Recruitment Case Study
The problem:
Many clients come to us with a similar problem – trying to find the right staff for their business was turning out to be a nightmare!! They had tried recruitment agencies (desperately expensive and had a real ‘bum on seat’ mentality) and were now trying to do the recruitment on their own. Trying to get the time to write ads, post them, wade through the applications, organise interviews, screen, test, assess, review and reference check was just something they didn’t have! Plus, many of them had never had to do this before – it takes expertise to know what to put in an ad to try and attract the right people (sometimes they were getting 3 people applying, others 100), was difficult.
They also found they weren’t quite sure what questions to ask either. They would read each application one by one, and get many candidates in for an interview. At the face-to-face interview, the client would ask whatever questions came to mind about that candidate, such as “would you be good at this job?”, “hypothetically, what would you do in this situation?”
These questions were not terribly helpful – they gave the candidate the opportunity to give the “right” answer about their skills and capabilities, not an actual indication of what they could do. Being not terribly structured either, our client was often asking different questions of different candidates, meaning objectivity and consistency went out the window. Few points of comparison existed and it made the selection decision quite biased and unsystematic (which would make any decision difficult to justify if questioned by the courts!).
After several attempts at hiring people, this client found that once the new employee started, they weren’t the right fit. In some cases, they didn’t have the skills required to perform the role, sometimes they had the skills but lacked any initiative or drive, and some candidates had the wrong attitude and didn’t fit in with the organisational culture. In all these instances, the new employee had left again within the first three months, and the lengthy, time consuming recruitment process started all over again.
The solution:
We went back to the drawing board. What type of person were they looking for? Why was the role vacant? What managerial style did the person this new person would report to have? Having dealt with the client before we already had an idea of what was happening culturally and strategically and were able to integrate this information straight away, saving time and money in the process.
After some coaching and training, we asked the client to write an ad and send it to us for approval. This they did. We were able to make suggestions based on our experience of what tends to work for that industry, role type and salary level. We were also able to make recommendations as to when to post, where (seek.com isn’t always the best option! Sometimes the local paper can be good for attracting return to work mums for example). We often post the ad for client to keep anonymity, but many clients do this themselves.
In this case, our client didn’t need help at the screening stage – they were fortunate to have the time and resources available to screen through the hundreds of applications and sort out the good from the bad. It was in the next few steps of the process that they needed a little expert assistance from People Dynamics to help them find the perfect employee.
We often help our clients by taking care of the entire recruitment process for them; however we have many clients (such as the one mentioned above) who only require assistance at certain steps. We help these clients by tailoring a recruitment package to suit their individual needs.
For this client, we offered a packaged recruitment assistance option, coming on board just to write appropriate interview questions, facilitate interviews alongside them, conduct behavioural profiling, and guide them in their selection decision. Through this process, we were able to help the client discern what were the important skills the new employee needed, how to accurately asses (through behavioural interviewing techniques) whether each candidate truly had these skills and capabilities, and how to judge the values and attitude of a candidate to make sure they matched with the organisational culture and the personalities of the other people they would be working with.
The result was that through utilising our specific expertise, our client was able to find the perfect candidate (and that person is employed by them to this day!). We have repeated this process multiple times for this client, who have found that using our expertise at the recruitment stage really does make all the difference to the longevity and retention of their staff!
Get in contact or call us today on 03 9077 4870 to find out more about our packaged or end-to-end recruitment options, and how we might be able to help you iron out the kinks in your recruitment process.