As recruiters, we are sometimes faced with certain misconceptions, some which have been around for many years. These fallacies sound true, yet on further inspection they’re anything but. It may be that some people choose to believe them in order to meet a certain company goal or to make things easier for themselves. In the end, continuing to believe them can potentially hurt your recruiting success.
Here are the top four recruiting fallacies you should never believe again for the sake of your recruiting process.
Recruiting is not as important as sales and/or client acquisition. One of the most widespread recruiting fallacies is probably the notion that hiring top talent is not as immediately important to a company’s goals as are its sales or client acquisition. Many companies see money coming in as their number one priority. If the company’s making lots of money, signing new clients and closing more deals, then all is good—the company’s goals are being met and the stockholders are happy.
What companies should realize is that without top talent, the company goals won’t continue to be met. A successful company reaches its goals thanks to the people who make it happen. Employees are the ones that make the sales, sign the clients, and close the deals. Without top performers, a company won’t be able to perform at the top—it’s that simple. Giving recruiting top-level priority in the way a company does business is crucial to achieving success.
The perfect candidates will find you. Maybe your company is a well-recognized, 100 year-old brand. Or maybe you’re a tech start-up that just launched what’s being hailed as this year’s game changer. Or perhaps you are a top company in an industry your city is known for. Some companies are in a position to think that candidates will come to them, and in some cases they do. But relying on that is a sure-fire way to end up empty handed when the time comes to do some heavy-duty recruiting.
Even if you have the upper hand in attracting candidates, you still need to invest in your recruiting practices. Just getting candidates superficially interested in you is not enough—you need to show them why they should choose to apply for a position at your company. You also need to have an effective and streamlined recruiting process that takes potential candidates through your system, including the necessary interviews, and into your operations fast.
If a candidate doesn’t respond, he or she must not be interested. Finding the right candidate is seldom easy, and when you do find that person, you’re eager to hire him and get him started. So nothing is more frustrating than finding the right candidate and not hearing back from him. When a candidate doesn’t immediately respond to an interview request or any other part of your recruiting process, it can lead you to believe that he’s just not that into you, but this is not always the case.
It’s understandable that you’re eager to hear back quickly when you’ve found a top performer and want to secure him for your company. Yet you must understand that he’s probably not hearing from you alone but from some of your competitors too, especially if he really is a great performer. That means he’s weighing his options, taking his time to make a decision, but not necessarily that he’s no longer interested in your position. However, if a candidate doesn’t respond at all after a full week, it’s probably safe to say he’s not interested, and you might be better off without him and his lack of professional etiquette.
Mass messaging gets more candidates into your pipeline. Any recruiter knows that having a solid talent pipeline is the key to finding and hiring top candidates. We all want our pipelines to be full and ready to move candidates into positions as soon as they open, saving ourselves the time and effort it takes to search for and court individual candidates. It’s easy to see why sending a mass message to lots of candidates might seem like a good idea to increase your pipeline, but it’s not always the case.
The main problem with mass messaging is that it’s impersonal, and that defeats the whole purpose of developing an effective talent pipeline. Sure, you can accumulate hundreds of names, but what good are they if you haven’t taken the time to cultivate them and learn about them? Doing the research on the front-end instead of going out with a generic message is a much more effective way to funnel talent into your pipeline.
Letting go of these fallacies will help you keep your eye on the ball and develop a clearer aim in your recruiting process. Are there any other recruiting fallacies that you have discovered?
4 Comments
Many recruiters look at a resume for ten seconds, see that the candidate worked for a well-known company, and instantly believe that the potential candidate has the essential set of skills and work ethic. Well, they might be right, but there is no guarantee of this. They are just making a supposition and taking the brand for granted.
Recruiting is by far one of the most important elements of a company. It’s the key to growing a company. Why? Because a company’s productivity depends on its employees. That’s the reason why many successful companies spend almost half their time recruiting. Recruiters need to bring on the right people who can help the company to achieve its goals.
Recruiters should be aware that not every candidate will know how to write a perfect resume. In reality, candidates are rarely as organized as a recruiter would like. I don’t agree with the fact that recruiters need just three minutes to read a resume. Unfortunately, recruiters think that if they can’t easily visualize the person from reading the resume, the person is not suitable for the job. This may apply to some specific jobs, but not for all. Recruiters should realize that people may have more skills than those they put on their resume.
One of the imperative task for a HR department is to ensure that they hire the right mix of competencies and talent which gels with the organisation culture and goals.Mere reading the resume will not show a bigger picture of the person and for that it is essential to meet the person,seek market feedback and understand his/her growth path .Hiring is an important tool in which a recruiter needs to imply right mix of strategy and functional skills.