MANY HR hiring managers are currently using recruitment practices that fail to engage job seeking HR professionals, a recent report has found
MANY HR hiring managers are currently using recruitment practices that fail to engage job-seeking HR professionals, a recent report has found.
Many employers simply don’t have their finger on the pulse when it comes to knowing what motivates jobseekers. As a result, they are missing out on attracting the best people in the market to their business.
The report found that less than one in two (42 per cent) of employers include salary information in their job advertisements, while only 36 per cent include information on career development opportunities and 34 per cent cover the provision of training in their advertisements.
“By providing information candidates actually want, companies stand a better chance of attracting the most suitable candidates and thus delivering a better ROI on their advertising,” said Richard Taylor, practice leader for Hudson Human Resources, which conducted the survey of 209 HR hiring managers nationally.
“Employers sometimes choose to leave information on salary, career progression and training opportunities out of job advertisements because they don’t believe their offering in those areas will be attractive, but more often the oversight of such criteria is driven purely by a lack of understanding that these criteria are the most important to candidates in the early stages of job seeking.”
In today’s market, Taylor said jobseekers are spoilt for choice and if an advertisement doesn’t talk to them about the things they feel are important, they will simply move on to the next advertisement.
The research also found that just 33 per cent of hiring managers actively introduced target candidates to their prospective colleagues and senior management during the interview stage, despite this being considered a valuable way of assessing the jobseeker’s cultural fit with the team and organisation.
“Again, I think in many cases employers are overlooking the idea of introducing key candidates to their prospective team because they simply don’t understand the value of doing so,”Taylor said.
“There is also the belief that building a meet and greet into the recruitment process adds another layer of complexity. At a time when employers are working harder than ever to streamline the process, any step that is not seen as absolutely necessary is being removed.”
The upside of providing candidates access to their prospective team is it demonstrates a strong commitment to open and honest communication in the workplace and in many cases drives a strong level of engagement from the outset. “Obviously this engagement is only maintained if the actual experience of the role matches what has been promised,” he said.
The good news for employers is that many of the issues identified in the survey can be rectified immediately by reviewing the content of job advertisements and the interview process and, where possible, tailoring the recruitment process to the candidate’s needs.
“The challenge for employers is to achieve a balance between honesty in the recruitment process and making a role attractive enough to engage the best human resources professionals in the market,” Taylor said.
