Make Recruitment a Dream, Not a Nightmare – The Biggest Recruitment Mistakes and How To Avoid Them

What do you picture when you’re looking to hire a professional? Perhaps someone who works hard, brings in business and establishes rapport with your customers, raising the reputation of your company. Now while that all sounds like a dream come true, I’m sure you don’t have to be told that it doesn’t happen all of the time.  

The flip side of this is a recruitment nightmare. A hire gone wrong can mean wasted hours and dollars spent on-boarding and training and reduced morale within the team. With the wrong fit, it’s likely the first to notice will be your customers! 

Needless to say, those who are in the game of recruitment have a lot at stake. Avoiding these crucial errors will help you to sleep soundly when you make recruiting decisions. 

1) Know exactly what you’re looking for

Having a well thought out position description works in two ways.  Firstly it should help to direct job seekers as to whether their skills and experiences are enough to get them across the line. You can save time sifting through resumes by including a polite statement along the lines of “those without the minimum qualifications need not apply”. By spending extra time preparing a position description in more detail, you will also form more tangible expectations of your ideal candidate whereby you can quantify how many boxes each applicant ticks against your criteria, rather than going with a gut-feeling. 

2) Work within your niche

A huge mistake that many make when advertising a job in a specific field is to advertise it on a gigantic, generic job board. The risks here include having your add lost in the depths of the hundreds of other similar positions and frustratingly, having applicants without the relevant tertiary qualifications trying their luck and applying anyway. Using a more specific job board, ensures your job advertisement gets seen by the right people and the right people only. 

3) Don’t forget to consider recruiting internally 

Candidates already within your team are your best asset. Working to up-skill your workforce with continuous professional development can help you to move your employees step up to a bigger role. This may leave a lower ranked position vacant, for which hiring is less of a risk. Another benefit of promoting existing members is significantly boosting employee morale, thereby increasing staff retention. 

4) Keep up with the times 

You are aware that gone are the days of posting a job ad in your local paper. What you may not know is that even non-mobile friendly webpages may not make the cut on the market preferred by the upcoming generation in the workforce. Research suggests that around 80% of millennials expect to be able to browse and apply for jobs on their smart phone. Advertising your job in a way that is highly accessible on the World Wide Web, not only via a computer monitor, but also smart phone and tablet can help you to avoid losing out to the more tech savvy competition when looking to pick up fresh new faces for your business. 

5) Don’t waste your time meeting candidates too soon 

Job interviews take time and are expensive; for an hour long interview, your hourly rate multiplied by the number of job interviews conducted equals a costly process – which if used in isolation may lead you to making a bad hire! Avoid going straight into interviewing everyone and anyone that simply look good on paper. Resumes can be deceiving but questionnaires, especially well formulated psychometric questionnaires, can help paint an unbiased picture of your candidates. They can do much of the work for you and can help you to eliminate those who may not be appropriate  for the job before scheduling out your precious time.

Recruiting right the first time saves time and money. Not to mention helping those in your business to meet their full potential. 

If you would like to chat about an assessment based recruitment approach we would welcome your call.   

Working with assessment partner, Psych Press, Capable People’s recruitment process integrates the full strength of online assessments and video interviewing for fast, job-fit relevant, data-driven results.

• Using science not ‘face value’ – our assessments are catered to industry, role, and function and are able to pinpoint the most promising talent from a large pool of candidates
• We learn about your goals + company  – to  design  custom campaigns and assessments that are tailored to your situation, not just ‘off the shelf’ solutions
• Fast and cost effective – As more and more applicants are online nowadays, so are we! Our online approach allows us to give you great candidates faster, and we’re also able to budget flexibly based on your needs.

Need Capable People? Contact us on 03 9670 4275 or email info@capablepeople.com.au to find out how we can assist your next campaign.

Job Posting Tips: How to Attract Top Talent

If you’re hunting for top talent, writing a compelling job advertisement is the only way to start. Top talent seekers are the ones scrolling quickly through a minimal amount of job openings. To reach these people your advertisement needs to be compelling and instantly resonate with high performing individuals. Also presenting and posting a job advertisement in an appealing manner could reduce the risk of receiving an overload of low achievers and make your life a lot easier. Here are 4 tips to help ensure your job post really stands out and attracts the best candidates.

1. Stand out early
Your title needs to stand out from the other 100 or so job posts that are offering the same benefits. I’m sure you’d be more likely to click on the link that reads ‘SEEKING CAREER DRIVEN SOCIAL WORKER’ than just ‘Social Worker’.

2. Give details
At this point, the jobs seeker only knows the position and company name. That’s all! Therefore, don't hold back when presenting the opportunity and the company in the description box. Give the job seeker some interesting information about the company, because they may have never heard of you. Don’t forget to make it interesting! For example, turn ‘New company located in Melbourne CBD seeks..’ into ‘Exciting new company seeks driven ___________ to join our innovative team with great career incentives.’ Keep your tone and energy consistent, this is all part of walking the talk and showing the true value and culture you have helped build up over your company’s life.

3. “For you to be considered, you must possess the following...”
As a previous job seeker, you may have seen this sentence and then seen it generally followed with ‘great career opportunities and ability to work in fast paced and friendly environment.’ As nice as it was to read that ALL these companies ALL cared about you having opportunities and challenging myself, you were probably longing for the time when you read an attributes section that didn’t look like they’d opened a thesaurus and searched for the word ‘hard worker’. It saves you money and the job seekers time if you simply let them know exactly what attributes or qualifications they need to even be considered for this job.

4. Add some character
Character and attitude in a job description translates so easily into first impressions, and leads to action from top (and time poor) talent! Describe to them what the work culture is like and use language that is going to convince this person excited to work with you.

Good luck with your next job posting!


Advertise your job with Career Exchange, one of Australia’s largest allied health careers communities, with effective direct advertising available for employers.

Career Exchange sends regular job, event, and classifieds alerts to a large database of allied health professionals, with strong branding flexibility for advertisers.

To view examples, prices and to register your free account please visit www.careerexchange.com.au. If you’d like to know about how our partners can engage the branding or hiring process of your next health hire contact info@careerexchange.com.au or call 03 9670 0590

Psychometric Assessments and Hiring Staff

An ever increasing number of employers are identifying the benefits of psychometric testing and are reaping the rewards of adding it to their recruitment process. Gone are the days where ‘gut feeling’ was an acceptable justification, decisions must now be based on tangible, objective data. Furthermore, current research suggests that replacing a skilled-person can cost an employer upwards of 150% of that employee’s annual salary. This means that even one bad hire can be extremely costly! This is where psychometric assessment comes in. Whilst there may be a bewildering array of psychometric assessments on offer, they all aim to provide objective data about a person. This data may be on the candidates’ personality attributes, past behaviours, and intellectual abilities. This information can then be used to predict future occupational success aka: job performance in a wide variety of workplace environments, including sales, human services and even the defence force.  This data can be used to predict how your future employees make decisions when under pressure or how likely they are to damage positive relationships with customers or clients. The objective results that are obtained are comparable between different prospects; to ensure you choose the right person for the job and be safe in the knowledge that you haven’t overlooked anyone you have screened. It is important to note that Psychometric Assessments should never be used as the be-all-end-all. They are most effective when screening potential employees, as simply relying on a resume and interview allows the prospect to tell you exactly what you want to hear. There is currently a lot of talk about Unconscious Bias and the best way of managing this is through supporting your keen observations with the objective, comparable data that psychometric testing provides. Employers are often concerned about how difficult they think these tests may be to deliver and interpret. Fortunately, you don’t need a degree in psychology to understand them! Psychometric assessments are written using plain, ‘real world’ language, so that any employer can easily understand what is being measured, why it is important to them and how their candidates’ results compare to the ‘average’ result of a relevant population (i.e. managers or graduates etc…) All of this allows the employer to determine if a candidate is suitable for such a role, how successful they will be and if they will fit the culture of the organisation or team. Psychometric assessments can also be tailored to meet the employer’s individual needs based on the specific attributes and qualities an employer is looking for in potential candidates. Psychometric tests can be used in recruitment for culture-fit, team-fit, role-fit and a candidates potential to be trained. Assessments can also be used for existing employee training and retention purposes as well. Assessments allow you to profile employees, identifying their strengths, development areas and work styles.  This data can be used for promotions and to reorganise work-flow. By reallocating tasks to employees to suit their work style you can increase engagement, productivity and job satisfaction, leading to a happier and more efficient workplace. If you are interested in learning more about psychometric assessments to help you hire the right people, please speak with Dr. Gavin Didsbury or a consultant from our assessment partner PsychPress who provide a variety of psychometric assessment solutions. Please call on 03 9670 0590 or email info@psychpress.com.au.

4 ways to modernise your job ads

The job advertisement process is the most important aspect of maximising public and professional interest for your position. Not only does an excellent advertisement stand out, but it entices more seekers and higher quality applicants who are more discerning about their application time to actively apply for the job. This allows the organisation to choose from a higher quality applicant pool and increase the likelihood of finding the most suitable candidate.

So, how does a company attract a wider and higher quality employee selection if the job does not appear enticing enough?

Simple! Any one of these four efforts can brighten up a less than exciting job position:

1. A catchy professional job title that helps your cause

First thing’s first, no one wants to search for a job and see a standard, boring title. Create more interest off the mark by turning the job title into an eye-catching headline.

For example: “Web Developer Wanted” can be turned into: “Powerhouse Web Developer Wanted for VC-Funded Social Start-up.”

Not only does this title grab the audience with the term “Powerhouse”, it also quickly describes the main aspect of the job. When we’re asked to help with titles for Allied Health positions it’s good to think about matching your core need to how ideal candidates should view themselves. ‘Driven,’ ‘Independent’ or ‘Team Leading’ used with ‘fast-paced,’ ‘independent’ or ‘growing’ workplace can quickly get out what kind of organisational environment exists and what the expectations could be.

2. Use a video presentation to show candidates the environment they could be working in

Many companies have a video conveying the organisation in a professional and enticing manner. Other videos show off the culture and friendliness of the team members. Providing a cinematic alongside the advertisement will more likely capture a larger audience at a lower cost. Any recruiter can film staff members with a video camera and create a fun yet professional video about the company. Also, making the office environment work friendly and aesthetically attractive will entice viewers to ‘want to work there’.

  

3. Engage the seeker with questions

Ask candidates questions to stimulate their responses, such as “are you looking for excitement?”, “want a friendly workplace environment?”  If it really is what some people might call a dull position be sure to use questions that highlight what kind of people will thrive - “can you criticise your own work outcomes?” or “are you able to shine with minimal supervision?”. Be sure to be honest and open about your workplace, you want realistic interest not a resume overload or retraction of enthusiasm at the interview phase.

 4. Have an innovative website

An organisation’s webpage is also an extremely important indicator for how an applicant feels about potentially working for your business. Making your webpage STAND OUT amongst other pages, as well as being easy to navigate are important aspects of successfully recruiting employees.  Consider including snippets and stories in a Careers section about current employee’s experiences and daily life. See more about creating a highly usable website.

All in all, if your job ad can bring high quality applicants closer to feeling ‘a part of’ your organisation in the early phases of awareness, you will receive more serious and dedicated applications. With many changes in job search behaviour including higher mobile use and passive seeking, seekers spend less time reading the particulars of job ads and need to find reasons to pay full attention, especially if they’re strong applicants!

Need help piecing together a job ad campaign that gets attention?

We often receive questions along the lines of “are you able to revive my job ad?” or “can you make my brand stand out a bit more in this ad?” and the answer is always “yes!” If you have a goal to achieve in your next hiring campaign be it increased retention or reduced resume overload, there IS a way to make that happen in your initial advertising stages. Speak to a Career Exchange consultant about how we can make your ad stand out in an engaged and directed way! Email us at info@careerexchange.com.au or call 03 9670 0590.