Rosie Greaves
5 Common Recruiting Errors to Avoid
Are you making these five recruitment errors? Find out here, and how you can avoid them.
According to a Gallup study, it can cost up to 50% to two times the employee’s salary you’re trying to replace, to hire someone to fill the gap. The same study found that US businesses spend a trillion dollars each year to hire people to replace staff who leave voluntarily.
So, suppose you want to avoid burning through your recruitment budget and save time during the recruitment process.
Well, don’t fret because there are a few things you can do, namely avoiding these five common recruitment errors highlighted below. This goes a long way to attracting high-grade candidates.
With that in mind, let’s explore these in more detail…
1. Not Being Organized
A structured approach to recruitment is imperative. This takes into account both what your company needs now and what it might need in the future, say in five years’ time. By planning for the future, you’ll better position yourself to reduce staff turnover.
The best way to do this is to write a detailed job description as part of your online job ad. This should include the skills you’re looking for and the responsibilities assigned to that role. Remember, the detail is essential.
Use hiring software to streamline your recruitment funnel. This should give your process more structure, by outlining what needs to happen at each stage of the process and when.
We also recommend using an online candidate tracking system to keep all your candidate information in one place. By centralizing your candidate data, you help avoid those with the right skills slipping through the net.
By Using these kinds of automation tools, your recruitment infrastructure should be able to cope better with high applicant volumes, help you to identify top talent, and facilitate the sending of customized responses to ensure a more personalized candidate experience.
2. Being Biased (Overtly or Inadvertently)
To attract the right candidates, be precise when writing your job ad. Use tools such as Text Analyzer or Gender Decoder to write accurate and bias-free ads. This same rule applies when writing job descriptions. These must explicitly list all the job skills the hire needs to demonstrate and all of their job-related responsibilities.
3. Not Using Social Media
As many as 91% of employers use social media to hire talent. Don’t be part of the left-behind 9%. Look at Marriott’s Facebook career page. It boasts 1,363,913 likes, and last year they were listed as one of the Best Companies to Work For in 2019 and recognized as a “Legend” for Workplace Excellence FORTUNE®.
So, if you’re unsure how to use social media to your advantage, study what Marriott’s doing, and take a leaf out of their book!
4. Relying Just on the Interview Process
Don’t solely rely on the interview process to find the right candidate. Your applicants may come across well in a 30-minute interview, but are they really capable of fulfilling the role?
Senior Google Executive Laszlo Bock wrote in his book ‘Work Rules!’, that interviews are a waste of time. Namely, because interviewers just spend 99.4% of their time trying to confirm their pre-set impressions.
Instead, assess whether candidates are a good fit for your company’s brand, values, and culture by setting them an interactive Situational Judgement Test (SJT). This lets you examine the candidate’s response to real-life job-related situations, to get a feel for how they’ll perform in the role.
5. Poor Communication with Candidates and Hires
Only a third of new recruits report being asked for feedback from their future employers. Asking candidates for their views on your hiring process can provide the information you need to improve it. Plus, it shows you care about your candidate experience’s quality, which works wonders for enhancing your employer brand – win-win!
The aim is to set realistic expectations via constant communication. It stands to reason that companies that leave future hires hanging around waiting for a response to an ad or interview won’t leave a good impression.
In fact, a report by CareerBuilder found that 83% of candidates said their experience would be improved if employers set a clear timetable of the hiring process. Also, 52% said their biggest frustration was a lack of communication from employers.
Look at DigitalOcean’s approach to hiring. They recognized that most candidates have the same/similar questions about the hiring process. So, in response to that, they created a digital resource hub to facilitate better communication. Simple yet effective, right?
Final Thoughts
The key takeaway: Take a hard look at your hiring mistakes and then do what you can to rectify them. This is the most effective way to ensure you and your hiring managers implement more effective strategies for attracting the highest-quality talent.
If you enjoyed this article and want to learn more about how to improve your recruitment methodology, please feel free to download our free eBook: The Ultimate Guide to the Candidate Experience. Enjoy!
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