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Recruitment & Retention

Published March 2009

Eliminating Recruiting Waste

 

  David Barbato

A company will strategically plan and invest in product development, marketing, sales and technology to be strongly positioned in the market and beat out competition. Yet, most companies don't apply the same dedication and foresight when hiring the workforce that will drive these elements to success. However, talent managers can achieve significant savings by taking a close look at the strategy and analytics for an existing recruiting program.

The Team

Internal recruitment teams typically are staffed with fixed resources to deliver services, and the resources often have distinct experience and skills not easily interchanged. Thus, recruitment departments tend not to adjust easily to market changes. Contract recruiters can provide flexibility in work hours and skill sets, but the on-boarding process and time to productivity related to systems and process training, absorbing the culture, and building internal relationships may drain internal resources and limit the overall return on investment.

Typically, once contractors conclude an engagement, they move to the next assignment. Time spent training them is not transferable and will need to be repeated during the next hiring period, on a new resource, during a company's next growth cycle.

In a recruiting environment with specialized domain expertise, the recruitment team's skills need to adjust as organizational changes occur. For example, shifting focus from engineering and product development to sales, marketing and customer support requires alterations to the strategy and a varied set of skills to handle the recruitment effort.

Annual business fluctuations can cause periods of high demand that the team cannot meet without outside recruitment agency assistance, which increases the cost of a new hire. Conversely, during down cycles or periods of reduced effort, the team is overstaffed and probably overextended in its financial commitments to various recruitment tools, job boards and advertising. Consider a model using contractors, or recruitment process outsourcing (RPO).

The Process

Unequivocally, a major area of waste and lost recruitment opportunity can be tracked to a lack of process. Actually, it usually cannot be tracked at all, which is the root of the problem. For example, you have an urgent need for a marketing coordinator. A hundred applicants submit resumes for the job. Resumes are delivered to the hiring manager, who vets the top two dozen or so. The director of marketing takes the resumes home that night, reviews them throughout the week and contacts the top eight to 10 candidates for an initial phone conversation. She then chooses five that seem qualified for a formal interview and sets up times for them to meet the team.

HR may step in to inform candidates of their interviews, while the marketing director runs the interview process. Considering the myriad responsibilities that fall on a marketing director, it is unlikely she is taking all the right steps to ensure interviews are done in a consistent, fair, effective and productive manner.