Recruitment Best Practises: Improve Your Recruitment Process

<div class="grey-callout"><h2>In This Guide You’ll Learn</h2><p>My golden rules for good recruitment from start to finish.</p></div>

I’ve done a lot of recruitment – and made a lot of mistakes along the way! I’ve learned from these, though. This series of recruitment guides along with my book, The Secrets of Great Recruitment, distil my knowledge and experience into actionable steps to help you make your recruitment as effective as possible. If you follow my advice you’ll avoid common pitfalls and save yourself time and money in the process.

Here are my Golden Rules for an Effective Recruitment Process:

Only recruit when you need to. SMEs often recruit unnecessarily. Use my Six Tests of Recruitment to determine if you really need to hire. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Why You Might Not Want to Recruit Right Now.)

Recruit the right people at the right time. As businesses mature they go from needing mainly generalists to having to recruit more specialists. Determine where you are in the business life cycle and recruit appropriately. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Why You Might Not Want to Recruit Right Now.)

Know what a Great Performer looks like. Don’t use traditional job descriptions which tend to be too vague and generic to be of use. Instead draw up a Great Performance Profile for each role which specifies desired Measurable Outcomes and competencies that you want in an applicant. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Writing a Job Description (aka a Great Performance Profile))

Be realistic. Don’t ask too much of applicants. Consider whether the person you’re looking for actually exists and remove unnecessary and over-stringent competencies. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Does the "Perfect" Employee Exist?)

Assemble a Recruitment Team. Don’t let one person do the recruitment. You need multiple perspectives to make good decisions and to avoid costly mis-hires. Bring in an outside consultant to help if necessary. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Writing a Job Description (aka a Great Performance Profile))

Pay enough. You need to offer a credible salary to attract good applicants. Conduct a market analysis to figure out the right amount. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How Much to Pay Your Employees.)

Generate good Applicant Flow. Harness Applicant Attraction Channels in the correct order to get a good pool of applicants to choose from. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Attract Enough Applicants.)

Don’t go to recruitment agencies first. You can usually find the same applicants through job sites and flat-fee recruiters for far less of an outlay. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Choosing the Right Recruitment Agency.)

Choose a good flat-fee recruiter. Flat-fee recruiters can save you time and money – but make sure you use a reputable one! (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Choosing a Flat-Fee Recruiter.)

Advertise on lots of job sites. There are many job sites and your perfect applicants could be anywhere so you need to widely publicise your advert. If you’re using a flat-fee recruiter, make sure that they use a good range of sites. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Advertising on Job Sites.)

Select sites rationally, not dogmatically. Don’t advertise on a site just because that’s what your company has always done. The market tends to be fluid and what worked before may not work now. Carefully assess job sites’ suitability for your current recruitment needs. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Advertising on Job Sites.)

Duration-based adverts are preferable. Performance-based adverts seem like a nice idea, but are complicated to use and can end up costing a lot. Traditional duration-based adverts are often the best option. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Advertising on Job Sites.)

Forget CV databases. Databases are hard to use and have lots of old CVs. They’re best left to recruitment agencies who mine them heavily. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Use CV Databases.)

Write a good job advert. To get a good response, you need a good advert, not a glorified job description full of jargon and business-speak. My guidelines for writing adverts are based on rigorous real-world testing. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Write Your Job Advert.)

State the salary. If you don’t advertise a salary you’ll tend to get 80% fewer applicants. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Write Your Job Advert.)

Don’t identify your company in your advert. If you include your name and logo you might get swamped with calls from applicants and recruitment agencies. And if you advertise regularly, jobseekers might perceive you as having high staff turnover. It’s best not to include your name and logo at all. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Write Your Job Advert.)

Don’t state a closing date. You wouldn’t want to turn down a great applicant just because they’d applied one day after a closing date, so it’s best not to include one. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Write Your Job Advert.)

Don’t redirect jobseekers to a career page. You’ll tend to lose over 90% of applicants if you redirect them from a job site to your employer career page. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Employer Career Pages.)

Shortlist everyday. Don’t wait to see who else applies before shortlisting a promising applicant. You could lose them to a competitor while you dither, so shortlist regularly. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Shortlist Applicants.)

Use simple solutions to track applicants. Advanced applicant tracking software is expensive and often overly elaborate. Spreadsheets, emails and cloud-based file sharing usually do the job perfectly well. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Shortlist Applicants.)

Don’t skip Telephone Interviews. Telephone Interviews save you time and effort by helping you avoid interviewing obviously unsuitable candidates. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Carry Out Telephone Interviews.)

Don’t bother with Video Screening technology. Often candidates don’t want to use these systems. Telephone Interviews are much more effective. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Carry Out Telephone Interviews.)

Don’t use psychometric tests to screen applicants. Few applicants will be willing to take a test early on in the recruitment process. Even the test providers don’t recommend that you rely on such tests to screen applicants. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Using Psycometrics in Recruitment.)

Use the Promise of a Reference Call (PORC). Telling candidates that you will be making reference calls to their former employers makes them much more honest at interview. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Carry Out Telephone Interviews.)

Carefully arrange interviews to reduce no shows. Sending a calendar invite over email encourages candidates who aren’t going to attend to let you know this. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Carry Out Telephone Interviews.)

Don’t rush interviews. Allow 75 minutes for an interview. If you don’t allocate enough time, you might not find out everything you need to and will have to do follow-up interviews. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Interview.)

Choose an appropriate location for interviews. Your work environment is best, otherwise use a provider such as Regus or WeWork. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Interview.)

Probe what candidates tell you. To get the information you need to make good decisions, you need to probe candidates’ answers to see if they really stack up. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Interview.)

Sell the job. Good candidates always have options so don’t assume they’re 100% committed just because they turned up to interview. Keep selling the job and your organisation throughout the recruitment process. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Interview.)

Be honest with candidates. If the role requires them to work long hours or if there are constraints on career advancement because your firm is small, you need to be open about this. If you aren’t, new hires might get fed up and leave. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Interview.)

Use competency interviews with care. These can be useful if interviewers properly explore the context of candidates’ answers. Often they don’t, though. Structured Interviews are a more effective and predictable way of getting the information you need. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Interview Questions for Employers.)

Use a Structured Interview script. A script helps you stay on track and be consistent across different interviewees. They also enable you to really listen because you’re not worrying about what to ask next. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Interview Questions for Employers.)

Use the PORC during interviews. This is an incredibly powerful technique that can help you gain deep insight into an interviewee.

Pre-close interviews. This helps you gauge how likely it is that a candidate will accept a job offer. If they then don’t accept, you’ll have already got a sense of this and lined up other options. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Interview Questions for Employers.)

Don’t bother with third or fourth interviews. Make sure that your first and second interviews are thorough and well designed so that you don’t need further interviews. Candidates might well lose patience with a long sequence of interviews and take a job somewhere else. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Interview Questions for Employers.)

Use Job Simulations. These allow you to check if the candidate really can perform the tasks required of them. Sometimes people shine in interviews but bomb in the simulations. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments.)

Test for cultural fit. Employees need to fit into the team to be effective. Equally they need to be comfortable with the culture of the business they’re working for. Cultural Assessments are a good way of checking this out. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Job Simulations and Work Culture Assessments.)

Use the Delphi Technique to make decision. During recruitment discussions, senior people often dominate. But good decisions need to be made on the basis of everyone’s views. The Delphi Technique helps you to do this. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Deciding Who to Recruit.)

Use a pre-mortem to foresee problems. Thinking ahead of time how things might go wrong with a candidate helps to make decision making more robust. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: Deciding Who to Recruit.)

Keep open the option of not hiring. Recruitment can be such an effort that it sometimes feels like you must hire come what may. Hiring the wrong person could be very costly, however. Sometimes you have to decide not to hire if you can't find a suitable candidate. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Deciding Who to Recruit.)

Always take references. At interview you only hear candidates’ side of the story. Taking references is crucial for checking their claims and potentially avoiding expensive mis-hires. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Conduct a Background Check.)

Take references before making a job offer. If you make an offer, then take references and find out something you don’t like, it can feel difficult to backtrack. For this reason, take references first. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Conduct a Background Check.)

Speak to referees yourself. Don’t leave references to reference checking firms or recruitment agencies. Calling the referee will get you better information than communicating in writing. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Conduct a Background Check.)

Make offers over the phone. When you call a candidate and offer them a job you get to listen to their reaction – what they say and how they say it. This is much better than having to wait for a reply to an email. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Make a Job Offer.)

Send a written offer straightaway. Without an offer in writing, the candidate might continue to look for work. Nail things down with a written confirmation as soon as possible. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Make a Job Offer.)

Stay in touch with new hires before they come onboard. It’s quite common for people to accept a job offer and then never show up! Keeping in contact with a new hire increases the chance that they’ll start – or at least inform you that they won’t. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: Keeping in Touch With Candidates Before They Join.)

Do a proper induction. New staff often leave. An effective induction helps to settle them in and reduces the likelihood of them resigning.

Keep your composure when a staff member resigns. Don’t get angry or upset or tell the employee to leave. You may want to make a counteroffer or hold an Exit Interview so you need to receive the news calmly. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: Handling Resignations.)

Do Exit Interviews. Don’t let an employee leave before holding an Exit Interview. The conversation might reveal issues about your organisation that need to be addressed urgently. (For more on this, see our PDF guide: How to Conduct an Exit Interview.)

Don’t tolerate Poor Performers. See if you can get them to change or develop other staff so that you’re less dependent on them. If you can’t find a solution then you may have to dismiss them to protect your organisation. (For more on this, download our PDF guide: How to Dismiss Staff.)

Reassure your existing staff after a resignation. Someone leaving can destabilise a company. Other employees might get itchy feet and start looking for other opportunities. Resolve any issues with your management and work culture that contributed to your employee leaving. Speak to your existing staff and let them know how much you appreciate them. (For more on this, grab our PDF guide: How to Dismiss Staff.)

Seek good legal advice. Good employment solicitors are worth the money. They can help you find solutions when things go wrong. Some lawyers are less helpful, telling you lots of reasons why you can’t do things and never giving you a straight answer. If you treat staff well, you’re much less likely to encounter problems in the first place.