Answer to last month’s business dilemma
A time of economic uncertainty can be just the time to sharpen your recruitment tactics. The exceptionally talented people at your competitor might be more open to changing jobs and you also want to make sure that you’re in the best position to take advantage of the upturn when it comes.
John Hancock from CHPD’s parent company, Capital H Group, outlines his top five initiatives for seizing the ‘opportunity’ of a downturn.
• Have the ability to approach ‘passive’ candidates from your competitors, know who they are and how to open a dialogue. While these star performers may still be ‘safe’ in their jobs, a more uncertain economy may mean they are more willing to speak with your recruiters about a ‘plan B’ in case things do get worse.
• Tighten up your selection/assessment processes so you do a better job hiring the right people. While it is never a good time to select the wrong people, now is definitely the worst time to make expensive hiring mistakes. Plus, in a downturn, you can afford to be more selective.
• Get your (recruiting) house in order by focusing more effective processes, including automation. The job market has been busy for the last couple of years so many in-house recruiting functions have had little time to ‘fix’ inefficient or outdated processes. For example, examine your applicant tracking systems. New software developed in the last couple of years has helped many of our clients become much more proficient.
• Get better at recruiting from within your organisation. Hiring from within is almost always more cost-efficient and typically a safer bet than hiring from the outside. Now is a good time to hone your processes, especially if internal cost-cutting involves layoffs in some divisions while hiring still needs to happen in others.
• Consider whether your business would benefit from working with a partner to help you identify and manage recruitment risk. The right partner should work proactively on your behalf without increasing your overall costs. Sourcing - finding and screening good candidates that match job requisitions - is probably one of the most time-consuming and specialised areas of the recruitment process. Ask yourself whether this needs to continue in-house or whether you can buy such services on an as-needed basis from an outside company. If you anticipate that your hiring will fluctuate greatly over the next few months, outsourcing sourcing may make more sense than doing the work internally.