Football Transfer Deadline day ???

(and the importance of speed and agility of process when hiring talent)

It was transfer deadline day on Monday..............

If you are a football fan you will know that this is a major mid season day in the football calendar where us fans wait up for the deadline cut off time of 11.00pm to see who our club get over the line – or more than often don’t!!!!

Imagine if recruitment was like that and you could only hire for your team within a certain window of time – wouldn’t that be interesting? And wouldn’t that alter client’s approach to the processes they use for hiring?

If you knew that the deal had to be done by 11.00pm at night but not at all then the speed of pace during the process would be quicker, and more urgency there.

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Fast moving decisions and processes

On transfer deadline day the clubs that are more agile to get meetings through, medicals completed, paperwork completed, make decisive decisions about which players they are going to offer contracts to – are often the ones that have the most success on transfer deadline day.

The clubs that leave it all to the last minute, or can’t make decisions between which players to go for are the ones that end up not securing the best football talent for their teams and are left with weakened squads compared to their competitors.

(We also see players that have offers made that choose to take renewed contracts to stay at their current clubs, or decide to go to other teams instead, but that’s something for another post!! )

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But………….wait a minute………

Doesn’t this also mirror the importance of urgency and being competitive when it comes to securing talent for any business?

In recruitment I can 100% say that the companies that show urgency to move through the stages of the process, make decisions on which candidates to offer, and get paperwork out quickly to candidates are the ones that find it easiest to secure the best talent.

Companies that have

• Drawn out processes
• Have interview processes which require candidates to jump through multiple different hoops to get the job
• Delay on making decisions on who to interview on receipt of CVs, who to bring forward to 2nd interview and at offer stage
• Companies that take their time to get offer letters and contracts out to candidates post offer

?Unsurprisingly are the ones that find that candidates have been snapped up by then elsewhere, and have to repeat the interview process.

But there are success stories.....

We have had a client this week for a Senior role in their organisation complete the process for hiring within under 2 ? weeks of initiating us to locate candidates for them.

This includes review of CVs, 1st interviews, 2nd interviews (face to face) and offer – unsurprisingly they are likely to secure their 2 chosen candidates – both of which are excellent, with directly aligned backgrounds – whilst other roles the 2 candidates were interested in before this company’s roles were introduced to them are still waiting to conduct 2nd interviews.

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In recruitment of course we don’t have a set day with an 11.00pm cut off point for hiring – but maybe there is a lot to say, if you are a hiring company or manager, to adopting a similar level of urgency and agility that teams have on Transfer Deadline day to ensure that you attract the best talent before somebody else does.

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