We’ve had a lot of interesting articles sent to us this week so we thought we would examine some of the best. You’ll probably notice that they all follow a similar theme: making the best hires; specifically making them reliable, sustainable, repeatable and affordable.
First up we have an amusing and cautionary infographic from staffing firm Vitamin T commented on by Mashable. Warning against the dangers of hiring a ‘zombie’ or a ‘bad employee’ and the financial repercussions of such a hire, the infographic examines factors such as the cost of recruiting and interviews, training, salary, health care, lost business and severance. The results are certainly surprising.
Vitamin T reports that ‘41% of companies estimate that a bad hire costs more than $25,000 [£16,129.13]’ and more alarmingly 25% of companies quoted a loss of $50,000 [32,258.54].
These are undeniably costly errors, and ones that both Vitamin T and BRS Global believe are entirely avoidable.
However, having seen the difficulties and cost a bad hire can run up, the next logical question to ask is ‘How can we avoid a bad hire?’ A question which neatly brings us to our second article, a piece entitled ‘Measuring the success of the recruitment function’ by Talent Puzzle. Rather than specifically zeroing in on the cost of a poor hire like Vitamin T, Talent Puzzle instead are interested in linking the ability to make quality hires back to the recruitment process itself. To quote:
‘To properly measure the effectiveness of your recruitment team, you need to have a much more detailed approach than just looking at cost of hire.’
The article calls for an organisation to have a ‘clear definition of a quality hire across a range of factors’ including ‘intellect, values, motivations and behaviours’; in other words culture fit. It also suggests that having found a suitable or unsuitable hire you can then ‘backtrack’ the channel used to hire them for either future use or disregard respectively. While this careful and cautious approach may initially cost more, the post-hire costs will actually fall. In the words of the article ‘Companies succeed or fail according to the quality of their staff, so if there’s any department that it’s worth investing in assessing, it should be the recruitment function.’ Here at BRS Global we certainly agree with this ethos and always work with clients to understand the factors which make candidates a good cultural fit for their organisation and assess on that basis.
Lastly, if you were looking for some inspiration to draw in those great hires, then look no further than a recent recruitment video from Twitter. Perhaps it is to be expected that the social media giant would produce a funny, short, high impact viral call to action. The video itself is both informative and amusing, focussing on its employee’s sense of fun and creativity and selling their workplace and culture rather than the specifics of the application process itself with even Dick Costolo, current CEO, roped in to play along.
So what lessons can we learn from Twitter et al? Invest time in your recruitment process, make sure it works well and can produce consistent high quality hires. Learn which channels direct the best candidates towards you. Match your advertising to your culture fit and encourage your potential employees to connect with you in interesting ways (where appropriate).
This all sounds good but is something you may find difficult to achieve if you have limited time and resources. Why not give BRS Global a call on +44 20 7748 4393 and talk to our team about setting up a talent pipeline to provide an on-going stream of high quality candidates to support business growth and staff turnover? Alternatively you can email us at contact@brsglobal.com or see our website for more information http://www.brsglobal.com/our-services/talent-pipelining/.
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