Recruiting in Recession
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Time to invest!
Even if you aren't recruiting - don't forget recruitment!!
So everyone in recruitment knows it's pretty quiet just now and we all know why. That's not to say that there is nothing happening, far from it; for example Consortio is working on two cracking projects at the moment but it's the corporate recruiters that I want to appeal to in this message.
Budgets are being cut and activity reduced, head counts frozen and future budgets far from being agreed. As a corporate recruiter within a business big or small you may find that you have some more time on your hands that you didn't expect. What exactly are you doing with that time? How are you investing in the future?
The facts about demographics in the Western World and the ageing senior management pool coupled with the talent gap that all of those in the know in recruitment and talent management know all about won't be going away - recessions don't influence trends like that, although they make us forget them for a while. There are plenty of quality candidates about in most skill areas at the moment but that's only because so much talent has been released into the market by the recession, once that talent is reabsorbed we will all be back to square one; wondering where to find tomorrows leaders and how to acquire the best talent.
Some of the things that you should be investing any available time in doing are:
- A recruitment process audit
- A recruitment 'experience' review
- Revisiting recent Exit Questionnaires
- Upskilling your managers and HR support team
- Attending Graduate Recruitment Events
- Researching the global market and learning
So what does that all mean?
A Recruitment Process Audit:
Simply put it means looking at everything you do and giving it the sort of scrutiny that you have always wanted to and then doing something about the gaps. This doesn't mean spending any money, although a wish list for when budget funds start flowing again might be a result! No, indeed you can make many improvements without spending a cent.
Are you happy with the letters, standard e-mails that candidates get? Let's face it candidates will still be applying to you even if you don't have jobs for them, that's what happens in recession.
So can you honestly say that those letters are sent promptly, are a strong reflection of your employer brand and say what you want them to say? If not then get them changed, every candidate should walk away from contact with your business impressed!
A Recruitment 'Experience' Review
This asks you and your team the simple question, what is it like to apply for a job with your company? It is the most difficult to answer if you are on the inside but the most important if you want to maintain and build a strong reputation.
If you were a candidate what is the experience like, 'warts and all' from the moment you click on 'vacancies' or 'careers' on the web-site to the moment that you get the call offering you the job - understanding exactly what this experience is like is a huge step forward in changing things and improving the process.
If you are into flow diagrams then this is a time to indulge yourself. Seeing the path candidates take and the dead-ends, delays and cringe worthy problems they encounter will open your eyes to what needs to be fixed.
Talk to recent graduates if your graduate programme is a worry, Generation Y are good at two things in terms of feedback; honesty and directness - you will maybe regret asking but you will have a clear idea of what needs fixing!
Revisiting Exit Questionnaires
This is a hugely valuable resource that often gets forgotten usually when you are trying to recruit staff to replace the lost ones! If you have an Exit Questionnaire Process in place then what a great chance to drill down into them and learn something. Even if retention of staff falls under a colleagues remit you can usually get a very clear picture of how the recruitment of staff influences how long they stay and why they leave.
How powerful is that! To know in broad brush strokes why you gain and lose staff and then have a chance to do something about it. Is it the way you advertise, the style of interviewing that your managers adopt, the pension plan or even the fact that a certain competitor picks off your best people once you have spent time and money training them! It's all good information that you can reinvest in to the recruitment function - it's no always about look ing outwards at the market sometimes looking inwards offers more...
Upskilling your managers and HR Support Team
Once you have done all of your internal reflection on how well you do things then the gaps you discover can be fixed. One of the most common results of all of the above work is that you will discover that your business is not as good as you thought you were at some of the basics.
Things like telephone screening, interview style, candidate testing and assessment centre design. management and hosting all make or break your recruitment processes. If your staff, your peer group of managers or even your senior managers have not had a Skill Set MOT recently then you might find that you are causing many problems that could be avoided.
Internal training courses or external support to deliver them, cost little in comparison to the damage that underskilled staff (who think they are skilled because no-one ever pointed out that they weren't) can do. It might need all of your charm and diplomacy but use the time you have now to make your recruitment machine lean and ready for challenges ahead and that means turning over every stone!
Attending Graduate Recruitment Events
So you might not have the money to do everything that you wanted to this year, that's life! Buit what you can do is get out there and find out who is recruiting and how. There are some interesting things happening in the graduate market at the moment and never forget the top talent is still the top talent and you need to keep your hand in to understand how, where and when you can target them.
Graduate recruitment can be misleading - there are more of them but the top talent is still the same as always - don't slip into the habit of thinking that there will always be a queue of great talent to choose from.
Researching the global market and learning
The fact that you are a regional or national recruiter / employer shouldn;t stop you from looking at what the world is doing. There are so many exciting things going on globally; new graduate recruitment events, talent management systems, international mobility, web-site recruitment, schools-university-employer partnerships and up-skilling and re-skilling of staff within businesses.
Get the magazines, read the blogs and use LinkedIn to join the groups and get connected - it is inspiring and will make you aware and full of fresh ideas - trust me.
Overall this is time for not sitting back on reflecting what you might have been doing if you had been recruiting, it's a time for reviewing what you have done, what you will be doing and how well you do them.
Recruitment is going to be a major strategic influence over the next 10-15 years and beyond - why not use the recession as a positive time to roll your sleeves up and get your recruitment engine fine tuned and ready for action when things pick up?
if you want any help with any of the processes that I have detailed above them let me know - this is the stuff I love doing!
