Fifteen Things You Can Do to Improve the Quality of Your Employment Function
By Kevin Wheeler – Published Nov 17, 2004
©2001–2008 Global Learning Resources, Inc.
1. Survey all hires within the first three months and ask them why they said YES. Identify statements, practices, and behaviors that were particularly attractive to them as candidates. Also probe into what could have been done to make your brand stronger and your organization more attractive.
2. Use customers as a source. They can refer candidates that might be 'in tune' with the way you think and work. Customers can be as good a source of referrals as employees. Offer customers a discount, a free-bee, or some small token of appreciation for every candidate referred.
3. Keep all potential candidates informed about their status and your company through email, electronic newsletters or a blog.. This builds a relationship, develops communications, and instills an understanding of your company's philosophy and culture. It also shows respect for candidates.
4. In partnership with hiring managers, develop a definition and a way to measure quality of hires, hiring manager satisfaction, and time to hire. Cost per hire is of almost no importance to a hiring manager.
5. Do an internal customer satisfaction survey at least once a quarter. Find out what managers think about your function and your service and ask for suggestions on how to improve it. Add a periodic meeting with hiring managers to brainstorm ways to improve the quality of your service, and you will have all you need to make improvements.
6. Make the Internet the hub of your recruiting activity. Develop a web site that serves you well, use it to attract candidates, educate them and communicate with them. Pro vide information on trends and emerging issues, and interest candidates inwhat your company does.
7. Make sure you benchmark your employment function with the competition. One way to do this is to ask new hires what their experiences were at competitors and what processes and practices they went through at other organizations. Ask them to recommend any practices they thought were effective. Know as thoroughly as you can exactly what any competitor is doing (or planning to do).
8. Focus on ANTICIPATING needs by developing some sort of workforce planning system. Usually managers have budgeted for a certain number of additions. You can predict turnover based on history. Together you can draw up a model of the types and number of people you will need quarter-by-quarter and can put in place a strategy to get those people. The more variables you include and the more you get detailed data, the more useful the process will be.
9. Make sure you have developed "feeder channels" to bring new talent into the company. These can be intern programs, school-to-career programs, or other similar methods that will keep building relationships and talent.
10. Aggressively use an internal employee referral program - no matter what they cost, they have proven to bring in more high quality candidates, at lower cost, than any other program.
11. Collect the email addresses of all candidates and get their permission to use that address for later possible tracking. Ask candidates who turned down your offer and find out why. Use a third party, if necessary, to gather that information. The information you get here may be the most valuable of all because it lets you know what you can modify or improve to get more yes's.
12. Decrease the time to get a decision made on hiring. Focus on time to hire not cost to hire! Find out why managers take more time than you feel is necessary to make up their minds and then focus on developing ways to overcome their iuncertainty or reluctance. The faster you can et a decision made and communicated to both the successful candidates and the unsuccessful ones, the higher your close rate will be.
13. Sponsor Internet-based chat rooms or other forums for anyone to ask about whatever it is your company does. Sponsor school information programs. Get employees into classrooms as instructors or guest speakers to build a reputation and relationships.
14. Develop ways to attract, interview and communicate with candidates remotely. Face-to-face is NOT necessary. It will take time to change the paradigm, but if you can do it you'll clearly have a competitive edge.
15. Track your recruiters - who are the highest performers? Do you know why? Can you transfer skills? Same goes for hiring managers. Who make decisions the fastest and have the lowest turnover. Find ways to communicate this and perhaps even give an award to the managers who make hiring decision quickly, who close the most candidates, who have the highest employee satisfaction.