Robust Recruitment

Last June we brought you an article on Talent Management and Recruitment, exploring what it means and the surge in popularity for Talent Management Programmes. 8 months on we are revisiting recruitment, this time focusing on this ever growing industry and exploring current attitudes towards recruitment.

In the February edition of ‘The Recruiter’ Mark Gilbertson commented; “there are still enough chief executive officers and HR directors who view recruitment as a cost or an overhead.” This organisational attitude combined with the current prophets of economical doom and gloom could lead one to reasonably assume that investment in ‘recruitment’ will sadly find itself as one of the first issues for the corporate chopping block. It was no surprise therefore when I read further into the Gilbertson article that more companies are using online selection and recruitment methods in order to “reduce the time and resources spent on critical face – to – face selection and assessment.”

The Yorkshire Insider, however in their February edition has painted a much more positive picture for the recruitment industry, especially around Executive recruitment stating that executive search companies are “continuing to service a buoyant demand.” Dr. J Martin told the Insider that “even a recession will create a demand within executive recruitment.”

Recruitment and the identification of the right people for your organisation should not be viewed as a cost but indeed an investment. Once attitudes shift and leaders embrace recruitment as an investment, only then will it become an effective and cost efficient process. Investing human and financial resources in the recruitment process will ensure that the right people are selected the first time around, preventing you from having to re recruit in the future and subsequently spending even more time and money.

So what might a ‘robust’ recruitment process look like and what methods might it require? The table below gives a clear picture of the relative value of various recruitment methods. The score against each of them relates to their predictive validity, i.e. the extent to which it will predict a candidate’s successful performance on the job.

(These figures are taken from Chmiel and Chmiel 2000)

Conventional selection techniques like interviews are notoriously unreliable as a predictor of future performance whereas Assessment Centres come are rated as the most reliable. Therefore if we can combine a number of these recruitment methods within in an Assessment Centre, then we will give ourselves and our new recruits the best possible chance of success and ensuring a positive future for both the individual and organisation.

Just last year more than 37% of senior HR managers found that employee retention was their biggest challenge (CIPD), which is reflective of the modern widespread view that there no longer a “job for life”. The importance therefore of harnessing, identifying and nurturing the right people has never been more crucial.

Once over the hurdle of embracing recruitment as an investment, it is then vital that the right team (internal or external) is chosen to devise the most appropriate selection process. By adopting a Talent Management Process from the start organisations can expect to recruit the right people, who will stay with them for the long term, perform as required fulfilling their potential and even become the next wave of management, senior management.