How can recruitment firms ensure that their next internal hire is the right person?

Taken from Perpendo White Paper: Assessing Recruitment Consultants for Internal Recruitment 

Here's the thing

• 61% of recruitment leaders feel that the biggest challenge facing them for the year ahead is growing headcount

but

• 42% of firms don’t feel that their internal recruitment processes are consistently and effectively identifying the right talent
• 37% of recruitment leaders feel that too many of their new hires aren’t making it through their first year
• 24% of recruitment firms’ internal hires leave within 12 months

As the UK recruitment market continues to grow, the more ambitious and forward thinking firms are now actively considering how they can take a different approach to building their teams to take advantage of this growth and stay ahead of the pack. In particular, the question being asked across many board tables is “How can we ensure that our next internal hire is the right person?”

The short answer to that question is to ensure that internal assessment processes accurately and consistently identify those candidates that will perform well once in role. Or to put it another (slightly more technical) way, increase the reliability and the predictive validity of the assessments that are being conducted.

Predictive Validity is the extent to which the performance in an assessment is related to the later performance that the assessment has been designed to predict. 

In order to increase the predictive validity of your internal assessment process there are two main questions that need to be considered:

• What attributes are predictive of success for a recruiter joining the firm (ie what does good look like)?
• How is the assessment process going to reliably and effectively establish if a candidate has these attributes (without having a negative impact on the candidate experience)?

What attributes are predictive of success for a recruiter joining the firm?

The process of defining what is required by someone in order to be effective in their role is called Job Analysis. This involves collecting and analysing evidence to identify what is involved in a role and the attributes required by someone to be successful.  To identify what it is that makes successful recruiters different from others, it is useful to consider the attribute that relate to four areas: 

• Knowledge & Experience: What do successful consultants know that makes them more effective at their job than others?
• Motivation: What drives successful consultants to achieve and keeps them working for you rather than looking elsewhere?
• Behaviour: What do successful consultants do differently to others?
• Cultural/Values Alignment: How are successful consultants aligned with the culture, values and ways of working within your firm?

By investing the time in taking an objective and evidence based approach to identify the specific attributes that are common to high performers you will be able to build your assessment (and indeed development) strategies and processes on a strong foundation.  

How is the assessment process going to reliably and effectively establish if a candidate has these attributes?

Once you have identified the core attributes that are exhibited by your successful recruiters you can begin to define an assessment process that will reliably and effectively identify these attributes in potential hires.  

When thinking about what an effective assessment process should involve there are many considerations including: the reliability and validity of the assessment, candidate experience and employer brand considerations, the resources required to administer the assessment, time and cost to complete to name just some.

To make your internal recruitment as predictive as possible, the key is to select and structure the assessment methodologies that provide you with the insight into the specific attributes that you have identified. There are a wide range of assessments methodologies and tools that can be included in a multistage assessment process. Each has its own benefits and considerations with regards to their application in an assessment process. When thinking about the effectiveness in assessing particular attributes, different methodologies will elicit evidence that relates to particular attributes with varying degrees of effectiveness, so an assessment should build evidence over different stages to be most effective (be aware of over reliance on any one assessment or 'too good to be true' claims by assessment publishers).

Application is key to ensuring validity: one of the major reasons that internal recruitment processes can be less effective than they should be is the way that they are applied. Once you have gone to the effort to identify and/or create the assessment tools and process, ensuring that they are consistently applied by individuals that really understand the mechanics of the specifics elements, why they are being completed and how they fit into the overall assessment and decision making process is fundamental to its success. 

In short

Recruitment firms obviously know how to recruit, it is after all ‘the day job’. However, with internal recruitment (and in particular the impact of bad hiring decisions) continuing to be high on the agenda of the industry it is considering undertaking a review (based on actual evidence!) and refining approaches currently being taken.

Whether starting from scratch or just reviewing current processes, firms that want to ensure that their internal recruitment assessment processes are best able to predict the performance of consultants should:

• Identify the attributes that are predictive of success by taking an evidence based approach to job analysis
• Establish the specific assessment methods that provide the best measures of these attributes in candidates
• Structure the different assessment methods in a formalised assessment process ensuring that they are consistently applied and give an excellent candidate experience
• Ensure that everyone conducting assessments understands: the mechanics of that assessment stage, how that fits in to the overall decision making process and the business imperative in getting the decision right
• Continually evaluate the assessment process using key metrics to establish where improvements can be made.

Taken form Perpendo White Paper

Assessing Recruitment Consultants for Internal Recruitment: How to ensure your assessment process is predictive of performance.

If you’d like a copy of the full paper which discusses in more detail considerations around establishing the attributes of successful consultants and different assessment methodologies that can be used to gather the evidence contact [email protected]

About Perpendo Talent Solutions

Perpendo Talent Solutions is an assessment and talent management consultancy dedicated to the recruitment industry. Perpendo supports recruitment firm to identify and realise the potential of their people to maximise business results. 

If your recruitment firm wants to consider a new approach to its internal talent strategy or processes (which might not be as painful as you think to implement!) and you want to find out more about how Perpendo might be able to help contact James Crichton via LinkedIn or at [email protected]