Time For A Recruitment Audit?

Are you frustrated with your recruitment results? Have you had a trend of unqualified applicants and/or a candidate turn down your salary? When it’s time to hire, do you simply repost an old job description, and/or do you take the time to review and determine whether or not it is still valid? When was the last time you conducted in-depth reference checking inclusive of educational credentials, and/or personal credit? And what about your interview team--are they using best practice interview strategies that are legally compliant with provincial legislation? Do you even know what legislation protects your potential candidates?

Depending on your answers to these questions, it may be time to conduct an in-depth audit of your recruitment and selection process.

As external consultants, we can work with you to develop and customize an audit checklist that will meet the needs of your organization.

One of the first steps to ensuring you are attracting the right kind of candidate is to assess exactly what kind of candidate you are truly looking for, and make sure your hiring team agrees on this ideal. This stage of criteria development is the most important process element. Without careful consideration and accuracy, you will be off and running… but in the wrong direction!

The next area of assessment is to figure out where and how you plan to identify your candidates. First of all, have you determined whether or not an internal candidate could be considered? Are you only using one marketing strategy? Is it working? If not, why? Perhaps your methodologies are outdated and/or the candidates you are seeking don’t refer to this source for their news. If you are not attracting good candidates, it is time to do a review of this element of your search strategy.

What process will you use to evaluate your candidates? Is it a simple two-step process: an interview and reference checks? Will you utilize a panel of interviewers or a series of interviews with different members of the management team? Are your interview team members trained on best practice interview strategies? Do you have specific interview questions aligned with the tasks and skills required? Are your questions compliant with legislation? An audit will identify strengths and weaknesses in this area.

The subsequent search element is to select the best candidate. How do you choose your finalists? Do you simply rely on your one interview and a quick reference check? Are you using psychometric assessment tools to provide in-depth personality and character evaluations? If not, why not? What about the background check mentioned earlier? Without a combination of these elements, your selection process is not meeting the standards of best practice.

The last series of process steps include developing an effective employment offer and solidifying the agreement. Are you offering a fair market salary? Have you even checked to see how the market has changed since your last recruitment? Does your salary respect the level of expertise offered by the candidate? Have you defined the salary with respect to internal equity within your organization? If not, you risk losing your good candidates!

The recruitment and selection process doesn’t end the day you have a candidate sign on the dotted line. You also need to create an onboarding and/or orientation program to help your new candidate fit in. What does your program look like? So many new candidates are thrown to the so-called, “wolves” and expected to get to know the lay of the land all by themselves. Be careful, some candidates won’t last!

If your recruitment process has areas of weakness, then you will be at risk of failing to attract high-quality candidates, losing candidates, paying too high a salary, or losing them within the first three months. No matter what, the best and most effective recruitment process is a rigorous, systematic process that must be managed at every step of the way. Perhaps it is time for a recruitment process audit! If you need assistance in auditing your hiring process, get in touch with Paul, Brent, Troy, or Tara, or call us at 519-673-3463 or 416-847-0036.