What is common for the most successful leaders and business owners? They all talk about the importance of recruitment. Companies are about people, and to get the best ones you need to understand a couple of things about recruiting. Many companies fail or remain average because of their poor recruitment knowledge, processes or the people behind them.
Here are the 5 most common reasons why companies fail to recruit the best:
1. No clear idea of the profile
As a headhunting and recruiting company, usually when we see or hear for the first time what the company is looking for, the profile is full of holes and missing much key information. Customers are surprised when we start asking and really digging behind the profile, forcing them to think and give us the answers so that we can do our job well. How can you score if you don’t where the goal is?
Another common thing is that when someone leaves the company, they automatically recruit an exact same kind of person and don’t think about how the business might have changed during the past years and what kind of experience and knowledge they may need in the future. Nope – instead they just hire an exact copy of a person who has been in the same role for the last 5 years.
2. Wrong channels
Nowadays there are dozens of potential channels to attract the best candidates. Most companies don’t have any idea about those and are stuck with old traditional ones. Also, based on research for example LinkedIn conducted, most companies doesn’t even bother to measure which channels work for them.
3. Poor job advertisements
Unfortunately, around 80% of the job advertisements I see are poor or just really poor. They are not attractive, not selling the task, missing key information and have ridiculous lists of required skills. And this is not surprising because of the fact I mentioned in the first point. How can you write a good job advertisement if you don’t know what you are looking for?
4. Poor employment branding
The fact is that the most companies and brands are fairly unknown. However, if a company has a good online presence and for example an active and stylishly implemented social media strategy, an unknown brand is not that big issue when recruiting new people. When a candidate is attracted by one way or another the first thing they do is go and check the company’s webpage as well as social media channels. Usually, based on that impression it’s determined whether the application form is filled in or not.
5. Unskilled recruiters
I’ve seen this too many times. Particularly in companies that don’t understand the importance of every recruitment, you see ridiculously unskilled people doing their hiring. The biggest problem in most cases is that the person who is responsible for the recruitment doesn’t have a real understanding of the profile nor the tasks this new person is going to do. As an example, if you have never spent a single day in a marketing job or haven’t studied it, you should not recruit people for marketing roles.
Written by,
Teemu Ruuska
Director, Co-Founder & Headhunter
InHunt World