Following a survey conducted by jobsite.co.uk, they have estimated that small businesses waste nearly £70 million a year on ‘bad’ recruitment. The investigation discovered that nearly a quarter of new employees leave their job within six months.
The SME sector invest £300 million a year on sourcing 250,000 new employees, however, 55,000 of those businesses have to re-recruit within a six month period.
Clearly, there is a direct financial cost in having to start the selection process again, however, a far greater indirect cost reflects upon business productivity, re-training, staff morale etc.
There is no selection process that can offer a 100% guaranteed success, however, businesses can improve on their attrition levels by following some simple and cost effective procedures and guidelines.
1. Make sure you have a clear and up to date job specification, there should be no surprises in the day-to-day duties a new employee will undertake when they join your business.
2. Consider inexpensive pre assessment tools like a Thomas International ‘job analysis’ which assists the employer to obtain a greater understanding of what personal traits a specific job requires. It is scientifically proven that if you fail to select the correct personal traits for a role, the candidate is more likely not to succeed in the post.
3. Prepare your interview questions; think about the key competencies that are required for a person to succeed in the role. If they need strong conflict handling skills then create questions that explore their past experience in handling difficult customers, how they resolved an issue, how that made them feel etc.
4. Use testing tools to assess an individuals skills, these can be extremely diverse, however, relatively inexpensive. I would advise anyone considering using any form of test to use a professional to assist or proven test material from a reputable source, creating your own tests without validating the material can be more of a hindrance than a benefit.
5. Try to reflect a fair and clear picture of your business, the environment and culture of your company at interview. Make sure the balance of the interview is even, give your interviewee the chance to answer and ask questions.
In a study conducted at The University of Michigan on the ‘Validity and Utility of Alternative Predictors of Job Performance’, the usefulness of the interview in accurately predicting later success on the job was analysed. The surprising finding: The typical interview increases the likelihood of choosing the best candidate by less than 2%. In other words, if you just ‘flipped’ a coin you would be correct 50% of the time. If you added an interview you would only be right 52% of the time.