At what price HR harmony and recruitment resonance? This is not where I cut and paste Bayt.com's highly competitive employer price list and the litany of completely free Bayt.com jobseeker tools and services. To the contrary, I will take this space to talk about far more expensive things ... such as the cost of getting the recruitment process wrong!
As an HR stakeholder you are probably well versed in the costs involved in mismanaging the hiring process. First, there is the cost of the recruitment method which can range anywhere from nothing for a free job posting on a leading jobsite such as bayt.com with its new free JobsLite product, to a very substantial chunk of annual salary charged by many well-heeled high end executive search firms.
If you use top end external headhunters you may very well end up paying a good chunk of the guaranteed bonus and first year performance incentive as well. But the direct recruitment costs are only just the beginning! What other costs are incurred when the match goes horribly and immediately wrong? Well there are the cost of training, admin, orientation and induction, the costs of visas, permits, licenses and relocation, the costs of flying the candidate over for interviews and vice versa where applicable, and very often nowadays the costs of assessment centres, psychometric and aptitude testing and lunching, dining and entertaining the candidate to win them over.
But even these costs are just the tip of the iceberg. There are other less tangible but more drastic long-term costs involved in poor recruitment.
One is the erosion of general staff morale, confidence and productivity when the status quo is challenged and a hire goes horribly wrong. This is particularly true when hiring mistakes are frequent and are not addressed professionally.
Another is the potential cost of leaked confidential materials and proprietary or privileged information. Yet others include the potential costs of suppliers, partners, affiliates and clients becoming disgruntled and distrustful and unsettled with the change in guard. Even the brand and general company reputation can often suffer significantly with enough HR leakage and the associated dissonant ripples.
So what can be done to hire ''right''? Well, leagues of seasoned HR professionals have written legions of articulate volumes on this topic. If I could choose just 4 pieces of advice from over a decade in this industry I would probably focus on the following:-
1. Take responsibility
Delegating the hiring process lock stock and barrel to external stakeholders however blue chip, white collared and well tailored is often a recipe for dissonance. Instead aim to own internally as much of the hiring process as you can, to build and permate the organisation with a sophisticated articulate HR culture and to disribute the recruitment process internally amongst all relevant stakeholders before you very carefully allocate any elements of it you need to outsource externally.
2. Know yourself
Take stock of the organisational culture, the values, vision, mission and management style then take stock of the culture and management style in the department you are hiring for and then take stock of the exact role and its precise requirements in terms of hard and soft skills, aptitudes, credentials, experience, and other factors. You are in a better position to complete the recruitment puzzle once you are most familiar with the nature of the elements you already hold. Have confidence that you know your organisational needs best and gain that confidence through sound and critical internal examination and assessment.
3. Know the candidate
Only you as an internal HR stakeholder can hold up the exactly relevant light by which to view the candidate and only you can best identify and understand the subtle shades and nuances that set off the right chemistry once all the boxes have been ticked, blanks have been filled and tough questions answered. You can delegate the tests and questions and even describe the exact ''attitude'' and ''aptitude'' you are looking for but in the final analysis no interpretation of the candidates' profile will be mapped more accurately to the company's needs than your own as the internal stakeholders.
4. Reach for the stars
Thanks to extravagently well-endowed modern day jobsites such as the Middle East's #1 jobsite www.bayt.com you are no longer limited or constrained when it comes to reaching out directly to source, screen, shortlist and woo worldclass potential candidates. With ample choice and unprecedented reach now readily available when it come to identifying top talent from across the region and beyond, you can now afford the luxury of taking time to really screen, assess and get to know your candidates and get a feel for their ''fit''.
Don't settle for lukewarm when you can tap into the very best there is. How have I served you by painting this picture of dissonance and placing a weighty burden on your back? I hope I've inspired just a bit! Because there is no heavier burden on any party involved than the burden of making suboptimal decisions with a company's greatest and proudest asset, its people. And yet no lighter load in the long run than in recruiting once you have the people process right! If nothing else I hope you take the reins today and realize there is no substitute for studied informed hiring decisions that come after a laborious process of sourcing, screening and assessing that you are willing to take a large degree of internal ownership and responsibility for.
Whether you use a leading jobsite such as Bayt.com to identify the largest choice of top talent globally or pay an extra sum and use a leading recruitment agency, headhunter or executive search firm that uses a leading jobsite to source top talent, the final analysis chair, synopsis tools and enthusiastic company ''sell'' should really reside as largely with you, the proud employer, as is logistically possible!
