Shortage of time means employers limit their recruitment pool and miss out on good candidates
David Woods, 09 March 2010
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2 comment's on this article.Recruitment processes are taking too long, causing employers to miss out on potentially good candidates, new research reveals.
According to TalentPuzzle, 86% of business owners and HR staff admit they would like to spend less time dealing with recruitment processes and agencies, especially as the majority (88%) say they would be looking to make a significant number of permanent hires over the next six months.
Almost three quarters (73%) of respondents admitted that because of lack of time they were limiting their recruitment pool and missing out on potentially good candidates.
And 86% of organisations said if they were able to more effectively source the best recruitment agencies it would result in less hassle and improve the quality of their hires.
Virginia Raemy, CEO at Talent Puzzle, said: "Currently employers are caught in a catch 22 situation when it comes to recruitment. They recognise the importance of recruiting the right people but many simply don't have the time to devote to recruitment. Ultimately, they can be dealing with dozens of agencies for a single advertised position, which means multiple contracts, multiple fees and multiple negotiations, all of which can be very time-consuming.
"Employers want to continue working with recruitment agencies. However, up until now it has been quite difficult for them to quickly identify the best or the most suitable. By using a recruitment marketplace such as TalentPuzzle, organisations can easily rate the performance of individual agencies based on the quality of CVs submitted and their responsiveness. This crowd-sourcing approach to rating agencies can help organisations quickly identify the best or most appropriate agencies to work with."
The survey of 250 business owners and HR staff at UK organisations, with up to 750 employees, was commissioned by TalentPuzzle and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne.
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Lesley Nash - 09 March 2010
Our experiences show us that shortage of time results in two things: a) recruiters worrying about getting too many candidates to be able to manage and b) hiring managers relying too heavily on agencies as an expensive means of outsourcing the administrative overhead. Shortage of time does not have to be an issue these days, even with the leanest of resourcing teams. The missing link is often the fact that organisations do not have a good Applicant Tracking System of their own. Once an organisation has an effective online application process with a robust applicant tracking system the exciting part of recruitment can really begin which is the Attraction Strategy: that exciting mix of using a variety of sources to bring talent to the organisation, ranging from job boards, local advertising, national advertising and carefully selected agencies. If the online application process has effective filtering high volume of applicants becomes a thing of the past. If automation and standard communications have been set up in a thoughtful way, administrative overhead is dramatically reduced. Our work has helped us reduce admin time by over 800 hours per recruiter per year in one case, and has allowed other clients to embrace the subject of attraction with more time on the their hands and less fear of being overwhelmed with responses. Employers do not want to stop working with agencies completely but they do want to reduce their reliance on them for roles that they can and ought to be able to source themselves. Lesley Nash, Changeworknow.
Cormac McGrane - 11 March 2010
Same old story, when there is a shortage of candidates companies are happy to pick the best of a bad lot. When there are too many they look for shortcuts or waste time blundering through the masses of responses, while the good guys out there just get on with it and get a new job. The best candidates are rarely on the shelf for long. Typically they are gone after 4 weeks, unless they have decided to give themselves a well deserved break.
Why do companies make such a mess of recruitment. I blame it on the "Hand of god" syndrome. This syndrome afflicts most managers and it is based on the belief that on promotion to managerial status, some greater power reaches down from the heavens to touch the head of the special one and confer on them omniscitent powers management.
Ignorance is bliss. If you are not concerned about the bottom line, survival or growth, then any old recruitment process will be good enough. But if you are really in business to do good business, then it is like any other business transaction. If you don't do it right, you are going to get screwed.
There are many right ways to hire and there is a best way for any business. I've seen them all, the good the bad and the ugly. You have got to be able to adapt to the market and you have got to be able to put your hand up and call for help if your current approach isn't doing the business for you. Your accountant or FD will thank you for it if he or she is any good.
Recruitment and staff turnover costs are rarely measured, but savings made go straight to the bottom line. But you are better off not putting the cart before the horse and cutting costs before you have a reliable process in place to make sure you are actually going to contribute positively to the business. Pick the right people and you are on a winner, pick the wrong people and you may never realise why your business continues to struggle.
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