OK,
regular readers of this column will know I am fairly caustic when it comes to
our industry, recruiters are no better than estate agents, you know the
rhetoric. Well, I am not convinced
it is all our fault.
Ever
heard the expression, “People are our No.1 asset”? Yep, me too. I have heard it muttered by the same
people who then go and hire without a job description, or ring ten agencies and
ask them to all drop their trousers on the fee and send them CVs by the end of
the day. So when does hiring not
knowing what you are looking for, or trawling the bottom of the candidate pool
look like trying to find your No.1 assets? The truth is it doesn’t.
This blog was originally written written by Roger Philby for Recruiter Magazine and published on their website on December 9th 2009.
According
to research the cost of mishiring an individual is 4-14x their base salary and
most UK organisations are getting 75% of their hires wrong! This is why £24
Billion per annum is spent managing poor performers in UK PLC. Except, these aren’t poor performers
(disgusting label), these are individuals who have had the misfortune of being
hired by the wrong company for them.
So
whose fault is that?
The
individual? The recruitment companies being used? Or the companies using them?
Pick
me…Pick me...I know!
Truth
is a lot of companies are getting the service from recruitment companies they
deserve, there you go I said it, it might not be the recruitment companies
fault. If the recruitment company
is called and asked to send CVs by the end of the day, what can they do? A thorough and accurate selection? Or a
spray and pray approach? If my
first conversation with a client is, “everyone else is doing it at 12%, so you
have to” what chances my heart is in the accurate selection of the right
individuals? If I am treated as
one of many suppliers, not engaged with properly, not trusted, not given the
full information and terrified that if I send in the wrong candidate (not that
I’d know what wrong is at this stage) I’ll get canned from the PSL what chance
that I’d do the best job?
Answer
is simply none.
It
is a bit of a cheek that the same people who moan about how crap our industry
is, perpetuate the problem by being equally crap in how they engage us. Seriously, if these companies put as
much care and effort in to the hiring of people as they do say, a new server
installation I believe the service they received would be infinitely
better. Sound stupid?
Think
about it for a minute, when
installing £50,000 of servers, they would write an RFP detailing the
specification (the job spec), they would detail the process for sourcing, work
with the vendors on refining the spec, then put together a proper tender
(selection) process, meticulously going through the pro’s and con’s of each
server. They would then select the
server and put together an installation team (induction) and then have a post
installation service agreement (90 day coaching).
OK,
now re-run the client process for the last £50,000 hire you made…
Figured
it out?
What
they actually mean is our servers are our company’s No.1 asset, simple.
