Hiring the right candidate for a vacancy is far from an easy process. This is after all, why companies assemble expensive HR teams and outsource hiring needs to specialist recruitment firms. Hiring the right person is a process that presents numerous challenges. In this article we look at five of the most common corporate hiring problems and your company can fix them.
1. Cost of hire
The real cost of hiring is said to come in at around 20% of the employee’s annual salary, in the $30,000 to $50,000 mid-level pay grade. This equates to between $6,000 and $10,000 for just one employee. Multiply this by all new positions and replacing employees when necessary and the cost becomes significantly high.
Then there is employee retention. It is expensive and disruptive when an employee leaves. It creates a headache for the department that loses the worker and by extension, the company as a whole.
What you can do
To reduce hiring costs requires a multi-layered approach. Improving the company’s brand image will make attracting candidates much easier and therefore reduce the cost of advertising vacancies. This typically comes with time, through marketing and the growth of the company. There are many other processes, including rewarding employees for referrals, partnering with local universities, industry associations and institutions, and consulting recruitment specialists.
Aim to retain employees by aspiring to create the type of working environment and challenging role that makes them happy and keeps team morale high. Regular training programmes, for instance, have been proven to lead to greater employee retention rates and lower recruitment costs (costs which are much higher than the costs of implementing training programmes).
2. Poor process
Writing inaccurate or unappealing job descriptions. Failure to implement and follow a streamlined, structured recruiting process. Failure to ask the right questions at the interview stage and truly examine the candidates appropriately for the specific needs of the role. These are just some of the problems during the search and selection process that create recruitment problems and lead to poor hiring decisions.
What you can do
A hiring road map is vital. A recruiter or hiring manager must outline a detailed structure for the hiring process, aimed at recruiting the ideal candidate by a specific target date. This process workflow should be the blueprint for all hiring needs. This streamlines the process and ensures that no unplanned, irregular practices are used.
3. Lengthy periods of time to hire
Companies can spend months searching for the right candidate, and often they simply can’t find the right person at all. Leaving a position unfilled for many months means that the business is missing an important element in its optimised functioning. This inefficiency causes a number of costly issues.
What you can do
This problem arises in particular when a very specific, specialised role is vacant, when there is a small local talent pool or any of a number of other reasons, such as too much competition for candidates.
Making the company and position more attractive to candidates helps enormously, ensuring that the position is advertised in the right places and reaching the right potential workers. The hiring process must be streamlined for efficiency and lastly, outsourcing to recruitment firms who specialise in sector-specific hiring provides companies with the labour they need.
4. Candidate quality
Does the candidate have the skills that your company needs? Are they responsible? Are they experienced? It is a challenge to find a candidate who ticks all these boxes.
What you can do
Widening the talent pool where your company searches for candidates increases the likelihood of locating the right person. While it can be expensive to invest more of your hiring budget, is it even more costly to risk waiting months for the right person to come along? Often, it makes more financial sense to spend more to find the right person as quickly as possible.
Additionally, something that many companies do if it proves difficult to attract the perfect candidate is offer training programmes to bring new hires up to the standards required. They identify the candidates with the right foundational education, work experience and drive that they can develop.
5. Competition for the best talent
The best candidates often have their choice of who to work for. How can you stand above other companies? This is especially difficult if your competition for human resources are well known brand name companies.
Solution
Are you paying enough? Are you offering more than rival companies, or at least, the same? What about additional perks and benefits? Holidays, company equipment, travel, culture, the social aspect and so forth. Companies are increasingly coming up with more interesting ways to incentivise jobs and attract the best talent. If you can’t compete on financial packages for instance, what can you do to make your company stand out? What is unique about your organisation that no other company can say and might help to attract talent? It could be flexible work hours, great team spirit, medical insurance, the company’s mission and so forth.
Want to discuss any of the above? contact us on info@mselect.iq