A well-thought recruitment strategy can be the lifeblood of a successful organization. Bringing in the right expertise is required to support a company, keeping it fresh, innovative, competitive and always at the top of the game.
Unfortunately, companies often see recruitment as a burden. They want nothing to do with it, and when they do, they hire reluctantly and with as little effort possible. What they fail to realize is that hiring the wrong people can be devastating; costing much more than if they hired right the first time.
There are some recruitment tactics that should never be attempted. Think about how awful recruitment can be like shooting yourself in the foot.
If you recognize any business committing these five recruitment fails—stop them NOW, before it’s too late!
- Looking For Love In The Wrong Places
Need people with specialized knowledge, or a postgraduate degree? Nearby fast-food joints and retail shops are not the place to start. Even if you happen to find an employee with a doctorate working behind the counter, they probably won’t have the work ethic you need.
Solution: Gear your search to the type of expertise you require; if you need engineers, focus on the engineering department of the local university. Filling a graphic designer position? Try online social groups that focus on the visual arts.
- Read It in the Sunday Papers
Cast a wide net? Too much work! Recruiting by appealing to the smallest possible audience is barely lifting a finger. Ads in the local newspaper will surely bring warm bodies—job seekers desperate for a job, any job! To include another challenge, don’t leave any contact information—no website or email address. If applicants genuinely want the job, let them work for it!
Solution: Today, reaching a wider audience is not hard, especially with HRM tools widely available. Applicant tracking software and online job posting make targeting the right people easy, even easier than placing a help-wanted newspaper ad, and with infinitely better results.
- Those Last-Minute Stragglers
For a few companies, their entire “recruitment strategy” is to stick a “help wanted” sign in the window, sit back and wait. The right person will come in—eventually! Of course, the company might not get a flood of applicants, but they are truly SAVING MONEY!
Solution: What are the real costs of dragging out the hiring process? Lower productivity, missed sales and overworked, stressed-out and shorthanded staff. When hiring the right employees, every day without a new hire is money lost. Do it yourself with a structured approach, or outsource your hiring to a cloud-based service provider—either way, recruitment that is targeted and organized will result in less time wasted and more getting down to business.
- Be vague and secretive
Not quite sure what duties you need a new hire to take on? No problem—a job is a job, right? The time to talk job duties, compensation, perks and incentives is when the right person walks through the door.
Solution: Getting a perfect hire is a little like fishing. Using the right bait will get you the prize catch. Sell your business from the start! Have appropriately specific job descriptions, with realistic expectations of the job, what is needed to be accomplished, and what it pays.
- Shoot Me a Fax
The fax machine shows that your business is on the cutting edge of communications; fax technology has been around for years, so it is something EVERYBODY knows how to use.
Solution: Fax machines? Isn’t that something cavemen used before the invention of fire? Put a fax number in your ads, and you will seem like your business is ahead of the curve—circa 1985!
Technology—including mobile applications and cloud-based systems—has not only made hiring more efficient, but it has made it easier than ever for an organization to perform (even one stuck in the 1980s!) The number of HRM service providers has also grown, and the amount of support for SMBs has never been higher.
Know of any other recruitment fails? Let us know in the comments!
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