Last month, I delivered an ERE webinar on achieving recruiting excellence. During this hour-long webinar, sponsored by Oleeo, we unpacked a lot of information. You can catch the webinar below.
Given the high registration volume and follow-up conversations I have been having, I wanted to dig a little deeper into the impact of having the right process in place. Remember that, without the right process, you will almost definitely end up either investing in the wrong technology, optimizing the wrong part of your recruiting effort, or throwing money away without improving your recruiting outcomes and competitiveness. Chances are, it will be all three.
So How Do We Start this Overwhelming Process?
The first thing to realize is that technology cannot drive recruiting excellence. In fact, technology is one of the last steps on the journey. The journey toward recruiting excellence starts with these five steps:
- Decide who will lead the change.
- Define what “there” looks like for your organization.
- Document the current state of TA at your organization.
- Identify and assess, in detail, the risks, gaps, and opportunities.
- Build and prioritize your 18-month recruiting excellence roadmap.
Start where you are.
- What processes do you have in place?
- Have you standardized your processes company-wide?
- Are those processes standardized for at least 80% of your hiring?
- Do you have and use the right metrics to measure your success?
- Do you have the ability to evaluate for quality of hire?
- What is your recruiting excellence goal – what does success look like?
In order to begin the journey to recruiting excellence, we need to start with where you are on that journey and know where your destination is.
It’s Not All About Technology, But You Also Won’t Get Anywhere Without It
Technology alone does not equate to recruiting excellence, but technology is also not going away. When nine out of ten applicants are lost because of a hiring process that is too complex, you have to home in on a process that is tech enabled. And to do that, you must choose recruiting excellence.
Recruiting excellence is a choice. It’s about choosing among strategic versus transactional, competitive edge versus talent risk, and reliable processes versus operational risk. Choosing to achieve recruiting excellence also means choosing cost effectiveness.
How Do We Achieve Recruiting Excellence?
Recruiting is both a science and an art, but many HR professionals rely too heavily on the art aspect. There is a science to how we go about creating recruiting excellence at Beacon Lane. We use a proven, methodical approach called Recruiting Excellence 3.0™. The Recruiting Excellence framework includes:
- Standardize: People and Process Focus
- Stabilize Scale: Foundational Technology
- Optimize: Innovate and Lead
You must standardize and stabilize before you optimize, and that can take the better part of a year using a very disciplined process. You have to ensure that you are not only evaluating applicants properly but that you are also providing them with a good experience. And you must make sure your company’s brand and culture fit the talent you’re trying to attract. Candidates are making decisions about your company long before they consider applying to work with you.
Great Hires = Improved Productivity, Culture, and Revenue
Recruiting excellence is about more than just filling seats. Filling seats is not enough. Having the right people does more than just fill vacancies; having the right people promotes your company culture and brand, it leads to improved collaboration and productivity, and it has a measurable impact on your bottom line. And if you make a bad hire? It will cost you. Project delays and lower productivity are a given, but you’ll also experience decreases in morale, potential loss of other talent, and the exorbitant cost of replacing the hire.
Please watch the Blueprint for Recruiting Excellence webinar here:
At Beacon Lane Consulting, we define Recruiting Excellence as the right hire, for the right role, at the right time, for the right cost…every time. While this concept often seems ambitious, we continue to help clients work towards this through the ideal blend of process standardization and innovation, resulting in the most aspirational candidate experience. If you are looking to optimize or transform your recruiting function, get in touch. We’d love to help.
