Recruitment in the 21st century

Recruitment is one of the biggest challenges that business owners face.

How do you recruit quality people and retain them long term?

In days gone by the priorities of employees was centred around job security and entitlements. People often had a job for life. 

But things have changed and now we live in a time of flexibility and career progression. People are placing a higher importance on job engagement and want to be part of a company that they believe in.

Business owners will recognise that hiring new staff comes at a huge cost, both financially and the hard work invested in training and development. Without proper processes in place this can become a drain on cashflow and productivity not to mention disruption to the existing employees.

Here are a couple of steps to help you create an effective recruitment process.

• Company mission - Every company should have a mission statement. Employees these days are looking to be engaged and are wanting to feel part of the company’s core mission and direction.
• Employee profile
  • Create a profile of the type of employee that you want to recruit that includes the culture that you have or are looking to build within your business.
  • Research your existing employees to find out why they like working in the organisation.
  • Attitude traits you would like to see in a new employee.
  • What skills they must have and what can be trained
  • Roles and responsibilities of the new recruit
  Designing an employee profile will greatly increase your rate of success within the recruitment process because you now have a more targeted approach in who you are looking for and are no longer assuming but instead making decisions based on facts.
• Document recruitment process - Document the whole process from start to finish and create your own procedures manual. Include your company mission, creating an employee profile, writing job ads, screening candidates, interview process, hiring, ongoing training and support. Ensure that this is regularly updated so that anyone can pick up the manual and know step by step how to recruit a new staff member. Consistency is key!
• Systemise training- Training new staff is expensive as it takes time and resources. Ways to help reduce this is to systemise your training by creating webinars/videos, manuals & documents which staff can use without the need of a trainer. An added advantage is that it can be self-paced and revisited when needed.

By creating a recruitment process and regularly reviewing it you will find that finding, training, and retaining quality staff has become a whole lot easier!

The Money Edge | Debbie Chapman | Bundaberg