Why You’re Missing Out On Top Talent

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic has brought many industry sectors to a standstill, and businesses are making redundancies. Because of this, many HR professionals believe they will see an influx of quality job seekers knocking at their doors. However, this is simply not true. Instead, quality candidates are sitting tight until the jobs market stabilises. So if your business is relying on this tactic, you could be missing out on top talent.

But what’s the alternative? To attract the best candidates takes a combination of:

• Clever candidate resourcing
• Smooth candidate journey
• Painless interview process
• Quick decision making
• Efficient candidate onboarding process

All of the above need to be in place to attract and recruit the talented professionals your business needs to get through these tumultuous times.

Five Reasons You’re Missing Out on Top Talent

There are five critical stages of the recruitment process where your company could be failing to reach top talent. Addressing each of these areas can make your business more appealing to the best candidates. Furthermore, making each stage of your hiring process as candidate-friendly as possible can increase new employee retention rates.

1 – Not reaching potential candidates

Advertising on job boards is not enough to achieve results in the current climate. If this is your only method of candidate attraction, your business is missing out on passive job seekers. According to LinkedIn, passive applicants make up a whopping 70% of the recruitment market! But how do you reach these people if they’re not actively looking for a job?

Recruitment Resourcers don’t wait for applicants to apply for jobs, they go out and get them. They do this by systematically searching job board databases and social media channels for candidates who are a good match for a role. Once they find their ideal candidate, they make contact and guide them through a screening process instead of waiting for them to apply.

Recruitment Resourcers are 180° Recruitment Consultants who focus on finding the candidates businesses would not otherwise be able to reach. However, most companies can’t justify employing in-house Recruitment Resourcers because they don’t need them unless they are recruiting for multiple roles on a continuous basis.

Solution

Recruitment agencies employ teams of experienced Recruitment Resourcers who specialise in finding niche skills. Therefore by working with recruitment agencies, businesses can reach top candidates who would otherwise be unattainable to them.

2 – Applicants experiencing a poor candidate journey

When candidates decide to leave their existing position, they want to find a new one as quickly and painlessly as possible. So, first of all, applicants need to be able to submit their CV quickly and easily. Next, your recruiting process needs to be as slick and efficient as possible, keeping candidates informed at every step of the way.

Therefore, poor communication, or bottlenecks in your recruitment process, can result in losing top candidates to your competitors.

Solution

Put yourself in an applicant’s shoes and walk through your candidate journey. Then consider how this compares with your competitors. Where you identify bottlenecks that slow your recruitment process down, find ways to eliminate them.

One-click apply, communication within 24 hours of applying and after each round of interviews are a candidate’s minimum expectation. Automate where possible and employ a chatbot to answer basic queries, so you don’t have to.

If your business doesn’t have the technology to achieve that, piggybacking off the technological capability of a reputable recruiter could be a cost-effective solution.

3 – The interview process takes too long

Some companies insist on waiting for ten quality CVs before they draw up a shortlist for interview. Even in the current climate with so many redundancies happening, by the time you see your tenth CV, the first five will have already found jobs.

What’s more, once they have a shortlist of ten, many companies still insist on going through the traditional three-stage process:

1. Telephone interview
2. First face to face
3. Second in-person interview

In large corporations, a recruitment journey like this can last up to six weeks. On the flip side, the best candidates get snapped up in, two weeks on average. Therefore, a six-week recruitment process is far too long!

Solution

The moment you see a quality CV, take action! Additionally, work out where you can employ technology to speed up your recruitment process.

For example, use video interviews instead of calling candidates into your office. Anything you can do to reduce your time to hire will, in turn, reduce your candidate drop off rate.

4 – Hiring decisions take too long to make

Once the interview process is over, candidates don’t expect to have to wait more than 24 hours for a decision. If a decision takes any longer than that, candidates will assume they were unsuccessful at interview.

This might sound like candidates are just impatient, but try putting yourself in their shoes. Haven’t we all experienced feeling ghosted after an interview at some point in our lives?

Solution

The harsh truth is that the longer it takes your organisation to make post-interview decisions, the less chance it has of snapping up the best available talent. So if this is an issue in your business, it needs to find a way to speed up making hiring decisions.

Start by considering whether you are asking the right questions during the interview? Competency based interview questions or behavioural questions can help you identify the qualities you seek in potential candidates.

Alternatively, question whether too many decision-makers are involved in your company’s hiring process. If so, gathering their opinions and getting them to agree can be a challenge. 

Eliminating problematic decision-makers from the process can speed up time to hire and increase acceptance rates from top talent.

5 – Sloppy new employee onboarding process

Once a candidate accepts an offer of employment, many businesses don’t contact them at all until they are due to start. When their job finally begins, companies often waste days wading through tedious paperwork.

However, reading contracts, signing paperwork and ticking health and safety boxes doesn’t have to be done on the job. Such inefficiency can be a real turn off to new employees and leave them wondering if accepting your offer was the wrong decision.

With so much competition in the recruitment market right now, the chance of losing your new hire due to a sloppy onboarding process is high. Remote employee onboarding is particularly challenging because they don’t feel the same excitement about joining a new company.

Solution

Don’t wait until the candidate’s first day to fill out reams of paperwork and dull due diligence. Instead, drip feed it to them on the run-up to their start date and use it as an excuse to make them feel welcome. Automate where possible and use electronic signatures to speed up the process.

For example, one of our clients sends out a Kit-Kat and a branded pen with every employee contract. This never ceases to make them smile and, as cheesy as corporate branding is, onboarding goodies encourage newbies to feel as though they’re part of the team.

Conclusion

If your recruitment budget is tight, the quickest and most cost-effective solution to missing out on top talent could be enlisting the help of a recruitment agency. They already have technology and marketing systems in place to reach the best candidates. Therefore, you benefit from their existing capability without it eating into your time or budget.

Additionally, most reputable recruitment companies place candidates on a contingency basis. This means that it won’t cost you a penny unless they make a successful placement. If you have any questions about this, our team would be happy to have a conversation with you.

We hope you found this article useful. If you did, please feel free to share it on social media, where others might benefit from it too.