If the candidate has made the effort, why shouldn’t you?

Few employers enjoy the recruitment process. Some are more thorough then others, but it is rarely anything other than a long-winded, stressful process.

Are you performing as an interviewer?

The problem many find is that, at a time when unemployment levels remain high, businesses can be unrealistic in their expectations, or attempt the en-masse interview approach when attempting to find the right candidate.

For example, is it really fair or worthwhile to make graduate-after-graduate traipse down to your offices, for a 10-15 minute interview?

And, just because there are stacks of candidates, doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to find the perfect candidate. You’re not. Because they don’t exist.

The point is, whether you have 5 or 500 applications for your position, you need to know that you’re getting the best candidate out there.

And you can only know you’re getting the right candidate by ensuring that you are using all of the tools at your disposal.

With the help of social media tools such as LinkedIn, recruitment can now be a much calmer, simpler process. LinkedIn not only enables you to make a ‘passive’ (someone who’s not applied) candidate ‘active’, but it also now gives users an ‘apply for job’ option.

Better still, is their recently unveiled Talent Pipeline, a tool which instantly gives Recruiters and Hiring Managers their own FREE CRM tool.

This will make recruitment on LinkedIn easier than ever, giving recruiters an ‘Add’ button that provides them with easy-to-use access to over 116 million CV’s.

So, finding candidates is easy.  However, deciding on the right candidates to interview can be difficult. Why not make it simpler?  A conversational insightful tool such as LAB Profiling will tap into a candidate’s mindset and motivations at work, giving you a clear idea on whether they’re exactly what you’re looking for.

Recruiting the right candidate can be time-consuming and, at times, expensive. But, when a candidate has spent lots of time and money of their own ensuring they give you the best possible interview, surely the least you can do is return the favour?

Sound interesting? Why not find out more about LAB Profiling and see how it can improve your recruitment efforts.

Recrion is a specialist in career and talent management, and works with organisations to retain and motivate their employees. For more information, contact us on 01780 484910 or email katherine@recrion.co.uk. 

Will this job motivate him?

For many, there is no such thing as the perfect candidate.

Even after sifting through 100s of applicants and orchestrating a rigorous interview process, it can feel as if you haven’t found exactly what you’re looking for.  And like many employers who can’t afford to wait for that "elusive" individual to turn up, you adapt the job criteria to suit the individual strengths of the next best candidate.  And then hope they are worth the gamble.

I recently discussed how social media had begun to change the recruitment process, in that it enabled you to broaden your search for talent and tap into passive candidates – who aren’t necessarily looking for a specific job.

But, even if you’ve added Social Media to your recruitment arsenal to source the people you believe will fit seamlessly into your company, what then? How can you ensure that you’re making a worthwhile investment?

LAB Profiling is one way of keeping consistency throughout the recruitment process, ensuring that – from start to finish – you are clear of exactly what it is you are looking for.  So that when you do adapt the job criteria and select the next best candidate you are no longer taking a gamble.  Instead, you are making a confident decision.

The key to making a confident hiring decision, is to understand what behaviours candidates need to have to be motivated to do the job.

For example:

If the candidates are going to be troubleshooting and solving problems most of the time,  they need to be motivated to prevent bad things from happening and have an Away From pattern.

If they are more interested in moving Toward a goal, then they might have trouble recognising what should be avoided or identifying problems.

These two motivations move in the OPPOSITE direction!

The LAB Profile is a conversational tool rather than a psychometric test and is used to assess the candidate's 14 sub-conscious motivational patterns at work.  By understanding what triggers their motivation and then keeps them motivated, you are able to take the risk out of the appointment enabling the candidate to thrive in your environment.

Sound interesting? Why not find out more about LAB and Job Profiling and how it can derisk your recruitment process.

Recrion is a specialist in career and talent management, and works with organisations to streamline their recruitment and retain and motivate their employees. For more information contact us on +44 (0)1780 484910 or visit www.recrion.co.uk

Recruitment moves on

Unless you’ve spent the past three years living under a rock, the growing impact of social media in modern-day society won’t have escaped your attention.

Facebook is no longer solely for teenagers, Twitter isn’t just a device to monitor your favourite celebrity and 100 million people worldwide are rushing to upload a virtual CV on LinkedIn.

The popularity of Social Networking continues to rise, especially with Google+ gaining over 20,000,000 users within three weeks of its launch.

Whether we like it or not, Social Media is here to stay. And it’s only going to get bigger.

In the Recruitment sector, opinion is divided as to whether this is a good or bad thing. What does it mean for the future, in terms of how we go about finding people for our jobs?  With LinkedIn recently giving users an ‘apply for job’ option, giving would-be candidates the option to apply for a position directly through the social network, it’s clear that social media websites are playing a growing role in the job recruitment process.

When recruiting, it’s important to maintain a sense of perspective here and keep our feet on the ground. Social media isn’t going to kill the CV any time soon. But to ignore Social Media websites altogether would be highly foolish.

Recruitment constantly evolves and it’s important to utilise all the tools that we have available. LinkedIn, in particular, gives us the opportunity to make a passive candidate active, approaching quality, highly skilled individuals discreetly.

Similarly, if you’re embracing modern technology and modern-day techniques in the application stage, the interviewing process needs to be adapted to reflect this.

As Recruitment moves on, so does interviewing – with the ‘standard’ one-to-one meeting no longer giving you enough assurance that you have the candidate you really want at a time when fewer employees are staying with a company for a significant period of time.

With passive candidates being approached for interview on social networking websites, it’s more important than ever for both you – the company – and the candidate to get a mutually clearer picture of each other.

One way of doing this is through LAB Profiling.

By using LAB profiling to tap into someone’s sub-conscious mind, you are not only guaranteeing that you have the best person for the position, but you’re also making the interview process much more meaningful and giving top candidates the assurance they need that they are making a sound career decision. Most importantly, you’re also using all of the tools at your disposal.

Sound interesting? Why not find out more about LAB Profiling and what it can offer your business.

Recrion is a specialist in career and talent management, and works with organisations to retain and motivate their employees.  For more information contact us on 01780 484910 or email katherine@recrion.co.uk .

• They a trouble-shooter or target-driven
• What levels of work related stress are they able to cope with
• How much change they need in their jobs to stay motivated.

Yet according to Alexander Mann's Future Fit Recruitment Report, only 33% of HR Directors are good at coming up with creative ways of attracting talent in a market of increasing skills shortages.

The report finds that HRDs purposely have tough skills criteria that are too rigid, with one in five HR leaders admitting there was a lack of flexibility around finding candidates.

Increasingly, as the selection process has become more challenging to deal with, employers need better recruitment and selection tools to understand what truly motivates candidates. One of the biggest innovations in recruitment selection is the LAB Job Profile.

The Language and Behavioural Profile (LAB Profile) is a subtle psycho-linguistic tool that gives us unique insights into the below-conscious motivational patterns we humans have in various contexts and is based on the words people use (it is not a psychometric tool).

Once the job has been profiled by analysing the specific tasks and responsibilities the person will hold, you can use this information to:

• Write job advertisements using the appropriate influencing language to attract the right people and turn off the ones who wouldn't suit the job
• Ask screening and interview questions to understand how closely the candidate's motivations match the job profile and work environment
• Adjust tasks and projects based on the candidate's motivational profile in order to get the best performance out of them once they are on board.

If you are interested in adopting flexible, innovative recruitment methods, have a chat to Katherine Wiid, Director of Recrion, a LAB Profile Practitioner with 20 years recruitment and selection experience. She can be contacted on 01780 484910 or www.recrion.co.uk.

It’s down to the final 2 candidates for a position.  What sways the decision – their education or experience?

This question was asked on a HR LinkedIn forum and 78 comments later (and comments still coming) the results are fascinating. Fascinating because Peter, who asked the question, only gave 2 options to choose from to make the final decision – education or experience.

The comments and responses show that HR and hiring managers all have their own unique preferences when making hiring decisions.

Here is a summary of the hiring decisions put forward:

• Character. Skills can be learned, but getting the right character that fits with the team is gold.
• Education may be important, but the actual value add comes with the candidates’ prior experience in the role.
• You can have the best CV and experience in the world, but if you don't sell yourself you won't get the job.
• Education can be important in the initial years of one's career but the knowledge and the understanding one has developed of his job over the years will always have an upper hand.
• Intuition. Both education and experience are second hand. The success of the position will be more determined by the quality of relationships built from interview onwards than by employee history.
• Time in the corporate environment trying and testing strategies and driving actual results gives someone the confidence to execute on instinct. In that sense experience makes a candidate successful more quickly.

So far it looks as though experience is the overriding choice as being the winning formula in this particular interview scenario.

However, what puzzled me was that no-one thought to consider motivation as being important. Peter could have saved a lot of time deliberating if he had profiled the job and then profiled the short listed candidates to understand how closely their 14 motivational patterns at work match the requirements of the job.

How can LAB and Job Profiling optimise your recruitment and selection process?

LAB Profiling enables you as the interviewer to understand more than just the skills and experience of a candidate.  It gives you an opportunity to test their stress response, interaction with others, creativity and much more.

Katherine Wiid, Director of Recrion, is a Talent Management and Behavioural Specialist with 20 years recruitment and selection experience.  She can be contacted on 01780 484910 or www.recrion.co.uk.

A recent survey by Microsoft found that 40% of HR managers have chosen not to hire a candidate as a result of a negative online profile and a similar figure was found in a survey on behalf of graduate recruiters.

According to Barr Ellison solicitors, there is no current law in the UK  against Googling an applicant but there are laws to protect how the information discovered could be used.

These could include laws against discrimination on grounds of:

• race
• gender
• disability
• age
• sexual orientation
• religion
• or the Data Protection Act.

Even obtaining basic information such as age or marital status could be seen as discriminatory.

Alison Barr of Barr Ellison recommends sticking to information in the public domain and on professional networking sites, such as LinkedIn, and leaving the private information private.

It is good to have a reminder of interview best practice before someone in your business falls foul of the law.

Recrion is a Career and Talent Management Specialist advising clients on recruitment, retention and redundancy.  For  information on our services you can call 01780 484910.

Graduate Talent Pool is a well timed solution for gradudates who face a bleak 2009 / 2010 with only one third predicted to find employment.  The Talent Pool will provide employers with interns on a paid or unpaid basis giving both parties an opportunity to test the water before becoming permanently employed.

Parents of graduates that I have spoken to are despairing after having put them through university in order to become financially independent only to find them graduating with no jobs to go to.  Which is why during the current economic downturn the Government is looking to support graduates seeking work. The aim is for the ‘Graduate Talent Pool’ to support 5,000 internships, building on the 2,000 already achieved through HEFCE’s Economic Challenge Investment Fund and will sit alongside other additional graduate opportunities, including:

• Demand for an additional 14,000 postgraduate places can be met by universities and supported by Professional and Career Development Loans. Up to 30,000 Career Development Loans will be available this year;
• 250 short term placements through Mini Knowledge Transfer partnerships, rising to 500 in 2010/11; and
• Thousands of existing volunteering options available through “V”, an organisation aimed at young people between 16-25, and other voluntary organisations.

Recrion is a specialist in people management and during the downturn is actively assisting employers to find low cost ways of recruiting and retaining their employees as well as providing career transition support to those staff they are letting go.  Find out more about the schemes we are facilitating or call 01780 484910 for more information.

One of the big trends this year is the range of avenues being used by employers to find female talent – from rock climbing communities to teacher organisations as both attract large numbers of intelligent and talented women.  It is refreshing to notice the increase in female friendly benefits such as progressive maternity policies, flexible working and support networks.  A lot of work has been done by the top 50 on articulating their employer brand.  By moving away from the corporate line they are able to explain "what's in it for you." 

It is great to see a list of companies fighting hard to compete for the top awards – they are the companies that will survive the downturn with the best people in place as they recognise that the war for talent continues depite the economic climate.

Recrion is a People Management Specialist that works with organisations to attract and retain top talent.  Visit www.recrion.co.uk or call 01780 484910 for more information on how we can enhance your employer brand.

Every year small and medium firms invest around £300m a year in hiring 250,000 new employees. However, making the wrong choice is costing them dearly.  Research from Jobsite.co.uk reveals that 22% of new starters leave within six months.

As a result, many companies are facing additional recruitment costs of around £1,200 a time to find a replacement.

The cost of losing staff is not only financial. Research shows that losing just one or two employees in a year can cause a major disruption with more than 70% of bosses believing employee departures have a negative effect on business performance (in some sectors this is as high as 81%).

Yet, small firms are doing little to help their cause. Despite increasing popularity of online job recruitment tools among candidates, smaller firms are largely yet to catch on with just a quarter using online job boards. By relying on word of mouth referrals and agencies, small firms are not recruiting in large enough volumes to be able to validate and benchmark their decision making processes.  They also tend  to not use best practice selection methods such as psychometric tests and competency based interviews. 

"Gut feel" recruitment is resulting in hiring the wrong people which can be seriously detrimental to the productivity – and even the future – of small and medium companies, particularly in the current economic climate.

Recrion is a People Management Specialist that advises on robust selection strategies in order to minimise risk, improve processes and reduce the costs of recruitment.  Visit www.recrion.co.uk or call +1780 484910 for more information.