1300 363 128
Harvest Director, Maree Herath, gives her five best tips to getting your candidates over the line.
You go to a lot of effort to find the candidate that is the right fit for your organisation. They’ve been through the interview process. They have the skills, experience and attitude you’re after. But do they want to work for you? You make a job offer and… they decline the job. What? Why?
Getting candidates over the line is something that needs to be focused on from the very start of the recruitment process. If a candidate has a bad experience they might turn down the role, not consider future opportunities with your company and proceed to tell their network about the bad experience they had with your company.
Five best tips to getting your candidates over the line:
1. Take the time to brief your consultant properly.
Recruitment consultants need all of the details. Questions to consider are :
- Why would a candidate want to work for your company?
- What are the benefits?
- Can you offer them progression within the organisation?
- What is the key purpose of the role?
Setting the right expectation at the beginning of the process is paramount to successfully filling your vacancy.
2. Is your candidate weighing up other options?
A mistake many companies make is they believe candidates are only looking at a role with their company, but in fact candidates often have a range of suitable positions waiting for them; good candidates usually have choices.
3. Be timely with the recruitment process.
One of the increasing trends we are finding is the process is just taking too long and candidates are being interviewed by up to four people within an organisation in addition to their initial interview with the Recruitment Consultant. Some are also required to engage in personality profiling and aptitude testing. The issue is some candidates cannot wait out the time it takes to undergo this level of screening. It can extend a recruitment assignment by weeks and sometimes months.
In an ideal world the process would be a job brief, advertise/search, interview, shortlist, reference check, offer and then placement without distraction. By doing so the whole process to place a candidate can take four weeks – if planned and committed to.
4. Communicate often.
Many companies and managers have a number of priorities. Often recruitment sits to the side of core business decisions. The problem that arises is the silence. Silence in how an organisation wants to move forward with their preferred candidate/s. After such a long process making candidates wait even longer can be perceived as ill-mannered.
5. Formalise offers quickly.
Make sure once the verbal offer is accepted you get the written contract/letter of employment to them ASAP! We had an instance where a candidate was told they would receive an offer in writing within seven business days. 14 days later they had received it and took a counter offer from their current employer….. the candidate was simply given too much time to think about it and felt more comfortable with the company they knew. They had lost confidence in the new organisation because things just took too long.
As a business owner or manager I leave you with a thought:
“Are you equipped and do you have the time to properly manage the recruitment process which is key to your organisational success?”
If not maybe you should call Harvest Talent Recruitment, we would be happy to discuss our experiences and help you navigate what is truly a challenging process.
