When you listen to almost every successful business leader or entrepreneur, they always bring up the employees first. I often wonder though, how this is actually handled in real life and why for example the recruitments are not given the weight they actually deserve.

In this article, based on my own experience, I give the five most common reasons why companies fail in their recruitments:

1. Not carefully crafted Job Descriptions

This comes up so many times when we go search for a new employee for one of our clients. It is as if the customer already created a profile, according to which the search should start. However, when we look at it, we notice important gaps in it. When we then start asking more specific questions, we find that the client very often hasn’t even thought about them, let alone be able to answer them.

And not that we pose some very absurd questions, but sometimes when we ask, for example, how a person’s success in a task will be measured, there’s a completely silence in the meeting room.

2. Wrong channels

Especially when companies are looking for a candidate themselves, they often put up a job advertisement on different channels online, whether it’s their website, LinkedIn or a local job portal. Equally often though, a company does not have an understanding of whether the channels in use are the best for their need. They have always used those and will always use the same.

Marketing applied to Recruitment, is no longer about placing an open Job Vacancy somewhere where it would be obvious that it should be, like the company’s website. No, it is about positioning strategic call to actions, in such a way that it reaches people in places where they spend time anyway (eg. Instagram, Facebook, Podcasts, etc). I’m referring to targeted advertising on digital channels of course, which are Paid Ads.

3. Poor job advertisements

I would venture to say that the 10-70-20 rule applies to job postings, as it does to so many other things in this life. 10% of job postings are impeccable, 70% are ok-ish and 20% of them are of the sort that should have never been published in the first place. These are those types of job ads that raise no interest, do a horrible job at selling a job or company to a candidate, lack most of the relevant information, and on top of all this, contain an insanely long list of different requirements and expectations that are unrealistic for one single person.

4. Non-existent Employer Brand

The fact is that most companies or brands are actually quite unfamiliar to the general public. Especially when talking about them as employers. Few are the companies that come to mind that focus specifically on this side of their Marketing and also become known as a good employers, which is an entirely different game by the way. Google is famous for example for their comfy offices with deluxe chefs that spoil the staff each time, massage therapists and video game rooms.

However, it is not all that important for the success of recruitment process, how quickly the candidate recalls your brand, especially if those three points above are in order. In addition, there has been an emphasis on how the company is positively highlighted in different channels, on websites like GlassDoor for example you can read dozens of reviews on how a company actually is on the inside. The first thing an interested job seeker will do after reading a job post is that he or she will visit the company’s website as well as other social media channels and will make a decision as to whether or not to apply for the job.

5. Unskilled Recruiters

There is no Recruiter’s degree or University, and this is probably one of the reasons for which recruitment is widely believed to be something that everyone is capable of doing. Not always the case, quite frankly. The worst situation is actually when the person in charge of the recruitment, does not understand the profile being sought (this happens more often that what you would imagine unfortunately).

In addition to that, very often she/he also does not understand how the recruitment process should be handled. An unfortunate combination that occurs in many cases, sadly.

In order to be successful in recruiting, it would be good to focus on keeping the five aspects mentioned above in order. One more of them may divert a bit, in one way or another, but doing poorly in two already, then it starts to get pretty hard to handle and the process might take much longer or end up with unsatisfactory hires.

Teemu Ruuska

CEO

InHunt World

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