Richard Newton
Managing Director, Fresh Learning
This week I have had the pleasure of working with public sector body in the North-West of England, and was reminded of the importance of planning in the recruitment process in order to ensure that you get what you need. All too often we don't consider this, using old materials and poor advertising in order to secure applicants, and then jumping into interviews without having considered fully what we need to achieve from them, as well as not having sifted applications appropriately in order to ensure that we are actually interviewing the right people.
So what are the things that we need to do? Here are some points to consider:
Get the right applicants:
Consider what the role actually consists of - do you need to update it's Job Description and Person Specification. Are you including all of the most relevant and pertinent information.
Have you used positive language in order to sell the benefits of the position as well as the organization?
Advertise wisely
Where will you advertise the position? Will this allow you to reach the target audience for this role.
Would it be better to recruit internally or externally and can networks such as LinkedIn or industry pages/fora provide a better lead? - Giving a bonus to staff for introducing someone can be far cheaper than a print ad or using a jobsite.
Check the W's - Does your advert address the Who, What, When, Where, hoW and Why?
Sift applications to get the right people in the room
Once you have your applications or resumes, sift them effectively to create piles of yes, no and maybe based upon suitability.
In order to determine this, review the job description and person specification. Which aspects of these are essential and which are desireable and how does the person stack up against these?
Remember to remove personal identifying information from the application or resume when possible in order to ensure that you remove any risk of bias from the process and purely look at the person's suitability for the role.
Plan x 1.5
The secret to an effective interview is planning. Typically we don't allow enough time to do this - that is why we suggest that you leave yourself the time you think it will take to plan and then add another 50%.
A lack of planning usually leads to an interview that reviews the candidate's biography. In my opinion this can waste time in the interview as you are esentially covering what you learned from the application. I suggest that you instead create some useful, competency-based questions that really allow you to find aout about the person and their skills, knoweldge and experience. To do this look at the essential and desireable skills for the role in order to determine the specific competencies that you are searching for.
A competency-based question is a question that is designed to allow the person to reflect on previous experience in order to answer, therefore demonstrating competence rather than asking the person to to give a hypothetical response, to which it is more likely that they will just tell you what you want to hear.
Interviews with less stress and more listening
Utilizing the tools above, you will be less stressed as the interviewer going into the interview itself, and you will also typically gain a deeper understanding of candidates in order to select the best person for the job. In my next blog, I will talk about the actual interview, and how we can use effective communication and other skills in order to get the most from this stage of the process.
Fresh Learning offers a range of training and support with effective recruitment and selection. For more information, send us a message using the contact form on the right-hand side of this post or email hello@freshlearning.eu.
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