The HR Advisor

How To Overcome HR Challenges in Recruitment and Selection

Recruitment and selection meeting

Recruitment and selection is arguably the most challenging and impactful HR function. There are so many moving parts to get right, from positioning your business as an 'employer of choice' to ensuring new hires are a cultural fit.

Many businesses resolve to merely hire the best of the candidates that apply within a defined timeframe. But, what if all the candidates that apply are not suitable? How do you get to a point where you can choose between A's, not C's?

How well you overcome the myriad of HR challenges in recruitment and selection is what ultimately defines the quality of the people you attract and retain. So, let's explore some of the most prominent elements.


Your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

In the same way that your business invests in marketing its product and services to current and prospective clients, you need to ensure that you are putting your best foot forward for current and prospective employees.

Start by defining the unique and valuable reasons why your ideal candidate would want to join your team. Then, establish how to communicate all these key benefits; aka your EVP.

Your job ad needs to concurrently act as a mechanism to establish the requirements for the role while also being a tool to generate interest and desire within your target audience. Your job ad is the first impression that potential candidates will get about the company and the role, so make it stand out!

The four aspects of successful employee value propositions are;

Career: the promise of job security, training and development and opportunity for growth and progression personally and professionally.

Work environment: a positive environment with recognition and a healthy work-life balance.

Culture: an inclusive, flexible culture with a sense of social responsibility, team and common behaviours demonstrating the company’s vision and values.

Remuneration and benefits: the importance of fair remuneration and benefits together with the increasing importance of non-financial benefits, such as working from home, unpaid leave and flexible working.

Hiring managers need the right skills

Providing training to your hiring managers so that they are confident in conducting interviews will make a huge difference to the success of your hiring process and outcome. By giving them two simple tools; interview training and competency-based interview guides, they will be on their way to hiring top talent.

Behavioural interview training will give hiring managers a better understanding of the importance of consistency and job relevance when interviewing candidates.

Knowing that a potential employee is interviewed by a well-trained hiring manager is important in any company’s hiring process. The interviewer must ask the best questions to properly understand how the candidate would do the role and fit into the company. Failing to do this opens the door to brand damage and potentially a breach of employment law.

A fair, consistent and efficient process

It’s critical to ensure that the interview process is a great experience for all candidates. This is achieved by having a consistent template for interviews which contain behavioural based questions on personal attributes and behaviours, which are already defined in your job descriptions.  Doing so allows for a suitable comparison of responses.

Successful recruiting starts with job fit but then moves quickly to cultural fit. Most skills can be taught, but values can seldom be learned! Once a candidate meets the basic skills required, you must consider if their personal values are a good fit for your business. An effective way to do this is to implement your company values into the hiring process and ensure that their behaviour will fit the expected behaviours for your culture. Behavioural questions in the interview process allow you to achieve this.

Be on time, be organised and follow up with every person that you interview. Professionalism and efficiency throughout the hiring process ensure that candidates walk away with a positive connection to your brand.
 

Retaining your talent, especially millennials

It has been estimated that the real cost of recruitment in Australia can be upwards of 50% of a person’s salary. Costs include advertising, recruitment fees, interview time and resources, as well as induction and training expenses.  So, it is important to focus on attracting the right candidates and retaining them.

Millennials have a reputation for moving jobs regularly as they typically don’t attach to organisations. Before you conclude that this cohort of young Australians won't have much representation in your business, the eldest of the Millennials will turn 40 next year, while some of the youngest are university graduates with a few years industry experience.

The majority of millennials expect to change careers at some point which is why employers must have meaningful career and development conversations which are linked to succession planning and talent processes. 

Overall, there are many HR challenges in recruiting and selecting your employees, but if you have a well thought out strategy which includes the aspects mentioned in this article, you will be well-positioned to attract and retain the talent needed to grow your business.

 

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Topics: HR Tips HR Advice