Look within for solutions to recruitment challenges

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Look within for solutions to recruitment challenges

17 April 2014 7:19am

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Too many organisations are "externalising" and blaming the market for their inability to attract great candidates, when really they need to hone their recruitment practices, according to the former UK director of Flight Centre, Mandy Johnson. She has written a book, Winning the war for talent - How to attract and keep the people who make your business profitable, based on her experience leading the travel company, and as its Australian head of HR. Johnson worried at one time that her travel industry HR experience might not transfer well to other sectors; she actually "went undercover", taking a temp HR role in a different organisation, to apply what she'd learned to see if it worked. As a result, she found recruitment teams needs the right structure a robust skeleton of six "bones" all of which must be present for the team to be successful: 1. A positive and proactive corporate attitude towards recruitment. When there is a disconnect between recruitment and its effect on business growth and profits, the team is doomed. Executives need to see recruitment as just as important as other divisions of the business, such as sales or accounting, and understand that when challenges arise, they can be overcome through internal efforts they should never externalise the problem and blame a difficult market for problems attracting staff, for example. This "bone" in the skeleton is the most important one, Johnson says, because "without it, a company has almost no chance of improving its recruitment results".

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2. An HR champion with direct access to the company leader. Recruitment teams need a leader who is positive about hiring and 100 per cent focused on getting and keeping good staff, Johnson says. "Yet just having a champion isn't enough if that champion doesn't have access to the business leader to explain how hiring outcomes affect profit goals. They need to have real influence at the top table and get approval for the changes required to keep improving this area."
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3. Line manager involvement in the recruitment process. Line managers must be involved in the hiring process to ensure interviews adequately cover the technical skills that positions require, and to help ensure a productive relationship between the recruit and line manager. "If [the line manager] takes ownership of the new recruit it increases the statistical chances of retention," Johnson says. The line manager's role in recruitment can take many forms, but Johnson suggests they be involved when deciding on selection criteria and during the interview and decision-making processes.

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Look within for solutions to recruitment challenges

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"Involving the manager in some form also increases their recruitment proficiency and understanding. Once they see the time, effort and skill required to find the right person for a role, they're less likely to treat their new recruit as a disposable commodity."

4. Business practices that are aligned with good recruitment outcomes. Organisations that want to recruit the best people need some flexibility in their procedures. Johnson shares the example of a company that only held inductions every second Monday, and would have missed out on hiring a great person had she not fought to have a one-off induction approved. Similarly, companies can be too rigid about their pay structures, even though not hiring someone because of salary limits can have more costly consequences overall than simply raising the level for them. "It's impossible to achieve success in recruitment without the ongoing modification of business practices," she says. "These have a huge impact on prospective candidates and are often the deciding factor in hiring success. Modifying shift times to make them more family friendly or changing paydays from monthly to fortnightly can be winning factors when it comes to clinching the deal."

5. Dedicated, skilled, practised recruiters. Johnson says great internal recruiters have five key attributes: sales skills, demonstrated high achievement, communication and coaching skills, a peoplefriendly focus, and a willingness to "practise, practise, practise". The best recruiters, she says, are highfliers who attract other highfliers. "They inspire applicants with the story of their own journey "Employing high-achieving, motivated recruiters can have more impact on hiring success than just about any other single factor," she says.

6. Generous, merit-based rewards, and effective measurement. "Good recruiters hire quickly and efficiently, reduce staff turnover and enable a company to achieve its business goals. These savings far exceed the cost of any salary investment," Johnson says. It's also crucial to measure the effectiveness of recruiters and gather useful data that helps improve hiring practices and change HR understanding, or risk inertia and damage to the business. Among the various metrics Johnson recommends measuring are the: percentage success of recruitment advertising; recruitment conversion rate; speed of recruitment from ad placement to job offer; retention of recruits; and profit increase of increased retention.

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