The field of human resources recruitment is one filled with many time-consuming and costly challenges. With candidate processing, employers seek the best-suited employees for specific positions, often in high volumes, such as retail, customer service or banking. Candidates are in search of jobs for which they are qualified and in which they can prosper. HR departments, frequently without enough personnel and man-hours to properly interview large numbers of candidates at one time, strive to reach the most highly qualified candidates for their employers and create the best possible matches at the lowest costs.
Not surprisingly, this formidable undertaking requires the capture and time-intense scrutiny of all kinds of important delicate information - on resumes, over the phone, via the Web and, ultimately, in person. It can also be very expensive, especially when it comes to advertising for job openings. Not an easy assignment.
Consequently, due to the costly, often protracted and always intricate nature of qualifying and staffing high volumes of positions in short time frames, many companies with over-worked HR departments outsource their screening and staffing requirements to expert candidate-processing agencies. This enables companies in virtually any industry to concentrate on just those candidates who have already been prescreened, and establishes a more time- and cost-efficient process by alleviating the administrative burdens and advertising costs. In turn, candidates enter the hiring process via a high tech/high touch medium that eliminates days if not weeks from the hiring process.
And while there are many capable recruitment firms, unfortunately, there is no industry standard for processing candidates. Often, this means that applicants have to either fill out an application, use a cumbersome Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System, go on-line and complete a lengthy process; cutting and pasting resume information and never really reaching the actual company or learning more about the opportunity. It is an impersonal process that is often frustrating and certainly does not lend itself to capturing the most qualified candidates, quickly. The vagueness in the process and delays in contacting candidates leads to many qualified candidates falling through the cracks. Even in the current employment environment, those companies that can process candidates the fastest and most efficiently have the greatest opportunity to capture the best talent.
While there is no general consensus on which systems provide the best candidate screening and processing solutions for employers, there are several key candidate processing tools that can help ensure a positive employer recruitment procedure. In my experience, there are six critical candidate processing paradigms, which I call the "Six A s of Recruitment Success," that can serve as a guideline for all companies to use as a criterion checklist when evaluating or re-evaluating their employee recruitment process.
It s important to understand that a company s recruitment system, whether an internal or outsourced process, and for any high volume hiring situation, must have the capacity to quickly reach the widest audience possible in order to acquire the maximum candidate flow and field of candidates to select from. Effective candidate processing systems must also provide employers with a variety of ways in which candidates can reach them on a timely basis, as well as make the process easy and painless for employers and potential hires. The most successful screening and processing programs combine personal, hands-on interviewing with technology-based screening tools in order to ensure that good candidates don t fall through the cracks. This is especially important with hourly-wage candidates where high turnover is common.
With these caveats in mind, and based upon PeopleScout research, following are the Six A s of Recruitment Success that can assist employers in optimizing their candidate processing options and strategies, whether internal or outsourced.
Awareness of job opportunities. It is essential that companies monitor and measure the media effectiveness of their recruitment campaign and employer branding. This will ensure they are sending the right message to potential hires and achieving the greatest yield for their advertising dollar. Results are most effective when attained through technological and human interaction sources and measured against a benchmark within an established candidate processing system.
Access to a candidate processing system. Potential employees and employers both require quick and easy access to the process to make it work. This can best be achieved through multiple entry points. A combination of well-publicized, convenient Web access and immediate hands-on interaction with professionally trained recruiters is crucial for winning the race for the best candidates - especially in the hourly employee market.
Assessment of a candidate s qualifications. It is essential that time is not wasted in the area of early prescreening in order to avoid slippage. Good candidates must be determined quickly and without error. A highly qualified candidate-processing company will offer customers a sophisticated methodology that includes Web-based screening tools and personal interviews. If properly done, this kind of process will produce the best candidates in a manner that is efficient and cost effective.
Actionable processing system. It s important to have a proactive candidate-processing plan in place, but a built-in ability to quickly take action is the necessary next step to move qualified candidates through the recruitment process. This includes such functions as initial Web-based screening and real-time interview scheduling to strengthen the candidate s commitment and minimize risk of qualified candidates pursuing other companies.
Administration of the recruitment process. Great candidate processing systems mean nothing without the ability to follow through to the implementation stages. It is essential that a company have in place a good HR staff to administer the staffing and training process once candidates are identified. However, it is equally important that the administrative burden of trivial or redundant recruitment task are eliminated by using an automated or outsource process, so that these HR professionals can be reallocated to high impact HR objectives.
Analysis of the entire recruitment process. A company s HR department should continuously measure the success or deficiencies of the entire recruitment process. Tracking and measuring every crucial step, right down to the hire, will enable you to make fact-based decisions that will maximize your recruitment program. One of the best ways to analyze the success of your recruitment process is to utilize a software system that can seamlessly integrate data transfers from the candidate processing company into an employer s existing system for easy exchange of information and reporting. This enables companies to identify and monitor its best staffing practices and ensure added cost savings and productivity.
With dynamic economic, security and workplace violence issues today, finding, screening and staffing appropriate personnel is increasingly imperative. A thorough background check to weed out certain candidates while identifying good hires and matching candidates to positions within companies is more vital than ever. Most companies, however, concentrating on their core competencies, and often effected by downsizing, don t have the human resources or man-hours necessary to handle the full gamut of candidate processing despite the increased need for attention to detail. Outsourcing many of the time-consuming HR functions by utilizing a highly qualified candidate-processing company, can help employers avoid a great deal of time that might otherwise be wasted in weeding through unqualified candidates. A good agency can work with a company to define its hiring strategy and often reduce the amount of time involved in the entire selection process from four to six weeks to four or five days.
With today s technology, a prescreening recruitment process that is phone-based through an 800 number call center, or Web-based, is far more efficient than paper-based candidate processing. It is during this time in the process that well-trained interviewers, by asking the right questions, can determine the needs of the candidate, including availability, wages sought, experience level, flexibility and general fit with the employer. Only then should the applicant recommended to a company HR department for a final in-depth interview, saving valuable man-hours, time and money.
This approach to candidate processing, utilizing the Six A s identified above, enables employers involved in time-sensitive, large volume hiring, whether due to new store openings or high turnover positions, to employ these tools to develop invaluable and virtually automatic recruiting solutions that are best suited to their companies and the candidates they seek to hire. The combination of sophisticated, high-tech Web-based functionality with hands-on, skilled personal interviewing practices provides a sophisticated methodology that can help alleviate much of the immediate uncertainty and anxiety involved in the challenging candidate processing business, while enabling employers to identify the best long-term candidate processing strategies.
