.
The hesitance to adopt the newer way of doing things would
make sense if Recruitment Partners cost more than generalist recruiters but
they don’t really. The structure of payments is just different that is all.
Split into 3 staged payments that are released when each stage of the
recruitment is completed. It actually benefits the recruiter to perform these
tasks to the absolute best of their abilities. They have something at stake.
The unscrupulous recruiter who spends time seeking out
candidates only to then basically auction them off to the highest bidder,
unbeknownst to them? The organisations who are putting their trust in that type
of recruiter are left spinning in the wind, more time is ticking down,
desperation sets in. That kind of recruiter does not desire the scrutiny that
naturally comes with partnerships. They are not beholden to anyone and don’t
really want to be either. Specialist recruitment partners do not pitch the
prospective candidates to all and sundry, because they are dedicated to your
quest.
The candidates, who are so integral to the process, but who
get treated like a secondary thought by the unscrupulous recruiters must be
shown that they are valued. If they are approached by someone who tells them
that there are a number of opportunities available, they will not feel
targeted. They will not believe that they have been contacted because they are
special, but that a scattergun effect has been applied to find them and a
further scattergun approach is now being applied to which jobs are suitable.
This is alienating behaviour and does nothing to build trust.
Specialist Recruitment Partners are a way to break away from the short-term thinking that has left many companies in trouble during the pandemic. Making a change for the better has to start today.
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Encourage upskilling to make sure your employees can climb the ladder
Whilst the role of the recruiter has always been viewed as
one of seeking out and selecting candidates with the requisite hard skills
needed for the role they are tasked with filling, it should now also be seen as
the job of ascertaining which candidates have the requisite soft skills that
aid in their interpersonal communications and problem-solving.
This is essential now that working from home has become
normalised, in the wake of Covid-19. Teams need to communicate better and
managers need to be able to get to the bottom of problems at a distance from
their workforce. Productivity suffers otherwise.
The skills shortage is not just within the hard skills, it
is within soft skills too and upper echelon management are rightly concerned
about it. If you are desperately seeking the right candidate to unlock your
data project and, try as you might, you cannot find one, or find one who will
commit to your company, you don’t have many options open to you. The C-Suite
knows this and that is why around 80% of CEOs are stressing about it.
Offering opportunities and guarantees of upskilling to
prospective candidates is one way to win them over from a competitor’s offer.
Soft skills have now come to the fore more than they have in the recent past
and the impetus is on the honing of them, in order to prepare the workforce for
the next steps in their careers.
Invention, intuition, innovation and ingenuity are major
factors in the rising need for upskilling. Whereas the C-suite used to view
these attributes with indifference, with a pandemic that has not yet ended, the
benefits to a company’s health of collaboration and communication are now seen
as important. With that comes the desire to upskill the workforce.
Jobs that revolve around the understanding of technology and
a need for highly technical skills, are no longer immune to the need for
personal skills too. As projects grow larger and more complex, so do the teams,
which means that they must operate like well-oiled machines.
On top of all of this, the teams may be working at locations
in different cities, or even different continents, which means that
communication breakdowns will hugely inhibit a productive working environment.
Empathy must be present in those who are working in that environment.
Upskilling is already having an impact on recruitment.
Businesses are already starting to focus on whether a candidate has advanced
organisational skills, is friendly, thrives in difficult situations. Yes, these
are always on job specs, but now there seems to be a move towards profiles that
display this information as equal to the hard skills that are required.
Leadership qualities, emotional intelligence and resilience
are two other major soft skills needed to take these businesses into the future
and that also applies to current managers. Covid-19 has exposed a soft skills
gap within management, which needs to be filled quickly before it becomes a
real detriment to firms. The more diverse a company becomes, the more
management need to upskill to understand where employees are coming from.
A programme of upskilling within a company not only
strengthens the workers but it strengthens the company. Employees who have been
encouraged and helped to upskill are much more likely to respect that company
and to stay with that company. While upskilling costs money, it saves money in
the long run. Lower turnover, in turn, saves time and money on constantly
on-boarding staff. Upskilling builds confidence and leads to heightened
productivity too.
The paranoia that the C-suite execs have that they are just spending money to train the next company’s workforce must end. There is no evidence that that ever happens. Workers want to feel valued and respected and upskilling is a way both parties can win.
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Don’t get distracted when you are looking for five stars
It may sound like the most obvious thing in the world but
when you are recruiting and are looking for candidates, the best way about it
is that of prioritising quality over quantity. Pretty standard idea, so how
come it doesn’t always work out that way?
When exploring a recruitment strategy, especially within a
sector like Data or Cloud, it behoves a company to understand that if their
strategy is not correct, it could cost them more in time and money, than it
gains them in business success.
Competition is often an important driving force for a
business and can result in benefits, such as the advancement of technology or
marketing, opening up new avenues to explore, keeping prices at an appropriate
level and so much more. As the hiring of in-demand individuals heats up in a
marketplace with too few prime candidates to fulfil those demands, this can
lead to precious business resources going straight down the drain.
So many businesses are tackling data for the first time and
it can result in confusion as to what kind of team, what size of team, what
structure and what the achievable goals are for the team when it begins working
on the necessary data projects. If there are no internal experts who can
oversee and tackle these issues, this problem can be solved with an external
consultant, or even an experience recruitment partner.
Promoting your business correctly during the times you
interact with candidates is the best way to convince in-demand candidates that
they are in safe hands with you. During the ‘reaching out’ phase, whoever you
have handling the initial conversation, usually a dedicated specialist
recruitment partner, will sell your company and allay any fears the prospect
may have. Using a specialist recruitment partner is a good idea for this as
they are not ‘company men’ and have been through what the candidate is going
through: they have encountered your business from the outside, and have asked
the tough questions about your operations. They can give the prospective
candidate the lowdown on the company and honest answers about why they should
choose you over your competitors.
During the video interviews, are those conducting the
interviews giving the best impression of the company? Are they reading emails
on their laptop screen as they interview? Are they using their phone to
interview from, rather than a laptop? Is their background untidy? Are they
prepared, having read the candidates CV? Have they prepared appropriate
questions? All of these things are red flags that can lose you a candidate.
When already-busy hiring managers have to sift through
resumes themselves, this can result in great candidates being missed, or too
many candidates, who are not right for the job, being interviewed. This is not
an effective use of time and can also lead to wastes of other resources such as
money. The recruitment specialist you partner will pre-screen in order to save
you time. How many times have interviews happened with ten candidates when they
could have been pre-screened and reduced to the best three? Add to that waste
of time, the fact that with ten candidates to deal with, instead of three, a
business will not be as agile in its decision making and will lose those
candidates to competitors who actually have their act together.
Tasking multiple generalist contingency recruiters with filling these roles can be a double-edged sword. You can either get very few CVs sent over when the prospects are hard to find, or not active on the job market, or you can be spammed with any CV that is even slightly suitable. When working with a specialist recruitment partner gives you much more of a white-glove service, and costs you the same amount of money, why go for quantity, when you can enjoy the quality?
Curious about how Zenshin Talent can help your organisation? Contact us today for a no-strings conversation about your needs and our experience.
With over 90 percent of companies finding it difficult to
find and hire candidates with the correct skillsets and business leaders
complaining that the situation has worsened over the previous year, this has
led to organisations paying over the odds to ensure they have the hires needed
in order to guarantee that their firm will be able to run, uninterrupted.
Remaining productive during the pandemic has become harder
and harder, and now with the skill shortage exposed, and a probable additional
cost to businesses of over £6bn a year, the big question is now: “How do we
solve it?”
Well seeing as we cannot retroactively change government or private business policy, we must deal with the situation as it is and find ways around the problems thrown up by the current challenges:
1. Recruitment
Short term recruitment in order to fill the gaps in your
workforce may seem like the simplest solution but it is a false economy. The
amount of resources that are poured into a new hire are really quite large, and
if the turnover of staff starts to speed up, you are out of pocket. Yes, the
recruitment process is now starting to take longer than it did previously, but
getting the right candidate saves in the long run. How can you plan for the
long term when you hire with a short term mindset? Engaging a specialist recruitment
partner should be your first course of action here. The candidates may very
well be out there, but you need to know where to look and how to approach.
2. Interviewing
As previously mentioned, the hiring process is taking
longer, on average around 55 days, and it could well expand beyond that soon
too. Businesses are spending more on recruitment because desperation is setting
in. How many of these companies have really reassessed, or brought in a
specialist to assess, their hiring strategy? In a world where the power
pendulum has swung away from the employer and has swung back to the employee,
in a way not seen since the early 2000s, how can they afford not to change
their way of dealing with candidates? Processes must be streamlined and the
company must become more agile in its hiring or it will keep missing out on the
highly-skilled prospects it needs.
3. Fledgling Talent
Some firms have given up on
finding the talent they need and are falling back on lower or entry level individuals.
This isn’t necessarily a bad idea if you can’t find the candidates that you
crave. If you truly exhausted every avenue and came up empty handed, then the
next logical step is looking for fledgling talent looking for work in your
sector, perhaps university graduates. But this is no quick fix, easy answer, as
all grads are not made equal and you will still need to sift thought their
resumes or applications in order to find the best ones. If you have engaged a
specialist recruitment partner, they will find the best CVs and pre-screen the
prospects to separate the wheat from the chaff. The worst thing that a company
can do is leave a role vacant just because they can’t find someone to fill it.
4. Training
Spending just under £1.5bn on
training to bring their existing employees up to the required skill level,
organisations are certainly attempting to reverse the skills gap. This, of
course, has a knock on effect throughout the whole job market, meaning that the
workforce as a whole is better positioned and businesses by extension have more
choice. This speaks to a need for longer term planning not just within
individual businesses but across whole industries, who have become complacent
again since the early 2000s.
There must be more planning, more responsibility, more
strategy, a focus on the importance of recruitment and career progression must
be at the heart of it all. If you require a candidate to be agile and to
upskill, then your business must have that very same mindset.
Curious about how Zenshin Talent can help your organisation? Contact us today for a no-strings conversation about your needs and our experience.
