Maximising the success of your recruitment campaign and building an enduring candidate experience
In the current candidate driven market, companies really do have to up their game in how they manage the recruitment process and by extension the campaign experience.
Whether that is managing recruitment campaigns directly, or using 3rd parties such as recruitment agencies.
- Agree the role profile/job description before you begin
- Try and avoid putting together a wish-list job description, just because it meets your needs – i.e. a graphic designer who is also an accomplished marketing strategist. Invariably these are 2 separate jobs and as such if you don’t have the budget for both, then consider outsourcing the lesser critical requirement.
- Choose your recruitment agencies carefully. The ideal scenario is to have one reliable partner that can act as the gatekeeper for your company and represent you well in all their interactions with the candidate.
- Using multiple recruitment agencies out of sheer desperation is not effective. Why? – Because the candidate when approached by competitor agencies will get a conflicting interpretation of the business. Secondly, you the company will have multiple external contacts to deal with and feedback to.
- Using a single agency, guarantees that you should strike a good fee deal and ensure uniformity throughout the representation of your company to potential new employees and the consumer market at large.
- Agree a timetable – the date you will review CVs, when you will schedule interviews, when you will regret those that are not being called for interview and those that are not successful at interview.
- Commit to this timetable. There is nothing more frustrating from a candidate perspective, than being set expectations on the above and these are not adhered to.
- Clearly outline who the candidate will be meeting for interview and the respective roles of those interviewers, in order that they are given a fair chance to do some proper preparation beforehand.
- ALWAYS provide feedback to the agency, or the candidate directly, especially if they have been for multiple interviews/presentations and have been unsuccessful. These ‘discarded’ candidates can choose to act as an effective voice for your brand, despite not getting the job, but feel that they were given a fair and positive experience to demonstrate their fit or otherwise, for the role.
- If after commencing a recruitment campaign and due to unforeseen circumstances, the recruitment has to be stalled/cancelled or modified, please have the commonsense to let all those that have a stake in this know at the earliest opportunity – candidates, recruitment agencies, so they can leave with a positive impression of the company, that will not deter them from showing an interest in the future, rather than the ‘black hole’ syndrome.
Finally, I can cannot over-state, that in this age of social media channels, encouraging all of us to document our experiences and feedback, the importance of treating the candidate as you would wish to be treated. So obvious, but is the main cause of angst amongst candidates – and ultimately we are not just candidates, we can be consumers of your brand and in turn a positive voice or ambassador, that can drive your bottom line.