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In these challenging times, every business needs to look at their cost base and question 'spend for return?' Having been in the recruitment industry for last 15 years, 10 years of which as a Managing Director for the People first Group Ltd, I know there are a percentage of organisations that see 'recruitment agencies' as a costly commodity. I have to concede that in some cases they are, however, getting the recruitment process wrong whether you use an agency or you find a prospective employee by your own means is probably the biggest cost facing most businesses in UK.

Consider the time you have to invest to create a job specification, advertise or speculate your requirement, filter CV's, interview, administer correspondence to the unsuccessful candidates and then offer the one you have chosen. Then, they commence with your company, or did they get a counter offer and stayed with their original employer? Back to square one! Or did they commence but after 3 months they left your employ because 'it wasn't what they thought the job would be' or even worse, they did meet your expectations?

Recent surveys have highlighted that 40% of line managers have admitted to employing candidates they deemed to be 'the best of the bunch' due to business pressures. Most companies adopt unstructured or adhoc selection processes to analyse the 'ideal' candidate, very few companies use competency based interview questioning techniques, testing or profiling and even referencing.

The majority of businesses employ an individual based solely upon an interview, however, statistically; the interview only rates 2 out of 10 in it's accuracy in selecting the correct employee!

If you are seeking to employ someone, here are a few helpful tips to guide you through the recruitment maze.

First of all, ensure you know what you want from the employee, this may sound stupid, however, when was the last time you looked at the job specification you have printed out from the HR file! Has the role changed? Can the role be modified? This is your opportunity to develop your team for the future, have you looked at your existing team; can someone do this role better internally?

Along with your Job specification, have you ever created a 'person specification'? Consider the personal traits you require. For example, a sales individual may require the ability to be driven, self motivated, goal orientated. How many times have you heard someone say 'they could sell a fridge to an Eskimo'? In my experience, this simply means they talk a lot and very rarely listen. The tools are available to analyse what traits suit your role and they are not expensive.

Do you advertise or use an agency? If you advertise, I suggest you do your research, statistics show that traditional journal or broad sheet advertisements are not offering the return they once did. If you select an agency, negotiate the fee before you give the agent the job and explore what other value added services can they offer? People first offer assistance with writing your job specification, free job profiling services, tailor made interview questions to suit your vacancy, Personal Profiling and professional testing backed by industry leading businesses such as Saville & Holdsworth and Thomas International. Does your agency ever offer you these?

When you are interviewing, have you prepared questions for the interviewee before they arrive? If so, well done, you are in the minority. More importantly, have you prepared questions that challenge the experience, skills, qualities relating to the job you have on offer, otherwise known as 'competency based questioning'?

Ever used testing or personality profiling to assist your selection process? Testing can be as simple as measuring someone's accuracy at completing a task, however, I would advise if you were to do this you obtain a validated test that can offer you accurate feedback on how your candidate has performed against a comparative group. Again, these tests and profiling tools are available and are not expensive.

So the next time you look at the costs your business is incurring, remember the best savings come from getting it right the first time.

Mark Granger
Managing Director