Businesses that regularly fail to review their recruitment model are likely to be repeating poor practice, wasting money and alienating candidates. If your business conducts any level of regular recruitment you should be taking the time to understand what works, what doesn’t and how to improve.
Here are the things we think you need to know and why
1. Applicant Experience
A person’s experience in the recruitment process can be paramount to their perception of a business and improving this experience is essential for any successful recruitment strategy. The Recruitment Audit process enables businesses to adjust their model to make the candidate experience more pleasant, increasing their chances of engaging a suitable candidate.
A Recruitment Audit essentially helps a business understand if their practices are effective in engaging the right candidate. What could be seen as a simple survey can go a long way in helping businesses identify ways in which they can improve their applicant experience. e.g. What do people feel about your recruitment process? Would they reapply? Would they recommend your business to their friends, family and colleagues? Based on the answers, businesses can then identify specific factors within their process which may be causing potentially suitable candidates to drop out.
2. Manager Experience
While it is important to enhance candidate experiences, it’s just as crucial that the recruitment process meets the needs of the hiring manager. If hiring managers are given the tools, support and guidance to conduct recruitment properly then it will inevitably improve the business’ recruitment function. There are numerous ways to improve the manager experience which should all be explored including creating a culture of open communication, being clear on the expectations, effective assessment and selection criteria, and creating a thorough briefing/debriefing process.
3. Quality of Hire
All too often recruitment has been incorrectly measured based on number of roles filled instead of the quality of hire. By tracking factors such as whether a new employee passes probation, gets promoted, or exceeds expectations, businesses will have a better understanding of whether recruitment has been successful, and if not, identify how this can be improved.
There’s been an increase in interest around monitoring quality of hire which has led to new ways of measuring and better indicators. Additionally, there are now more sophisticated data analytics tools available that can illustrate the level of quality of hire within an organisation.
4. Sources
Not every recruitment channel will provide the best quality of hire. The Recruitment Audit process enables businesses to track which routes their top talent and new starters come through. This improves the organisation’s understanding of which platforms are most effective in engaging the best applicants. Businesses can then begin to adjust their spend accordingly i.e. less recruitment agency and more social media. Once adjusted, businesses will then start to see decreased time to hire, increased quality of hire and a greater return on investment.
5. Spend
There are numerous ways for a business to reduce their recruitment spend but to really understand where you can, or should be spending less, you should analyse what you spend your money on. The Recruitment Audit will help you understand the impact of your expenditures and highlight areas where spending less in the short term is costing you more in the long term. For example, a quick hire for a role may seem like a good idea but when they perform poorly and need replacing, you might find it was less costly to be spend some resources on Talent Mapping or creation of Talent Pipelines.
6. Team
For an effective recruitment process, all of the recruitment team involved must be making a valuable contribution. A Recruitment Audit is the best way to evaluate the team and understand if every member is necessary to the process. Through KPI’s and data reviews, the audit will highlight if the team have enough experience, if the manager has confidence in them, and if they’re brand advocates. It’s important to get this right as each member of the recruitment team can add value to the recruitment process when done correctly.
7. Brand
Having a strong employer brand puts the business in an excellent position to recruit the right level of talent. Even if a business does not have a particularly strong employer brand at that moment, the Recruitment Audit allows businesses’ to reflect on their proposition. The Recruitment Audit will identify brand awareness, brand perception, and brand value. Based on these insights you can begin creating a brand strategy which aligns with your recruitment goals, leading to more suitable and top talent being attracted to your roles.
8. Advertisements and Marketing
Talent attraction is becoming increasingly competitive within the digital world, those who fail to create a positive employer brand simply risk being left behind. Arguably the most effective way of building a relationship with potential external talent is through the creation of content. Recruitment content is recognised to improve the reputation of an organisation as well as strengthen their employer brand.
Your Recruitment Audit should measure how engaging, authentic and accurate the content you post online is. Are you reposting job descriptions or creating material which will encourage people to apply? Does your career site convey how great it is to work for your company? These types of questions allow organisations to consider their current proposition, as well as giving them the opportunity to consider newer ways of engaging candidates.
9. Assessment and Selection
Maintaining a robust and objective assessment and selection process should be the main goal for any recruitment team. However, finding the balance between cost effective and fair serves as a challenge for many businesses, although there are recognised strategies for ensuring an effective hire at a low cost.
Internally, Recruitment Auditing can enable employers to consider their own practices in terms of assessing and selecting candidates. Through this process, businesses should be able to evidence both how and why the best candidate got the role. If they can’t, then the process needs to be reviewed. This can go a long way in understanding if the assessment and selection practices are fair and effective in hiring the best quality of candidate.
10. Reporting
Recruitment reporting is recognised as a key aspect within Recruitment Auditing and in ensuring a successful process. Specifically, implementing reporting into recruitment processes enables businesses to generate results in an accurate and timely manner. This is useful as it can be used to present to stakeholders when pitching for a new role, or internally to identify the successes and failures of previous projects. Regardless of the cause, reporting provides key metrics based on costs, time and quality which can support the success of future recruitment.
Is a Recruitment Audit for you?
Hopefully, this blog has demonstrated the value a Recruitment Audit can bring to your business. Whether you’re a Business Leader, HR Director, or in the recruitment team, an audit should be on your agenda.
However, we understand that not all organisations have the capabilities and resources to complete a robust and effective Recruitment Audit. If this sounds like you then you should consider using an expert provider to audit your recruitment model. At Cogito we’ve audited some of the largest and most influential businesses both domestically and internationally with tangible financial results. If you want to know more about how our Recruitment Audit service can help you then please visit here to view our recruitment audit options or contact us.
To read how we’ve helped other organisations visit our case studies page.
Or for more talent acquisition insights related blogs, articles, whitepapers and webinars, please visit the iThink Hub.
