effective recruitment

Using effective recruitment to gain competitive advantage

Slow-moving recruitment can be a bottleneck to growth.

Cumbersome processes and over-stretched teams can make the job of filling vacancies longer and more costly. Worse still, it can lead to a negative effect on employer brand.

On the other hand, faster recruitment drives a snowball effect of benefits to your company’s performance. It reduces costs, improves candidate experience, and supports  your employer brand. Crucially, it leaves you perfectly placed to take advantage of new business opportunities, be competitive and grow faster.

Why faster recruitment delivers better performance

Effective recruitment can support your company to achieve faster levels of growth. Streamlined, efficient recruitment processes deliver higher-quality, more engaged hires, providing a competitive advantage that directly impacts on your business performance.

Research by Hay Group suggests that firms with a high engagement score have revenue levels on average 4.5 times higher than those with the lowest, and numerous studies have correlated high employee engagement with improved customer satisfaction.

Extended recruitment cycles are costly, both in terms of the time needed to manage them and the opportunity cost of roles sitting vacant within your business. Slow recruitment can limit your company’s growth. If you’re unable to source new team members quickly enough, this can prevent you from taking advantage of short-term opportunities to drive revenue. It can increase the risk of stress and disengagement amongst your current workforce if their resources are stretched too far, leading to increased attrition rates.

Slow recruitment can also be detrimental to the way your company is perceived as an employer. Inefficient recruitment processes leave high-quality applicants underwhelmed and likely to look elsewhere. Modern consumers have higher expectations of brands than ever before, demanding fast, personalised communication and seamless experiences. These expectations do not disappear just because they are interacting with your brand as a job-seeker rather than a customer, so recruitment must keep pace with the new standards for brand communication or risk damaging their brand perception and impact customer satisfaction.

The benefits of shorter recruitment cycles

1. Increase profitability and performance

Faster, more effective recruitment can have a far-reaching impact on your business performance.

Having confidence in your ability to attract and on-board high-quality candidates on tight timescales will allow your business to be more proactive and agile, able to take advantage of short-term opportunities and reap the rewards.

Since faster, more efficient recruitment processes are also less costly, you’ll also see a reduction in cost-per-hire, which will have a positive impact on profitability. Reduced time to hire also translates into faster time to competence. The quicker your new hires are confirmed, the sooner they’ll be up to speed and delivering results against your business objectives.

Industry figures suggest that clients working with a Recruitment Process Outcourcing provider typically save up to 70% of agency spend and reduce cost per hire fees by nearly 50%.

2. Attract higher quality candidates

Shorter recruitment cycles make it easier to attract high quality candidates. By fast-tracking high potential applicants, you’ll increase the chances of retaining their interest, while a slower process might leave them tempted to look elsewhere.

46% of employers have reduced the length of their hiring process as the market for good candidates becomes tighter, XpertHR research found. A further 28% have reduced the process because the time it took to hire was putting candidates off.

A survey of more than 3,000 jobseekers and 100 employers revealed that 92% of employers now make an offer within a week of the interview process, while 59% take less than two weeks from the role first being advertised to the first round of interviews.

A fast, frictionless recruitment experience also increases the likelihood that new hires will start their roles with a great impression of your brand. This increases their engagement in the crucial first weeks of their employment, improving their long-term chances of success.

3. Reduce attrition and improve productivity

Crucially, a more efficient recruitment process can free up your Human Resources team to spend more time on training and developing existing teams and onboarding new hires. The right onboarding process can have a major impact on engagement, increasing performance and reducing staff attrition.

Efficient, streamlined recruitment processes, including the ability to outsource when necessary, can empower your HR team to help new recruits hit the ground running and deliver results faster.

How to turn recruitment into a competitive advantage

1. Define your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)

Consumers expect more from brands than ever before, and this is true whether they’re approaching you as a potential customer or a potential employee. In a competitive marketplace, talented candidates are well-aware of their value to your business. As a result, they’re looking for cultural fit and the opportunity to work for a brand that resonates with them, rather than “just any job”.

This means that to attract the best applicants, brands need to treat the recruitment process as a sales activity. By presenting candidates with a strong EVP, brands can define the unique differentiators that give candidates a strong reason to choose them over competitors.

A strong EVP can reduce friction at all stages of your recruitment process, from attracting applications through to salary negotiations and winning out against competing offers. By clearly defining the intangible benefits your brand offers, a compelling EVP can drive engagement and commitment amongst potential employees, and help retain them for longer.

2. Shift to agile recruiting

While the agile approach has its roots in software development, its principles of efficiency and flexibility are transforming a growing number of other industries and functions. Recruitment is no exception.

Agile methodology encourages a shift away from rigid processes and fixed timescales to a more responsive, real-time view of recruitment. Agile divides longer-term plans into short, sharp bursts of activity with daily review points and regular re-prioritisation. This allows recruiters to move applicants through the recruitment process more quickly, and anticipate and respond to changing priorities more flexibly than would be possible using traditional project management approaches.

As a result, agile recruitment is better placed to deal with high-priority vacancies or short-notice requirements. Agile scales effectively, and makes it easier to integrate outsourced support when necessary. It can make recruiting at volume far more manageable, whilst still allowing for a high level of personalisation and an outstanding candidate experience.

3. Leverage Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO)

For your recruitment processes to respond effectively to short-term requirements, they must be adequately resourced. Urgent resource demands are often the most vital to business performance. They’re the ones which enable you to take advantage of immediate growth opportunities that competitors might not be responsive enough to fulfil. If your HR team is unable to scale and accommodate short-term or high volume requirements, this will impact on your business’s ability to profit from these types of opportunities.

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