Blog

03/05/2022

By Chris Andrews – Founder and Head of Advisory

It’s all about the planning

When most clients engage a recruitment agency, they seek a go2market partner for a specific assignment. Once the project is complete, each party goes their separate ways until the next hire. This way of hiring is only successful (assuming the agency is good) if the following three criteria are filled:

The internal workforce planning process is well managed. Firstly, without a clear understanding which skills are required for key roles and an awareness of what motivates applicants with those skills, you may be building a growth plan around unrealistic expectations. Secondly, poor planning can lead to unexpected gaps in the workforce, which in turn create time-pressure on hiring managers, leading to poor decisions and bad hires. Lastly, the traits required to meet growth need to be isolated and agreed upon before any candidates are screened – a ‘cultural stake in the ground’.      

Your hiring managers understand and execute best-practice. Even in a normal market, there is no excuse for bad habits, but in the current market every applicant needs to move through a process that is first-class and consistent. Candidates should feel welcomed, informed and thoroughly tested. They should understand in detail whether and why this role and organisation is the right fit, be treated with dignity and rejected in a timely fashion if unsuccessful. Hiring managers should understand the company vision, engage applicants and share consistent values.

The Employer Branding is creating competitive advantage for you. Before you go to market, your employer branding machine should be sharing the values and USP’s that you identified in the workforce plan with 1000’s of people every month, by engaging the passive candidate market through social media. Why are you such a great place to work? Why should I join you and not the competition. These messages should be confirmed at interview stage, not discussed for the first time.

At Stone, we are most definitely a go2market partner for all your hiring needs, but we also help clients in addressing the above three points, so they are ‘recruitment ready’ as an organisation. It’s this difference that makes our clients so much more effective at hiring great people consistently. Reach out to us today!