We all know that the larger a company gets the more difficult it is to manage all recruitment initiatives. In 2011, most recruiters were tasked with finding the right staff and helping to keep that staff productive and engaged. And, with the economy as it was/is, there were a few challenges that recruiters had to overcome in order to reach those goals. According to a 2011 article on ERE, some of the top challenges for corporate recruiting departments were:
- Requisition Load
- Incentive Structure
- Recruiter Skill Set
- Poor Recruiting Process - Disorganized Applicant Flow Process
- Distractions
How are recruiters expected to find top talent and keep them productive when faced with the challenges above? Of course, they had to overcome them. According to a study by Deloitte:
70 percent of mid-size organizations that responded saw improved productivity during the time period study (since the onset of the recession). 62.2% attributed the increase in productivity to improvements in business processes and 50.3% attributed it to improvements in technology.
If we can take this data as any indication of what recruiters did to overcome these challenges and/or could have done, I think we would have seen a lot more productive recruiting (and employees for that matter) in 2011. But let’s not waste this valuable information. How can you improve your business processes for 2012 and what sort of technology could you leverage:
Business Processes: Eliminate administrative work. The more paperwork your recruiters have to sort through and fill out (especially at a mid-size+ company), the more likely things will get lost. Misplacing or misfiling paperwork could prolong the time it takes to respond to a candidate’s application. Poor communication during the initial pre-hire stages can dishearten a future employee, causing productivity to decrease. Excellent communication can prepare the future employee better - helping them reach expectations faster and surpass goals more quickly? Find a way to streamline the process from start to finish. How you ask? Well, have you written out your current process and documented it for all recruiters to follow or do you rely on word-of-mouth training. Creating a simple word document that’s available to all can help cut down on the communication gaps that can often happen in the recruitment process.
Communicate with candidates
Technology: Start implementing technology to drive those business processes. When you become a mid-size company, you can't get away with doing everything manual anymore. First analyze what your current processes are. Then see which areas could be automated. Perhaps resume collection? Maybe the onboarding process? Figure out which processes are seeing the biggest administrative challenges and improve them with technology.
What are you waiting for? It’s never too soon to start optimizing your recruitment program. What are some of the ways that you are improving your recruitment program? And, have you seen a positive impact on your productivity?
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