For design managers, the priority of recruitment is not only to find the right candidates, but to bring them in when they are most needed. Whether this means filling a crucial vacancy or expanding the team at just the right moment to accelerate growth, timely recruitment can make the difference between success and failure.
However, achieving this goal can often be made more difficult by common mistakes or poor practices that lead to slow, inefficient recruitment. These failures will make it difficult for your company to attract the best candidates, waste limited recruitment budgets and potentially cause you to lose ground to your more agile competitors.
In this blog, we will look at some of the most common issues that cause companies to lose time and money during recruitment, and highlight some of the key solutions to recruitment inefficiency that can help your business regain a competitive edge.
What are the most common causes of recruitment inefficiency?
At a time when many design managers are operating within slim budgetary margins, inefficient recruitment can be extremely damaging. This makes it essential to avoid the following common and preventable causes of slow or poorly targeted recruitment:
● Inaccurate or generic job descriptions, which make it difficult for candidates to get a clear picture of the role’s expectations, requirements and responsibilities. This makes it harder to find the right profile of candidate and increases the likelihood of hiring a recruit who is ill-suited to the role
● Overly long recruitment processes, including slow reference-checking or unnecessarily lengthened interview processes. These will slow down the recruitment pipeline, making it harder to bring new hires into the team, and potentially cause candidates to lose patience and abandon their interest midway through the process
● Advertising roles in the wrong places - not every jobs board or professional network will necessarily be a suitable place to advertise for a specific role, especially if that role requires highly specialised skills. By casting your net too widely, or focusing on too niche a community, you will be wasting time and money
● Failing to utilise remote interviewing - despite the rise of remote working since the pandemic, many companies are still resistant to using videoconferencing technology to carry out remote interviews. This needlessly makes it harder to arrange interviews and calls with prospect candidates, making it more likely that the company will miss out on the hire
● Holding out for the perfect candidate - many of the delays during your recruitment process may be caused by a lack of flexibility around your chosen candidate, and a desire to put off making an offer to potentially promising applicants in favour of waiting for a hypothetical “perfect” candidate. This will make it very hard to fill the role, and will make the recruitment process extremely time-consuming
● Lack of communication with candidates, including a failure to correspond with potential applicants in a timely manner, or to ask them for feedback on your process. This can result in a cooling of candidate interest, and deprives you of meaningful insights into what went right or wrong
● Failing to monitor and evaluate your processes, meaning that your company is not gathering useful data or insights on the success or failure of its recruitment tactics. This makes it harder to replicate your successes, and can lead to money being spent on recurring recruitment activities that deliver no real value
● A lack of focus or accountability in recruitment - for many companies, recruitment is handled by managers who do not have the time, budget or direct responsibility to treat hiring as their main area of focus. This means it is likely to be treated as an afterthought, or that mistakes will be made by managers who lack in-depth understanding of recruitment best practice
Some of these mistakes may be seen as more understandable than others, especially for firms that do not have much experience in direct recruitment. Nevertheless, they can add up to create significant blockages in your recruitment pipeline, which will ultimately lead to a damaging talent shortfall for the business as a whole.
How can you help streamline your recruitment process?
Although there is no one simple solution to these recruitment inefficiencies, design managers can push for a better standard of hiring by advocating for the following changes:
● Create detailed, precise and appealing candidate profiles that communicate the responsibilities and advantages of the role in clear detail
● Target your recruitment efforts at the right professional networks that are most likely to contain the skills you are looking for
● Eliminate unnecessary steps or stages in your recruitment process, and look for ways to streamline or outsource the associated bureaucracy
● Maintain clear and consistent communication between candidates, hiring managers and everyone else involved in the recruitment process
● Utilise data, analysis and trackable metrics to assess the performance of your recruitment efforts over time, and focus future activities on the methods that work best, as well as tailoring your approach to the specific needs and expectations of the candidates you seek
● Ensure that the person in charge of recruitment at your company has the time, expertise and accountability necessary to take ownership of this function, or else hire a specialist recruitment agency to handle these activities for you
By taking these steps, your company will be able to spend less time on recruitment while delivering a faster and steadier stream of high-quality recruits, ultimately reducing the company’s spending on hiring and achieving the best possible return on investment.
How Employment Solutions can help
If your business is struggling with an inefficient recruitment process and would benefit from guidance and support to help revitalise your approach to hiring, it is best to contact a specialist recruitment agency that can help you make the necessary changes to achieve your goals.
Employment Solutions has specialised in supporting engineering and manufacturing companies with their recruitment for more than 20 years. We can review every aspect of your hiring policies and strategies, and help you implement the changes you will need to deliver maximum efficiency and optimal outcomes.
To learn more about how Employment Solutions can help you find and secure the very best talent, call our team on 0161 839 5353, or complete the contact form below to arrange a call back.