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How To Improve Your Recruitment Strategy In 2023
Reading Time: 6 minutes
If you are planning on making a hire within the next 3-6 months, you don’t want to miss this!
Have you watched our recent webinar – How To Optimize Your Talent Strategy In 2023?
Alison Walker, Founder at Walker Fairway, Andy Grant, Director at Blue Marble Recruitment, and Dave Crumby, Founder at 360 Talent Solutions tackle the biggest challenges in talent recruitment, development, and retention. Dave covers the biggest challenges the private sector currently face in recruitment, whilst Alison shares how to develop and retain the best talent for the public sector.
If you couldn’t make it, here are some highlights of Dave Crumby discussing the biggest challenges the private sector currently face in recruitment. Watch the video to find out what the biggest changes you need to make to your recruitment strategy that will save you time and money.
Watch it now:
The Biggest Challenges In Recruitment
I have spent the last 10 years supporting life science companies within the private sector.
To find out what my clients biggest challenges are, I conducted a series of surveys on LinkedIn. The 2 highlighted were by far chosen as the biggest challenge:
- Reducing time to hire.
- Skill shortage
When speaking with hiring managers and HR professionals, they share their frustrations as their current recruitment processes are taking on average 3 months … with some roles being open for up to 6 months:
- The UK average for time to hire is currently almost 2 months.
- This is a worrying statistic as most candidates lose interest in a hiring process after only 2 weeks.
It’s important to note that it is not just the life science industry that are highlighting these 2 challenges. The same challenges are being echoed across all industries in the UK.
UK Hiring Trends Index
According to TotalJobs, almost half of all UK businesses have increased recruitment and only 60% of new roles are being filled.
What’s interesting is that companies are now looking to our old friends in the EU to cover their skills shortages. Not only that, of those planning to hire from overseas, 14% are planning to hire outside of the EU.
Biggest Challenges In Recruiment - Case Studies
At present, the focus is on the top of the recruitment funnel with talent pipelining, where companies are trying to build a database of candidates. Companies are investing in Employer Branding and Recruitment Marketing to entice candidates into their recruitment funnel, which in theory will save time on sourcing.
Hiring managers are encouraged to be more visible in the communities they want to recruit from with networking activities such as virtual coffee chats and non-interview conversations. Yet, with the best intentions, both hiring managers and talent teams are spending a large percentage of their time promoting their company. This strategy is not only an inefficient use of time and resources, it places more pressure the recruitment funnel, and research shows does not have an impact on reducing time to hire.
So, I did some research into companies that have managed to significantly reduced their time to hire. I was curious what they did differently to achieve this.
ARLA FOODS
A multinational cooperative, which uses a range of innovative tools and tests as part of their recruitment process.
For their graduate programme, they receive thousands of applications each year and for the past 4-5 years they have been investigating how technology can augment their recruitment process:
Their previous recruitment funnel was inline with most companies:
- Sourcing
- Interviews
- Assessment centres – as part of their assessments, they would use a range of psychometric tests, which include Hogan, Ravens, and Predictive Index.
- Final selection
Their new optimized recruitment process now starts with:
- Sourcing & Assessments:
- Use of cognitive and behavioural assessments to screen out more than 90% of candidates.
- Followed by Interviews and final selection
They found that by measuring and assessing more data points earlier in the recruitment process:
- Gave them more clarity
- Resulted in a SHORTER RECRUITMENT FUNNEL:
- Less time used on the selection and screening process
- Ensured focus is on hiring for potential.
MOTIONSTRAND
A full-service digital agency experienced a period of rapid growth in 2016:
- To ensure they were operationally and financially prepared to meet that kind of growth, the agency brought in a corporate finance veteran and controller – who was tasked with stabilizing the company’s finances.
- The team knew that streamlining the agency’s hiring and recruiting processes would be critical to the agency’s future financial success.
- They incorporated Predictive Index’s assessments early in their hiring practices, confident in their ability to catalyze real change.
Benefits of these assessments included:
- reduced time spent reviewing resumes by two-thirds.
- reduced cost of recruiting a candidate by 72% annually.
- That translated to massive annual savings.
Introducing Data Earlier
Both case studies demonstrate how measuring more relevant data earlier in the recruitment process:
- Relieves the time pressure at each stage of the recruitment funnel
- Saves hundreds of staffing hours
- Improves interview ratios
- Saves money
- And provides a better candidate experience
Measuring More Earlier
With the changing shifts in the workforce and roles becoming much more complex, there is no surprise that the time to hire is increasing. We are seeing a massive shift from technical skills needed to a growing demand for soft skills. Metrics need to be introduced to measure and assess these soft skills such as:
- Attitudes, values, and behaviours.
Yet, these soft skills aren’t often being tested until the final stage of an interview process. To me this seems illogical – why wait until the end of the process to then have to start again?
What I propose is a more modern approach where companies measure and assess more data points earlier in their recruitment process – early screening is currently done by examining CVs and work history.
To make the best hire, you need to go beyond the traditional screening metrics and measure more earlier such as:
- Motivational drives, attitudes and values, and cognitive capacity.
Candidate assessment tools such as DISC, Hogan, and Predictive Index provide a panoramic insight by measuring what is beneath the surface. As an Associate Partner of Humanostics, I measure and assess more with the cognitive and behavioural assessments by Predictive Index. After completing these assessments, I was astonished how easy they are to complete and how much insights are generated from a quick assessment.
Based on a premise that people have drives, these drives create needs, our behaviour is how we respond to these needs. When predicting someone’s behaviour without understanding their needs and drives, we are just guessing. By measuring drives and needs, we can better predict behaviour.
6-minute Behavioral assessment:
- Provides a framework for understanding people’s workplace behaviours.
- 2 main uses:
- Candidate fit –
- People development
12-minute Cognitive Assessment:
- Is the single best predictor of job performance and
- measures how well someone can understand and process information.
What is a Behavioral Assessment
People have drives, which create needs and your behaviour is in response to these needs. So, if you only see behaviour, you are guessing someone’s drives needs. If you measure drives, you can better predict someone’s needs and behaviour.
The PI Behavioral Assessment™ (PI BA) is a science-based framework that maps personality in four motivational drives. The drives and their relation to each other constitute a person’s behavioural pattern and ultimately help you understand the underlying needs and the associated behaviour.
The PI Behavioral Assessment™ (PI BA) is more than a recruitment tool. It will help you to identify candidates who will be motivated and thrive in a given role.
Why use Behavioral Assessments
To make the best hire, you need to go beyond the traditional screening metrics and measure more earlier such as:
- Motivational drives, attitudes and values, and cognitive capacity.
Candidate assessment tools such as DISC, Hogan, and Predictive Index provide a panoramic insight by measuring what is beneath the surface.
When it comes to predicting future performance, technology is key:
- Education, years of experience, and references all have low predictive value. Yet, we rely on these for screening early in the recruitment process.
- Cognitive and Behavioural Assessments, have much higher predictive value, and when combined with interviews, provide the most effective method for predicting future performance.
For me, hiring without the use of psychometric assessments is like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing … and no picture on the box. It’s not fun, it takes longer, and when you are almost finished, you realise you have pieces missing.
Take the assessment today and start measuring more to improve your recruitment.
Dave Crumby
Founder at 360 Talent Solutions
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