Recruitment made easy! Are you an Employer of choice?

This is the toughest time I have ever seen in recruitment in the past thirty years when it comes to finding talented staff. Every Employer I have met in the past eighteen months has told me of their same tale of woe. “We can’t find good people!” Finding good to great staff should always be an ongoing process for most businesses. Succession planning, not just for management positions, but for any key roles within the organisation.

Recruitment will never be easy again, but you can do some things to increase your chances of finding and retaining staff.?The first thing is becoming an Employer of Choice. A place where employees want to come to each day. A place where time and money is invested in training staff and an environment that allows staff to make mistakes and rewards and recognises over-achievement. There is no room for bullying, intimidation or even just yelling at someone. People will just get up and leave.?

There are still Employers who treat candidates with contempt in the belief that they are the “Employer of Choice” and you should be grateful that they would even offer you a job. These Employers have a rigorous employment process that puts off quality candidates or by the time they get around to interviewing the candidates whose resumes they select, the candidates have already taken other roles.

We are hearing more and more that employees don't leave companies they leave bad managers.?There is much truth to the statement and employers are realising that they have to spend more time in hiring either the right managers or training mediocre managers in interpersonal and communication skills to ensure that they effectively communicate to staff without making them walk out the door.?

This places an extreme importance on ensuring that when you're interviewing potential candidates that the manager, they are working for will be a major part of the interview process.?This key relationship is rarely given the attention it deserves.

To get the best results make sure your recruitment process provides as much information as possible to allow the candidate to make an informed decision as to whether they will consider working to you not.?This information required is simply common sense. It is amazing how many times it is not provided.?I would suggest suppling a general information leaflet that provides basic company information the candidate would be interested in.?For example, salary range, Job Description, Person Specification, number of staff in team/department/organisation, reporting structure, company turnover, subsidiaries/related entities, mentoring and coaching, training provided, study support, other general benefits, travel requirements, public transport options, and parking facilities.

Career progression potential, the reason for the position, and organisational culture can be discussed at the interview. Now more than ever you need to truly sell the role and your company to potential candidates.

Whether we like it or not the candidate is king and the strategies we have been using in past years to attract them will not work in this current marketplace.