Recruiters, Stop Swimming Against the Current!
A pretty nondescript incident happened as I was boarding my flight to Sydney recently and it actually got me thinking about the work processes in many internal recruitment functions and agencies and how they tend to “swim against the current”.
So I made the mistake of boarding through the back door of the plane for seat 13C – what a nightmare. I had at least 20 people wanting to squeeze past me and I thought I would NEVER get to my seat. Plus, carrying two bags while trying to squeeze past all made it a bad start to the flight.
But I digress.
Let us consider Internal Functions first. You might be swimming against the current when your value proposition is not as competitive as your competitors in the market place, therefore the result of which is you getting candidates who tend to be either under qualified or not suitable. This is a waste of time and it will have a negative impact on your business.
The other area internals tend to swim against the current is skill composition. For example, you know you will have your work cut out if you are looking for talent with a combination of scarce skills, such as strategic sales experience and a niche engineering area. Typically, these skills are not present in one candidate. While it is not entirely impossible to source such candidates, your market will be severely limited.
Over onto agencies. Agencies typically swim against the current when they rush into recruiting positions where the salary is not competitive or when there are too many agents all recruiting same position. Or when they go through great lengths to recruit a position without realising that there is actually a field of strong internal candidates.
So what can you do to make it easier for yourself in recruitment? Here are six suggestions (in an infographic, no less, to make it easier for you) you should definitely take on:
I can hear many of you saying “no way, this is too much trouble”. Well think about this – swimming against the current is hard work, makes you tired and, ultimately, unsuccessful. Imagine if you have five recruitment jobs on hand where you are swimming against the current or pushing sh*t up hill.
How bad would that be?
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About Trevor Vas
Trevor has worked in the Recruitment, Information Technology and the Finance industries in various professional consulting roles. He is a recognised leader in human capital management for large organisations and is an active speaker at industry conferences in Australia and New Zealand. In his previous role, Trevor was the Managing Director of an Australasian consultancy business that consulted and operated Managing Vendors at many of Australia’s and New Zealand’s largest organisations. Since the establishment of HCMS, Trevor has consulted to BHP, Coles Myer, Crown Casino, ASB Bank and Waitemata and Auckland District Health Boards in relation to their enterprise recruitment models including Recruitment Technology, Recruitment Processes, Preferred Recruitment Supplier Agreements and implementing and optimising Recruitment Centres. Trevor is a subject matter expert in Recruitment Technology and Resource Management and has assisted many organisations to improve their effectiveness in these areas.
View more articles by Trevor Vas
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