Group Company Secretary- Asset Management Company
The election process for Liz Truss lasted 2 weeks longer than she lasted as PM; most employers have been there, investing in a thorough process to ensure they find what appears to be the best candidate, only to have things not quite work out shortly after the individual joins. Sourcing a new employee can be expensive, time consuming and stressful and if your organisation is mid-growth spurt, these factors can add up. Small consistent changes can make a difference, especially across multiple processes.
Below are a few tips you can look to incorporate in order to get the most out of your recruitment process.
- Ensure candidates meet with a range of stakeholders from across the business. Getting a variety of opinions from different levels helps build a more complete picture of how an individual is going to interact and what impact they may have across different departments. Getting stakeholders with differing degrees of experience and seniority ensures you’re considering the potential candidate’s wider influence within the business.
- If possible, meet in person. Virtual interviews have made life easier and allow for a quicker process compared to the pre-pandemic market. However, there is still a lot to be said about meeting someone face to face. We strongly recommend that at least one stage of interview (usually second or final round interviews for expediency) take place in person. This will give you a more realistic idea of what the individual will be like to work with and will give a potential candidate the opportunity to trial run what their commuting routine would be.
- Obtain references. In the current market, it is increasingly difficult to obtain “personal references” providing insight into an individual’s daily performance at work, however it is still important to ensure that dates and job titles match what individual outlines in their CV. You’re unlikely to get glowing and detailed references as you may have been able to 10 years ago, however there are other avenues such as “recommendations” on LinkedIn, and more importantly, doing a proper reference check can provide some comfort that an individual isn’t joining with various skeletons hidden in their closets.
- Try to ensure you have a strong second choice. In an ideal world, you will have 2 or 3 individuals at final stage who you feel would have a positive impact upon the business and who could confidently tackle the vacancy for which you are sourcing. With an increasing amount of buybacks and other speedbumps in processes, it’s important to hope for the best but plan for the worst, and having an extended list of strong applicants to take you through to the final stages of a recruitment process helps you to mitigate against risk.
Of course, I’m being facetious and understand that an election process is more complicated than placing a candidate. However, there might be a lesson here for organisations across the UK – planning, foresight and making the most of your recruitment process will help ensure your team’s retention rate goes up and the stability of your team only increases.
If you would like to discuss potential resourcing solutions to any upcoming hire within your department, please do send me an email glenn@dmjcosec.com and we can schedule a video call to discuss further.
Posted 25/10/2022 By Glenn Oborne