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If you’ve been hiring over the last few years, you’re probably thinking: recruiting is never easy. You can spend periods waiting for applications to trickle in and then the labour market changes, and you’re drowning in a deluge of CVs from a range of candidates with wildly different backgrounds.
While it might be tempting to wait for the job market to be just right (like Goldilocks), business realities dictate needs, which means adapting to hiring in the current candidate-rich environment.
We’ve talked to experts in recruitment and small business to guide you on how to handle those sack loads of applications, avoid common mistakes in the hiring process, and find the best match for your organisation.
Hiring your next employee is the most important thing you’ll do this year
The first thing to say is, congratulations, your business has a newly created role or you’re confident enough to be replacing a member of staff as they move on. Not everyone is in this fortunate position, so feel good about it.
The next thing to stress is that hiring a new member of your team is not something to be taken lightly. Be prepared to invest significant time and to give it the priority it deserves.
Josie Adlam, business coach and mentor with The Icehouse, says your people are the most important investment and hiring means adding value to the business. “This is an investment of time, it’s a curve that spikes up in the beginning to give you freedom down the road.”
One of the first things you’ll have to decide is whether you handle the recruitment process yourself or use a recruitment company to help. A traditional recruitment company will typically charge you a referral fee of 12-18% of the placed candidate’s base salary and often include a 3-6-month free replacement guarantee to re-recruit the role if the person doesn’t work out.
There are other agency models that charge for the recruiters’ time and expenses, but add no placement fee at the end.
If you use a recruiter, make sure they know your industry
If you outsource the recruitment process, make sure it’s with a specialist not a generalist, says Jonathan Rice, co-founder of pay-as-you-go recruitment firm, JOYN.
Using a specialist recruiter who knows your industry sector well, and has current networks and knowledge, can provide you confidence that they know what and what not to look out for in applicants, he says.
Consider partnering with a recruitment agency that encourages a collaborative role in the hiring process, allowing you to see candidates in the funnel, and highlight picks they might have missed.
Don’t make these common mistakes with your job ads
Underselling the role
If you’ve decided a recruitment company isn’t the way you want to go, the next step is crafting an excellent job ad.
Talent Seed director, Tania Howard, often writes job ads for clients as it's not always something employers are good at. She's seen a lot of bad hires in the last few years due to getting the job ad wrong.
“Often the job ad doesn’t sell the role. It’s all about what 'we' - the employer - wants from the employee they’d like to hire."
Remember, developing an effective job ad is as much about selling the potential candidate on the role as it is screening for the right hire.
Her advice is to describe the role so that people can visualise themselves in it, and to mention the benefits early on. She recommends including a short questionnaire within the ad, tailored to the job’s needs.
Not including a screening question
For a recent packing job ad that attracted over 600 applicants, one of the questions was: ‘Are you physically fit, and able to spend an 8-hour shift on your feet and carrying boxes up to 20kg in weight?’
The well-targeted questionnaire meant Tania only had to look at 20% of the applicants who passed the qualifying question.
Employers often make the position description too broad. On one hand, you may receive a high volume of applications, but on the other, many will be unqualified or a bad fit.
Jessica Cree, senior recruitment consultant with Source + Select Recruitment, says less is more when it comes to applicants: “If you get a lot of applicants without the skills the role requires, that’s telling you your ads are wrong.”
Josie Adlam recommends describing who would suit the job, but also making it clear who wouldn’t.
“Talk about your industry, the challenges within it, the role's day-to-day tasks, and some of the worst things about it,” she says.
“You don’t want someone starting the job and saying: ‘This wasn’t what I expected’.”
Use applicant tracking systems
If your job ad attracts a lot of applicants, or you’ve posted to a number of job boards, applicant tracking systems (ATSs) can help manage and automate candidate communications.
But if you don’t recruit enough to justify a subscription to one of these systems, most of the main job boards contain candidate management tools such as bulk email actions.
If you’re working with a recruiter, they will have an ATS, and if you’re hiring more than 6 times a year, it may be worth having a standalone ATS, advises Tania Howard.
The main benefit of a standalone ATS is that a business can receive applications from multiple job boards (like Seek and Trade Me Jobs), have them collated in one place making candidate comparison and follow-up a breeze.
Respond to each application
One mistake you want to avoid is failing to respond to applicants, no matter how many applications your job listing attracts.
Jonathan Rice says that job applicants could also be your current or future customers, and these days companies' consumer brands and employment brands are inextricably linked.
Not responding to applicants can cause resentment from and harm the company's reputation.
“It’s a small country - you have to respond and show care and gratitude that they took time to apply,” says Josie Adlam.“This is all part of what builds your brand.”
And if you’ve interviewed a candidate don’t decline them by email, she adds.
Phone-screening will help cull candidate numbers
Another leaf you can take out of an experienced recruiter’s book is to review each CV as it comes in and move immediately to call up candidates who seem most suitable.
Phone screening only takes a few minutes, and experienced hiring managers or recruiters can often tell after a quick call whether the candidate is worth inviting to the next stage of the interview process.
Ensure your prescreening questions are standardised for each call, and you are asking questions that provide you with value. Phone-screening is meant to be brief and high-level, so don’t worry about getting too deep into a candidate’s background.
After you have completed a phone-screening call, you can easily invite candidates to an in-person interview, or let them know that they weren’t the right fit via email.
Consider some outlier or over-qualified applicants
When a candidate with senior experience applies for a mid-level or even junior job, it can raise some eyebrows. But it’s worth making a quick call to them to see what their motivation is. You’ll be able to explain the level of the position, the money and benefits, and see if they’re still interested.
It can be intimidating having a senior candidate apply for a mid-level job but don’t judge a book by its cover, comments Jonathan.
“People’s lives change and they might want to go on a different journey or change pace or focus for a while.”
Now’s a great time to access higher levels of experience and talent while it’s available on the job-seeker market, and at a more affordable salary range too, he says.
Josie also advises considering some outliers among the applications you see.
“Some of my best hires have been people who I’ve thought: ‘They don’t seem typical, I wonder why they’re applying for this role?’”
Employers hire for aptitude and attitude, she says. “These applicants might have talents but not all the experience required. If they have the right attitude and match the cultural fit, they might still work out well.”
Benchmark your remuneration package
Offering a competitive pay package is an important part of attracting and securing good candidates. Small businesses often find it hard to access current salary data, which is where a recruitment agency or HR solution, like MyHR, can really help.
MyHR can provide accurate guidance on what the competition is paying and our HR team is expert at building attractive remuneration packages for your whole team.
Remember, pay is only one factor that will bring people in your doors. If you can’t afford to pay top rates, then think about all the other features of the organisation that an employee might really value, e.g. perks and benefits, a strong culture, or your mission.
Don’t fudge the interview process
After having gone through all the hard work of drawing up a shortlist of candidates you’d like to interview, make sure you approach the interview process with care and thoroughness.
“A casual chat is not appropriate and there’s so much evidence it isn’t an indicator of performance,” says Tania Howard.
Adhere to a good interview guide, which will help you gain proof of why this person might be a good match to the role based on what they’ve done.
With SMEs, it’s all about skills and culture fit. Hiring a new person is such a huge commitment, you can’t afford to get the wrong fit.
She suggests asking a question like: "Our culture is really important to us and our values are critical to our culture. One of our values is transparency. What does that mean to you and how have you demonstrated this in the past?"
You’ll have a number of interactions with the candidate to make sure they’re a good cultural fit. So, on another occasion have them meet their peers at the business, too, and then if it’s a technical role, test them on their skills, or give them an assignment.
Finally, reference checks are very important, says Josie. These are often so cookie-cutter, the referee will only say positive things.
Be smart with your questions, she says. If you confront a referee about a candidate, people can’t flub. Are they giving a politician’s response or are they being genuine?
