THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS

We often hear it said that “you cannot get blood our or stone”. One of the business processes that lend truth to this saying is – the recruitment process.  For any organization to meet its goals and objectives it must recruit the right talent and devise strategies to further develop and retain that talent, if deemed necessary.

If one needs to employ a driver one of the first requirements has to be that the individual is a certified driver and possesses a valid Driver’s License.  Let us extend this thinking to any other job position or title. You need an inventory clerk, first competency that comes to mind is numeracy, the ability to count, the ability to write, the ability to read, computer literacy.  What about a Customer Service Representative – that person must be customer centric in essence they must like people.  There are people who do not like people and would be very happy sitting in a back office crunching the numbers and producing intricate reports in a timely manner.  It would be ludicrous to recruit such an individual to sit at the front desk and smile at customers, to attend to their every whim and fancy or be polite and answer when they are spoken to, or to get information because that is what the customer requires at the time.  You get the picture.

Why then do we continue to pay scant or little attention to the recruitment process?  The recruitment process can be particularly expensive it not properly executed.  There are costs involved. These could be advertising, the time it takes to short list, to set up interviews, to make calls to persons to be interviewed, the cost of the members of staff participating in the interview, the work involved after the interview, following up on reference checks, ensuring the authenticity of certificates, contacting successful applicants etc.  After you have incurred all these costs then there is the on- the- job training that has to take place.  If the process was not successfully carried out the result will be early dismissal most times before the end of the probationary period.  And the reason for this is that there was not a job fit. The individual did not meet the requirements necessary to perform the job whether it was lack of knowledge, lack of motivation, poor attitude, or general misfit for the job. Poor job fit could result in more subtle costs, these  would be loss of efficiency, possible poor customer service,  loss of business, unnecessary conflict and demotivation of existing staff,  drop in delivery standards, time and money lost from rework, cost of errors,  It all adds up, every reason why closer attention must be paid to the process of recruitment.  There are also implications for your Performance Management going forward.  These are all implications of a poor recruitment and selection process.   A cost most businesses can ill afford but are not aware of because it is not easily quantified.

It is important that we know the objectives of the job.  What do I want the job holder to do? What is the purpose of this job?   To execute this job at its optimum what are the key skills, knowledge and abilities that the individual must possess. In addition to qualification you need to know what behavioural traits, qualities and values that you require. You must in effect know what competencies are required to effectively perform in that job. After you have undertaken this exercise you are then in a position to begin to identify suitable candidates for the job beginning with your application screening process. You know what you need and what you are looking for.   You line of questioning during the interview must be aligned to these competencies that you require. Questions should not be asked just for their own sakes, but to determine whether the individual possesses the competencies required for the job.  That is why it is important that we use behavioral and situational type interview questions compared to the traditional type questions that were ask in the pass.  The traditional questions have their place but primarily for information gathering purposes such as; what are your salary expectations?  If you were to be offered this position how soon are you available for work? 

The logic behind the use of behavioural questions is, how you behaved in the past will predict how you are likely to behave in the future i.e. past performance predicts future performance.  It is also surmised that behavioural and situational questions are more difficult to rehearse and that candidates are more likely to be truthful in responding to that style of questioning.  You are also able to ask the same question in different ways.  It also provides the interviewer with an opportunity to check for inconsistencies and to determine how the candidate would act in a similar situation.

There is the wrong way and the right way to recruit, to conduct an interview for the purpose of recruitment.  From sourcing candidates through to the interview its self and the post interview activities.  We at Celestial Self Development Centre can help you sharpen these skills and guide you into ensuring that you investment of time and money is worth it.  Contact us to participate in one of our scheduled training sessions or to arrange a customized session for your team members.

We can be reached at celestial@candw.lc; or visit our website at www.celestialsdc.com