Recruitment can be a minefield at the best of times when it comes to attracting quality people to your organisation, which is why it is so important to make sure that you put some key elements in place so that you get it right first time.  Otherwise, the consequences could be that you find yourselves spending a huge amount of your invaluable time interviewing, managing and developing the wrong people for your organisation who will eventually leave, underperform or go off sick and this can be costly.

Here’s our top tips for what you need to think about when you are planning to recruit:

1. Focus on the key requirements of the role  – differentiate between what skills, knowledge and experience are fundamental to the job and what are nice to haves but not critical.
2. Be impartial and objective – Ensure that you have a fair and equitable method for short listing, interviewing and selecting individuals which is free from discrimination.  Methods of avoiding discrimination could be:

• avoiding the use of age limits in recruitment
• avoiding the use of language that implies a bias (such as ‘store man’ rather than ‘stores assistant’)
• only gathering information about nationality and ethnic group for monitoring purposes (although it will also be necessary to check whether the candidate eventually selected has the right to work in the UK and, if they are of foreign nationality, whether a work permit is required).
• ensuring that any selection techniques are free of any cultural bias – and do not require language skills that are not needed in the job
• using a structured interviewing process that does not include any intrusive personal questions
• keeping clear records that show the reasons for the recruitment decisions based purely on the skills and competencies required for the job.

3. Methods of Selection – Make sure that your methods of selection are designed to assess your candidates in a fair and consistent way.
4. Recruitment Planning – Have a recruitment timetable so that you can organise your recruitment campaign in a methodical and professional way.  This will give a clear signal to candidates that you are a professional organisation and will influence their decisions as to whether you are the kind of company that they would want to work for now or in the future.

We hope that you have found this helpful, and if you’d like to know more, just give us a call on 07951 356700.