If your business is trying to recruit new people at the moment, then it should be easier than ever to find the right people. The current economic climate means that many businesses are cutting back, making redundancies, or just not recruiting at present. This means that the market is flooded with candidates, eager and willing to fill your vacancy – and many of them are well qualified and have relevant experience.
So why is it difficult to recruit the right fit? The answer may lie more in your recruitment processes and business culture, than a lack of suitable candidates.
Flexibility
It is widely recognised in the recruitment world and beyond that an employer who offers flexible working is going to find it easier to fill their vacancies.
But what does flexibility mean? It isn’t enough to advertise that your business supports flexible working. Job seekers are delving more into what that means an employer offers – and unless the offer is right, they won’t accept the role (or may accept it and keep looking for something better.
Flexible working covers a whole range of things, from remote or hybrid working, to varied or variable working hours, to term-time only working, to job sharing. There are many possibilities – probably as many as you have people in your workplace.
Tapping into new pools of candidates
If you want to attract some untapped pools of candidates – people returning to work after time out (maybe to start a family or to go travelling); people with caring responsibilities; older workers; ex-offenders; ex-military – then you need to find out what they might need to enable them to work well for you.
If you can offer remote working, then you can attract candidates from anywhere in the UK (or even beyond, with some caveats). In spite of a recent trend of big employers expecting people to “return to the workplace”, the evidence shows that only a small percentage of business leaders believe that the move to remote working had a negative impact on staff performance. Whilst not all work can be done remotely, if you are willing to adapt your workplace culture and job design, you might find that you can offer a much greater deal of flexibility.
Do you really want to go back to the days of “presenteeism” when people are in the workplace, just watching the clock until they can leave, but not actually achieving anything? Or when people are coming into the workplace with a cold or stomach bug and passing their germs round so you have a sudden period of increased sickness absence across the whole workforce?
Alignment of values
Today’s employees (and potential employees) are attaching more and more importance for their employer’s values to chime with their own. There is more expectation that employers will show empathy, will be keen to increase workplace diversity, as well as wanting to put more focus onto the health and wellbeing of their employees.
More and more, we want to know that businesses are exhibiting compassion, kindness, care – for their employees and for the world beyond. We want our employers to support marginalised groups in society and in the workplace. We also want to see our employers “walk the walk” as well as talking about how ethical they are. We want some proof this is not just words. If a business is advertising their environmental initiatives, or their equalities policies, or their support for mental health, then we want to see evidence of that within the workplace. Our recent blog looked at this issue in more depth.
If your employees (and candidates) believe that your policies and programmes to tackle some of the inequalities in your workplace are authentic and genuine, then they are more likely to be engaged and to want to stay. If you make genuine steps to improve these things in your business, then you will find it easier to recruit and keep a loyal and engaged workforce.
How do your leaders and managers behave?
Leaders and managers within your business must exhibit the values and ethics of the business. Otherwise, employees and candidates will think your values are just empty words. If you truly want to encourage a more diverse workforce, then you need to train your managers in how to avoid unintentional bias, how to communicate well with people, how to encourage and support, rather than berate and blame.
Managers who show empathy and adaptability can lead teams to greater heights as employees will feel more inclusion and wellbeing and they will want to stay. There is an old adage that people don’t leave a job, they leave a manager – as with all clichés, there is a large grain of truth in this. We want to feel valued, we want to be trusted to work autonomously, but to be able to ask for support when we need it.
If businesses can get this right, it can help to reduce the likelihood of employee burnout or stress related sickness.
And these traits should all be part of manager training for interviewing to fill vacancies. If candidates are interviewed by a manager who shares their values, who exhibits signs of empathy and support, then they are far more likely to be keen to take a job that might be offered. And remember, it is the candidate’s choice as well!
Academic achievement, or skills?
Businesses often assess a candidate’s ability to do the vacant role by looking at their CV or job application and the list of their academic achievements. You may want them to have a degree or some academic qualifications to prove their aptitude for the role, or maybe their ability to learn. This can be a bit of a “hit and miss” approach to assessing someone’s suitability. Even if their degree is in a subject related to your role (and it often isn’t), you cannot assume that just because someone has been able to pass a study course, they have the right qualities to do the job for you. Equally, the lack of a formal qualification doesn’t show that they won’t be able to do the job.
A skills-based hiring system is potentially a better way of assessing whether candidates are a good fit for your role. Someone might have several years of relevant experience, without any formal qualification. If you want your hiring system to be a)accurate and b) diverse, then you might want to consider that many potential candidates will not have a formal qualification, or their qualification might be from a different country. Looking at experience of using the required skills, or an aptitude for learning new skills might be a better way of assessing suitability.
Additionally, so called “soft skills” might be even more important to assess – can someone communicate well? Does someone demonstrate critical thinking, team working, customer service, problem solving , written communication skills? If they have the skills – do they have the right attitude? Do they want to work? Do they want to demonstrate their skills or learn new ones? Do they want to contribute to the success of the team?
Hiring for potential, rather than an exact fit, can be powerful in helping a business to move forward and thrive.
Salary transparency
Many job adverts still fail to include a salary range that they will offer for the role. Yet research shows that 75 per cent of applicants would be more likely to apply for a role which was open about salary ranges. It is soul destroying to go through a recruitment process for a seemingly ideal job, only to find that the salary is not at the level you expected. If the advert was honest about salary, candidates can self-select themselves out of the process if the business cannot meet their expectations.
On the subject of salary, many application or interview processes demand to know current or past salary levels. Again, a large percentage of applicants (65 per cent) do not feel they should be asked this information as it is not relevant. A company should be confident in the salary they are offering for a role and that decision should not be based on what someone has earned elsewhere. There is plenty of market salary level information available to allow businesses to set a salary range which is applicable for the role, regardless of what someone has been earning elsewhere.
The recruitment process is a two-way street and it is a chance for the candidate to assess whether they want to work for your business, as well as for you to decide on their suitability for your role. Many will feel less positive about you if you have asked about their salary history. They would prefer you to be paying what the role is worth, rather than the bare minimum your favoured candidate will accept.
What is it really like to work here?
In these days of social media and digital communication, we are very used to basing decisions on recommendations and referrals. Sites such as Glassdoor allow your candidates to look at what people who have worked for you think. Of course, this is only a snapshot, but it can make or break a candidate’s decision to accept a role with your business.
Case studies and storytelling can be useful tools to use in advertising your vacancy. Involving current employees in the interview process can also help. But this is only useful where your company is displaying it’s values and ethics throughout the whole hiring process (and beyond).
If you find your ideal candidate and they accept your role, they can still vote with their feet and leave if they find that the reality is not what was presented during the interview process. More and more people are willing to take that risk and look for a more suitable role.
As always, Heartfelt HR can support your recruitment processes and help you with any of these issues to improve the quality of people you can attract and keep.
