Common Challenges In-House Recruiters Face
Joseph Henry
Recruiting Insurance and Public Policy professional across the UK and US marketplaces. Founder of RecSurance.
All new roles have their honeymoon period, where the world seems a great place during the honeymoon period. However, after a time, problems, issues and disagreements arise. You realise that the job was not as perfect as you thought.
Below are the main problems that you will encounter as you undertake and begin your journey into the world of internal Recruitment. There are a number of common problems.
What main or common challenges can you encounter when you join a new Recruitment function?
Below we outline the main problems in more detail and propose potential solutions to each challenge
The Last Recruiter Was Not ‘Fit For Purpose’?
This is a blessing and a curse.?
A blessing because it will allow you to look good, however, as the previous Recruiter might have been doing a bad job regarding candidates, you might have a lot of repairs and work to do.
The good news is this is generally not a fatal thing regarding talent acquisition as there are always new candidates to engage with, new approaches to be made, and new adverts to write.
The biggest problem when you have a when the last Recruiter is not up to scratch or fit for purpose is dealing with the internal problems and reputational issues that could be present amongst the internal stakeholders (Hiring Managers and senior management) towards the Recruitment function.
Solution: Understand the Problems And Rebuild relationships
The first place to start is finding out what went wrong, which will (generally) fall into three camps:
Mismanaged Internal Stakeholders: Focus your time on building relationships with that internal stakeholder who felt let down.?
Mismanaged Recruitment Process: Review whether it was the candidate not following the process or whether the process was incorrect and act accordingly.
Poor Candidate Experience: Go back to previously interviewed candidates and reach out to those who interviewed over the last two or three months to find out what happened and to rebuild those bridges.
As I said before, this is not the worst thing to have to deal with as diligent Recruitment and expectation management over the coming weeks and months will start to right the reputational damage done.
The Recruitment Processes Need Overhauling?
This is increasingly a major issue as we move into a new social and digitally enabled workforce, processes just not being fit for purpose as the pace of change outpaces companies' abilities to create processes and adapt.
Being ‘fit for purpose’ does not mean that the process is not working, or indeed totally ineffective. Many companies hire staff, with processes that are not ‘fit for purpose’, they still get the job done, just not as effectively as they should.
For instance, a four-stage interview process with psychological tests and a homework assignment is not going to be suitable for a Christmas temp role in a supermarket.?
It might mean you hire the best Christmas temp ever, however, the long process will probably mean that you would need to start hiring in July.
Candidates just sending in their CVs and having one interview with one person is not a suitable way to recruit a new Chief Executive Officer in a lax and pally way is not going to suitable either.
Assessing the process and whether it is fit for purpose is not always going to be initially obvious and may take some time for all the problems to become evident. This takes time as you see candidate come through process?
Solution: Rebuilding the Recruitment Processes
The process has to fit the business and or the process to be useful. Context is key. Understanding what is going wrong with the process, what needs to be overhauled and what can be kept is an important undertaking that will require getting hands-on with the process.
Many times the Recruitment process can either be too laborious and data entry intensive or they are not mapped out and processed in a consistent fashion.
Other problems can include the wrong selection and interview process or too many steps.
If you are in a situation where you are going to be able to rewrite or re-create the process I propose that you follow the following steps
Map out the process: Add each step of the process that the candidate will go through, the date will go through, and the Hiring Manager will go through.
Eliminate: Look at this process and eliminate what is superfluous, add in what you think is needed. Stripping a process back to the bare bones, and adding additional steps later on
Ongoing Review: Review this new process in light of the types of roles that you are going to be recruiting for and make changes based on the types of roles that you are likely to be recruiting for and think it fits each role, or will there be a need for an altered version for different roles in the organisation.
Redesigning a Recruitment process takes time, patience and trial and error.
Incorrect Tools Or No Tools
This is something that many Recruiters walk into when starting their new job, especially if they have joined a new team or are starting a new Recruitment function.
Many organisations work out their Recruitment in very basic ways (email inbox etc) so if you are part of a new team doing Recruitment this is going to be an issue that will need to be addressed.
We have written earlier about the tools that you would need when you are starting an In-House function.
However to recap you generally will need:
Additional tools could include:
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This list is not exhaustive, however, it is a great starting place.
Solution: Building A Toolbox
You are going to need to follow the 6 steps below to build your toolbox
Stage One: Understand the internal appetite for sending money or changing vendors.?
Stage Two: Scope out the tools that you would ideally like if money was of no object.?
Stage Three: Develop a prioritization of this list so you can build a?
Stage Four: Build the case and evidence base to support these purchases. Take out trial periods if possible to demonstrate the impact these would have on the business or organisation.
Stage Five: Begin engagement with decision makers before any meeting to highlight and discuss these plans.
Stage Six: Pitch the idea and win over the decision makers.
High Staff Turnover
Higher staff turnover makes you a more valuable person within the organisation, because recruiting becomes more important. However, walking into a company like this can be very stressful as a new Recruiter.
You have two main choices when this happens:
Sometimes, the problem of staff turnover might be external to the organisation.
For instance, the care sector has a very high turnover as caring for people is not for everyone so high turnover is baked into the business.
There are generally three sources of high staff turnover:
Bad Hiring: Assessment and decision-making during the hiring process is flawed in relation to the role and company needs.
Bad Management: Poor management whilst employed by the business. There is an old saying “staff leave managers, not businesses”.
Remuneration: Paying below the market rate, especially in roles that have highly viable pay competitors in direct or complementary talent marketplaces.
Each of these will need a bespoke solution to solve them which will take time and dedication and buy-in across the business.
Trying to fix high staff turnover can be achieved with the aid of good Recruitment, however, you will need to assess where the high staff turnover is coming from and if Recruitment processes can make a difference.?
Solution: Improving The Candidate Experience
Improve the hiring process so that candidates stay longer in post by making the candidate experience more professional.
Improve the onboarding process and first three months within the business by helping to ease them into the organisation.
To do the above, you need to survey candidates who have been through the Recruitment process and new starters to the organisation, including people who have left. Ideally, over a two or three year period looking backwards.
Aim to collect data to prove this is the problem and propose an initial test to see if it changes the turnover rate.
Staff turnover is one of those forces of nature, however, like the forces of nature this is something that can be tamed or at least mitigated.
HR Has A Bad Reputation
Sometimes, you will start at a new In-House role and find that some members of the organisations have no buy into the concept of a Recruiter or certain scenario managers will go above your head to recruit the way they want to recruit.
Alternatively, it could be that the Human Resources function has a bad reputation.?
.Some managers just do not like people who work in HR. Why? insecurities in their abilities, possibly because HR tells them no or just a simple desire to be in charge. Dealing with and overcoming or at least negating this problem is something that may come up from time to time.
Solution: Rebuild Reputation Through Relationships
Set an example of professionalism and dedication.?
Time is going to be your best weapon when dealing with rebuilding a reputation. Rebuilding that reputation one day and one placement at a time.
Understand why there might be a bad reputation. Take action to prove otherwise, for example, poor communication?
Ultimately start to fill roles, quickly and effectively and reputations and buy-in will change.
Conclusion
When moving into a new Recruitment role, there can be a multitude of challenges to face. These challenges are not always going to exist in all organisations and new roles, however the above should set out a clear path to taking the first step to tackle the challenge head on.