Put the candidates first - recruitment practice
I have stressed before the link between recruitment and good pay management. Recent
contact with an organisation trying to decide if their competency-focused application
process is loosing them too many applicants prompts me to return to this theme.
Many pay structures are designed on the basis that staff will be recruited, or promoted,
into jobs towards the bottom of pay ranges and then have room for pay progression
within that post to reflect increasing skill and experience. When appropriate they
should be able to to move up to the next grade with enough pay headroom to repeat
the process. If too many recruits are brought in at salaries towards the top of the
range or with a level of experience more appropriate to someone ready for promotion
out of that job you risk jealousy among existing staff and an early onset of ingratitude
from the incomers.
The answer is to give yourself the best possible chance of considering as many applicants
as possible and making sure your recruitment and interview procedures are geared
to maximising the chance of catching those who fit the profile above. Despite the
number of organisations that complain of recruitment and retention difficulties it
is strange how many put unnecessary difficulties in the way.
Here are some of the do nots:
- Do not loose good candidates by insisting they do your selection for you before
they know whether they want the job or are likely to be granted an interview. Many
of the best candidates are those who are reasonably happy where they are but will
move if they find something they like better. They will not be keen to fill in complicated
application forms, especially ones that call for explain-how-you-meet-our-requirements
style essays. Even UCAS only expects applicants to write one personal statement which
is then sent to all the universities they applied to. Many of those job hunting through
online sites or agencies are doing so to minimise the effort involved in getting
to worthwhile interviews. They will not bother with jobs that require a weekend's
homework before even being considered. So accept CVs, have initial application forms
that are simple statements of the facts and only ask for the taxing stuff after you
have offered them an interview. If necessary get them in for a preliminary interview
before the final short-listing (recruitment based on a single interview, even with
a panel, is never safe anyway).
- Do not, if you can possibly avoid it, insist on a predetermined interview date.
I know many public sector and not-for-profit organisations find this hard to avoid,
especially where senior managers or board members have to be involved, but otherwise
you do not always need to interview everyone on the same day. Why lose your best
candidate because they cannot make your preferred date?
- Do not put the competency cart before the recruitment horse. If you have a competency
framework and want to select people against your specifif competencies - fine. But
remember that you are looking for people with the right abilities and not just for
people who have learned your version of competency speak. Questions along the lines
of describe an occasion when you exhibited an understanding of customer focus can
be meaningless to many candidates; especially those in lower grade jobs or from the
pre-competency generation. The traditional approach to recruitment was that the potential
employer asks the candidate about what they have done and how they might tackle the
challenges of the post applied for. Questions can be angled towards competencies
as much as at technical skills. It just takes a bit more work and imagination on
the part of the interviewers.
- Do not let the need for fair and equitable practice work to the detriment of the
organisation. If you are stuck with a scoring system at interviews make sure the
factors you are scoring against reflect your ideal candidate. Well-intentioned equality
rules that insist on jobs being offered to the highest scoring candidate mean those
recruited are the ones who will want to move on the soonest.
- Do not oversell the job and the benefits. Unrealised expectations are a major cause
of poor retention and a source of added pressure on the pay and benefits system.
- Do not forget to check the current pay of anyone who claims to need paying at the
top of your scale.
Frank Hobson
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