Finding and hiring the best talent is a key aspect of talent management for every company, large or small. Everyone should be working to improve the process. It is not just a matter of making the hiring function faster, easier and cheaper, it’s also about delivering the best-quality candidates to fill various jobs. The emergence of automated recruitment technology has helped large organizations who have both the money and resources to make huge strides in the war for talent but what about the little guy? Small to mid-size companies often can’t afford the technology to move toward this goal. Yet they are losing ground to their larger rivals.

According to a recent report from research house Aberdeen, based on more than 400 survey respondents to the firm’s talent acquisition strategies study; automation is having an impact on both the quality of hires and the quality of the hiring process. According to Aberdeen, quality of hire was rated the most valuable overall metric when assessing the effectiveness of talent acquisition. Since quality can be an ambiguous concept, Aberdeen says, respondents were also asked which elements define quality of hire.  The findings reveal that hiring manager satisfaction and efficient use of time are the top of the list.Those organizations that either fully or partially automated their recruitment process had more new hires reach their first productivity milestones than did organizations using only manual processes.

The need for a recruitment system focused on the smaller employer, that is most companies with up to 3000 employees, to automate recruitment, is acute. This will allow them to compete effectively and efficiently for talent on an equal footing to larger organisations. MyPeopleBiz aims to be the champion of the smaller-mid sizers by providing intuitive, easy to use interactive functionality to help companies forge better relationships with agencies and candidates, enhancing their employer brand and enabling them to become an employer of choice in the market for talent. In addition, there is no need to fret about cost asthe return on investment is recouped within year one.

This made me think that:

1) The way in which small companies are often perceived in the marketplace by potential employees could be an issue

2) The way in which small companies actually perceive themselves in the marketplace as being too small to be bothered about recruitment, probably is an issue

A key factor in successful business growth is intelligent, efficient, high quality recruitment. Unless a business sets out to start and remain small, it is difficult to see why any company be it small or large would not be focused on bringing in the people that are going to help it succeed. It seems odd to me that any firm, let alone a small firm should plan to stay still. So why would a small company not invest in recruitment? What are your experiences?

I know that often in small businesses there is a lack of resource and rarely is there someone who can dedicate enough of their time to achieve the desired results. BUT presumably, whilst there is no definitive solution to this problem, the development of a recruitment strategy and putting in place some disciplines and structures that can help better recruitment and administration is essential. In short you don’t need to be a big company to understand value and indeed demand quality recruitment. Of key relevance is managing the limited budget that small companies invariably have. It is essential to have systems in place that help you to control your budget, that tell you how many hires you can afford to make and where you are in relation to your intended hiring programme.

As a small business attracting people can be the hardest part so you don’t want to narrow your scope too much whilst avoiding the prospect of an unmanageable deluge of applications. Many small businesses depend solely on recruitment agencies because they feel that they do not have a strong enough brand to attract people via a direct strategy involving job boards, social media and networking. This can lead to smaller businesses paying the highest recruitment fees when they have the tightest budgets! Besides, small companies actually recruit more than they think. Most grow by 10% a year, most have at least a 10% attrition ratio.

By developing a strategy and a recruitment portal that exploits social media, referral networks and direct traffic to the company’s corporate website, recruitment costs can be massively reduced and efficiency improved. Small Companies should care massively about recruitment and try to gain any competitive edge that they can in the race to hire the best people. Pretending it doesn’t matter or that “we are too small to care” is giving out the wrong message. Please share your experiences about recruitment in small companies, after all the Government says that it’s where all the jobs are going to come from, but has someone forgot to tell the companies?

……when you can have a bespoke recruitment portal that offers a full ATS and so much more…?

At MyPeopleBiz we provide a cutting edge Applicant Tracking System as part of a bespoke Recruitment Portal.  In addition, your portal includes a Career Site, Interview Management system and a Communications Suite.

It also provides unique functionality that puts you in the recruitment driving seat, with the ability to take full control of your recruitment costs.

Your Portal is accessible from your corporate web site, enhancing the “employer brand” and driving direct applications to you as well as providing Jobseekers with a more enjoyable and fulfilling job hunting experience with a fully branded application process.

The ATS’s are by nature passive, butMyPeopleBiz has created an innovative Online Recruitment Platform that connects your recruitment portal directly to Jobseekers, Recruitment Agencies and Referrers, creating a dynamic market for talent whenever you need it.

A recruitment Portal will pay for itself and save you 30% plus on your recruitment budget in year1- Request a Demo to find out more.

The Start Up Donut offers free advice, tools and resources for those individuals who are interested in starting a new business.

Parker Crockford, Director at MyPeopleBiz says “The opportunity to work closely with a leading company such as the Start Up Donut is fantastic and we are keen to help small and start up companies that would benefit from a multi channel approach but lack the voice to reach every corner of the recruitment market place”

MyPeopleBiz have been working with SME’s such as Dub Studios, for some time and have tailored their approach to complement the idiosyncrasies of the small and start up businesses they have worked with.

Tom Watt, Owner at Dub Studios said “Dub Studios recently decided to expand its workforce. Considering the size of our business the personality, culture, creativity and skill of the individual we were bringing in was paramount. MyPeopleBiz was the perfect fit for us as it gave us access to a range of candidates that we could never have accessed without their multi channel approach. Throughout the process they gave us advice, support and relayed our specific needs to agencies. Their fixed fee recruiting gave us the power in a world where agencies have ruled for so long. MyPeopleBiz has given our small business strength beyond it’s size, with a reach that we could not have achieved”

Christoff Lewis, Business Development Director at the Start Up Donut said “Starting a business is a very daunting prospect, with the independence it brings comes uncertainty and even the best ideas can fall short due to poor planning and unforeseen circumstances. By pooling the resources and wisdom in our respective areas, MyPeopleBiz and The Start Up Donut can offer a better quality of service to our clients and followers’’

About the Start Up Donut
The Start Up Donut offers advice and tools that can help start ups get to grips with the multifaceted nature of the business world. There are few aspect of business more confusing, frustrating, expensive and important as recruitment. MyPeopleBiz offers a solution to these problems by developing custom strategies built around a bespoke recruitment portal.

About MyPeopleBiz
MyPeopleBiz is an innovative Online Recruitment Platform that connects employers of all shapes and sizes with Jobseekers, Recruitment Agencies and Referrers, creating a dynamic market for talent.
We connect talent with Employers by creating “vendor neutral” bespoke Recruitment Portals  which are accessed from the Employers own corporate website, enhancing the “employer brand” and providing Jobseekers with a more enjoyable and fulfilling job hunting experience. Every portal includes cutting edge Applicant Tracking and Interview Management for better recruitment.

MyPeopleBiz are aiming to introduce the benefits of a Recruitment Portal to start up companies who are interested in reducing the costs of hiring an employee, reducing time spent interviewing and tracking, creating databases of talent, creating referral schemes and maximising direct hire opportunities right from the offset then MyPeopleBiz are happy to have an informal chat to see how they can help. MyPeopleBiz can be reached by email at info@mypeoplebiz.com or by phone 020 3176 3737.

MyPeopleBiz are committed to creating market leading, bespoke 
Recruitment Portals for Businesses of all shapes and sizes to connect directly to talent from all available channels: Job Boards, Social Networks, Recruitment Agencies, Headhunters, Careers Sites and Internal and External Referrals.

MyPeopleBiz creates bespoke Recruitment Portals accessed from the Employer’s own corporate website so that talent from all available recruitment channels including Internal and External Referrals, Social Networks, Job Boards, Recruitment Agencies and Headhunters can connect.

Recruitment Portals are “vendor neutral” and benefit everyone. Employers enhance their “employer brand” and provide Jobseekers with a more enjoyable and fulfilling job hunting experience. Referral Schemes can be created and communicated to internal (employees) and external networks so that Referrers can be rewarded for referring their friends to jobs and Recruitment Agencies can introduce their Candidates at a click of a button and communicate directly with Employers.

Working in partnership with each Employer the portals powered by the MyPeopleBiz technology offer some major benefits – terms of business are agreed online, fixed fees and reduced administrative hassle through cutting edge applicant tracking and interview management for everyone.  The ability to control a Recruitment Strategy over the short, medium and long term, with the focus being to increase direct and referred Candidates is bringing major benefits to Employers such as Daniels Group for whom having their own Portal has proved a winning formula:

Emma Proudley, HR Business Partner said ‘Having an external partner to focus our recruitment drive at Daniels Group is proving incredibly useful. By hosting all our existing recruitment methods through one ATS (Applicant Tracking System) saves the HR team time, effort, and money. It gives us the ability to monitor the results of all applications and be able to communicate back to applicants in a timely and effective manner. We want to employ the best people, so using MyPeopleBiz which provides us with a multichannel approach to see the whole candidate market place, including a system that taps in to the passive market of applicants who are not actively job hunting. Additionally, MyPeopleBiz allows us to manage our relationships with our established recruitment suppliers effectively, as well as reducing our agency spend.”

Sarah Rowlands, HR at Solicitors Wedlake Bell, commented:
‘We have recently signed up to the MyPeopleBiz platform and now have our own applicant tracking system and can use all the recruitment channels in the market from one place saving lots of hassle and administration as well as cost. We have just recruited a Marketing assistant and pre our new platform, it would have cost us at least £3500 in agency fees. I set up a fixed fee for my agencies at £3500, I then created a referral scheme which would have paid a fee of £1800 for a successful referral and the job was also placed through the MyPeopleBiz network on various job boards and Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I paid a sifting fee to have my response dealt with by a recruiter which cost me £250 and was lucky enough to hire a candidate that came through direct so the whole exercise cost me £484. It is an eye opener.’

MyPeopleBiz founder Frank Varela says “Employers are seeing the benefits of our innovative and unique approach. Now with improved Career Site functionality, cutting edge Applicant Tracking, state of the art Interview Management, flexible Communications Suite, access to leading Social Media Networks, Online Headhunting, creation of Talent Pool Databases and much more besides Employers won’t find an offering like this on offer within the marketplace.

We have numerous clients such as leading retailer Phase Eight, PR communications firm Clarion and property/surveyors Gerald Eve enjoying success through their new Recruitment Portals and our platform is going from strength to strength. We are confident that we can add value to anyone looking to recruit.”

To celebrate the release of the new functionality, MyPeopleBiz is launching a competition for Employers to win a FREE Careers Portal for your company, with other prizes available. Visit our website to enter.

A leading recruitment commentator said that 2010 was going to be the year of the referrer, so we recently conducted a round up of the various research available in the market place with regard to referrals schemes, networking and the impact that this is making on the recruitment market:

1. 88% of employers rated referrals above all other sources for generated quality of new hires

2. 78% of companies are now using social networking and social media to find and attract candidates.

3. 50% of companies were spending more on business networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and employee-referral programs and less on print and traditional job boards.

4. 50% plus of companies surveyed by the CIPD admitted that so far they had not utilised an employee referral scheme at all.

Clearly the figures suggest that whilst employers who are utilising referral schemes are seeing an increasing percentage of hires initiated through their employees’ social networks, there is still a long way to go if more than 50% of employers surveyed have not utilised a referral scheme at all.

If your company already has an employee referral program, or is at the initial stages of putting this in place its worth looking at how and why they can work so well and also, how expanding them into open referral networks through sites like mypeoplebiz.com can take your recruitment to the next level with significant savings and a great calibre candidate otherwise difficult to find.

Traditionally employee referral programs act as internal recruitment method, encouraging staff to source new hires for your organisation from their social and professional networks through a monetary incentive. This allows for an efficient recruitment process reducing cost and time to hire thanks to improved relevance of referred candidates and the trustworthy relationship between the referrer, candidate and the organisation itself.

· A recent study showed that 88% of employers rated referrals above all other sources for generated quality of new hires

Referrals generate a higher quality candidate as they are likely know the job and candidate far better and are not prepared to waste their or their contacts time on something they don’t think is right. This cuts down recruitment time for you as candidates have essentially already been well sourced and screened for you. Furthermore, referrals build on themselves, not only are you likely to be building a better talent pool, hired referrals are likely to encourage further referrals and are more likely to refer new talent themselves, expanding your ‘talent network’.

By setting worthy rewards for successful hires you’re also creating ‘brand campaigners’ for your company as they promote your organisation to the friends and contacts in their networks. What’s more, 78% of your staff are spending up to half an hour of the working day on social networking sites, creating a even larger range of connections to source candidates from, capitalise on this rather than thinking of it as wasted time.

The impact Personal recommendations via current employees’ social networks can be very valuable in other ways too, as they can efficiently lead to candidates with the right cultural ‘fit’ for a company in addition to saving employers considerable amounts of money, reducing the amount spent on agencies and external advertising.

Why create an open your referral system? Internal referral schemes can work fantastically, but why stop there; all your competitor’s employees also know great people in the industry, and are just as willing to participate in the action. People are more connected than ever before with new technologies, and since 78% of staff are spending up to half an hour of the working day on social networking sites too, recommending a contact for a job is easy – just a simple message is required, and then they can chose to take it forward. Put simply, If your company rewards and encourages this behaviour, your company is going to be rewarded with better talent from the people who know what is needed.

CIPD surveys indicate that 64% of respondents agreed that referral reward incentives for staff have a positive impact – not just on the caliber of job applicants, but on the budget too. A large insurance company which participated in the study’s focus group reported a huge saving of £250,000 in recruitment costs as a result of their ‘refer a friend’ scheme.

Clearly, such schemes can be highly successful.

Once received, the process of filtering begins. This process alone will require hours of painstaking sifting (particularly with-out an ATS), and since whoever does the sifting will need to be fully conversant with every nuance of the position, and consequently, is likely to be highly paid, then by process of elimination arrive at a number of applicants to interview. Now this is the point – during this process of elimination you are in grave danger of missing the most suitable candidates. Why? Because you are basing your selection on a huge assumption. The assumption that a candidates’ CV is in any way representative of their suitability for the job.

Of course we need parameters, a form of measurement, somewhere to start the process. A well written CV can provide some useful information.

Most importantly it can register the applicant’s level of education and professional qualifications. Often it may provide some interesting points about the candidate’s interests and hobbies, and in most cases will offer an historical account of the candidate’s career path thus far. But, the way each recruiter (be they a member of the human resources team, a line manager or the company MD) views this account is purely subjective. A ‘good’ CV in one persons eyes will be completely discarded by another.

Can you really afford such a hit and miss approach to form the basis of policy for sourcing your most valuable assets?

A good recruitment agent understands this. He or she will have made it a priority to firstly completely familiarise themselves with the details of the position concerned, fully taking into account such details as; the culture of the company, the number and mix of the work force, the geographical location, the expectations of the employer, the retention and rewards policy etc. etc. They will also have an open mind concerning the attributes of the ideal candidate, making the number one priority finding the right person for the job.

Some candidates can write a very appealing Curriculum Vitaé (that is, appealing to some) and some are just not able to represent their clear suitability for a particular job by way of 2 -3 sheets of printed A4. So how do you decide? You let the recruitment agent do their job. Ask yourself, would there be around 20,000 employment agencies in greater London alone if they weren’t doing a reasonable job?

Over the years, I have built a level of trust with many clients, to the point that, if I recommend a candidate for a particular job, that candidate will be granted an interview regardless of what it says on their CV. This is how they arrive at a short list. They allow me to do what I’m paid for. Of course, the final decision is theirs and I will endeavour to ensure that they have a real choice. Not the choice between someone suitable and someone who isn’t but between two or three who are entirely suitable. The rest is down to what I call ‘chemistry’, something that as yet, we haven’t found a way to regulate.

Written by mypeoplebiz user David Bloomfield, senior consultant at Bloomfield consultants, a recruitment agency specializing in financial, legal and sales recruits highlights the benefits of using the agency channel in a recruitment strategy.

Connect your business with recruitment 300+ recruitment agencies across the country, deal with your applications quickly and effectively with our inbuilt ATS. Find out about cost efficient multichannel recruitment with mypeoplebiz here.

I have been merrily working under this preconception for years, until last week when during the course of a lunch with an old friend (who has significant experience in running huge businesses in the professional services space) we got talking about recruitment strategy.

I am going to share his thoughts with you because it was a very different take on the do nothing if it’s working theory. He began by saying that, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it is a flawed strategy or at the very least a non strategy. Doing nothing often means maintaining the status quo which is fine for a while but eventually you risk being left behind; particularly if your competition suddenly changes their strategy or becomes more aggressive in the market, or more efficient, or  if your business is susceptible to changes in technology which may have an impact on your strategy. He had read my previous recruitment insight last month in this column and he agreed that a multichannel recruitment strategy was a good thing because at the very least it puts the business in a position from which it can be flexible, not dependent on any one source or limited suppliers. But he cautioned that it was not enough just simply to play at it, instead he advised that as a recruitment team, you have to continually improve your offering to the business and that ongoing improvement and better quality of hire, is the goal year on year and to achieve that; you have to tinker and improve every year, you cant just say we are ok and we will do the same again next year; or you will get left behind. He added that in today’s world, cost reductions are essential and achievable.

There are some classic anecdotes I could cite, a Formula 1 car does not get faster every year without improvement, technology changes everything and this years winner, will be left behind next year if the car is not improved because all the cars will be improving; so whilst its not broken it is vital that it receives ongoing improvement in order to maintain a podium position and stay ahead of the field rather than get left behind. This thinking resonates with most recruiters at recruitment agents. They say that more often than not, when you talk to a prospective new client the barriers go up immediately regardless of whether you are offering something new and potentially fantastic its almost impossible to get an audience. “We are very happy with what we are doing”; “I like my agencies”;” I have been doing the same thing for years and it’s has worked up until now” are all common objections; and another way of saying: “its not broken and I am not fixing it”. The problem is that when you finally realise that it may not be broken but someone else’s strategy is working much better and the competition have got a lead and an advantage on you in the talent game, by then its too late and any changes or adaptation will take time to have an impact which could be costly.

This leads me to the other pearl of wisdom I got from my lunch, “people just don’t give change a chance”. This also resonates with me and with recruitment strategies, particularly with regard to social media.

There is a strange attitude to recruitment and social media.  You hear a lot of “we have tried it and it didn’t work”. Really? How long did you give it? Did you go into it hoping that you would be proved right all along? I have seen at first hand the reluctance to approach social media and social networking in recruitment. “We will give you one job to see what you can do- It’s in Mongolia-off you go, let’s see how well referrals work now!” (I jest about Mongolia, but only just).

The thing I find intriguing is that you get perfectly sensible, experienced people suddenly changing into the Y generation. They acquire that most modern of traits i.e. the requirement for instant gratification, you know “I want it now”. Except in this case  its ” I have tried it, I used the social networks yesterday and we haven’t had any response”. This is what I mean by going in to something with the intention of making it fail because it upsets the status quo, it gets people out of their comfort zones, its change. If you don’t give change a chance then the natural conclusion is that your strategy is right for you and if aint broke there is no point in fixing it.  But I wonder where we are heading with all this reluctance to adapt? When email came along, the fax worked perfectly well and the Royal Mail was still delivering letters, so it wasn’t broken. How many businesses still use the fax as part of their daily communications instead of email today?

Another “It will never catch on” was the internet. Many people made a virtue at the time of not having an internet strategy, particularly the bookshops. Then Amazon came along and the book shops have been going bust ever since, but their model was not broken, its just that selling books evolved and many of the book stores didn’t realise because they were closed minded and not interested in how the new technology would affect them. Recruitment agencies took the same approach initially. Most recruitment agencies did not bother with an internet strategy, now its all they do. Employers are still lagging behind the recruiters in terms of their thinking on candidate generation, too often relying on a strategy that lets the recruiters find the candidate first and dealing with the cost implications later. This is fine, as long as the business has no requirement to reduce cost and as long as your competitors aren’t stealing your talent at a fraction of the cost that you are paying. It is also fine until your talent acquisition model becomes too expensive and cannot feed the talent into the business therefore starving the business. The problem is that, when you analyse your recruitment/ talent strategy it doesn’t look broken yet, but can you afford to wait until it finally does break?

Getting back to my lunch conversation. My friend said that his own experiences in trying to seek systematic, ongoing improvement in his business have been very frustrating because of the negative internal reaction to any change, but he remains determined to push through a cultural change and to persuade his talent acquisition team to embrace social media and to ensure that it is embraced sensibly as part of a long term strategy.

It would be good to hear from readers about their experiences. Have you encountered reluctance to embrace social media/networking in to your recruitment strategy? Do you have examples of positive or negative reaction to change in recruitment? and, what impact if any has it made on your business or on your clients?

Click here to contact Frank

Two years ago, I undertook a significant research project based on how companies recruit and also what they wanted to achieve from their recruitment strategy.  Some of the key themes were better price control, more choice, more structure and reducing the burden of administration.  On a closer analysis, it was evident that many of the existing strategies  actually attempt to achieve better price control (although they don’t necessarily achieve this goal effectively) and a reduction of the administrative burden, but have the side effect of limiting  hiring choices. However, our experience is that these strategies, which generally involve a substantially single channel approach, have the side effect of limiting hiring choices and, often, an increase in the overall direct, variable, cost of hiring. Worryingly, most of the employers we spoke to seem to be unaware that they are approaching the war for talent through a strategy of ignoring potentially great candidates.

A solution is to employ a deliberate and effective multi-channel recruitment strategy which would reopen recruiting options and give scope for more intelligent focussing of recruitment.  The challenge is to find a way to do this without increasing the administrative burden on the employers’ HR function.  Perhaps most interesting, in addition to increasing the choice of quality candidates, the flexibility of a managed multi-channel approach implicitly results in a significant reduction in the overall cost of recruiting.

Looking at some of the recurring key themes that  limit choice will also lead me to tell you about  what I have done to help solve the candidate attraction conundrum and to ensure that all the options are always available to the employer.

Firstly the recurring themes

Attend any industry conference and you cannot fail to notice the dissatisfaction amongst employers with what is perceived to be the regurgitation of the same old candidates that appear on their shortlists time after time, the emphasis here being on the lack of choice, the lack of quality candidates, etc.

Interestingly, you also hear the same employers talk about the strong relationships that they have with the headhunters who continue to supply them with those regurgitated lists of candidates. You also hear a lot of talk about the PSL lists which now dominate the recruitment industry and which actually restrict the supply of candidates, to those supplied by the chosen few on the PSL.

Then there is another wave of choice limiters, the mantra of the internet recruitment gurus who, I can only imagine, must have been terribly upset or damaged so severely by their previous recruitment experience as recruitment consultants, that they now wish to show the world how to recruit without using a recruitment agent ever again.

Taking the phenomenon of continuing to use a supplier who fails to provide a fresh added value short list for each assignment first, it is easy to dismiss this as a real limit on choice by recalling that often quoted Einstein analogy that “the first sign of madness is to continue to do the same thing and expect different results.”  So, if this is a condition that afflicts you and it’s the main topic of conversation the next time you are struggling with a recruitment project – just use someone different and don’t repeat the same mistakes expecting to get a different result.

One could additionally question what the purpose of this strong relationship with the supplier is, since it clearly does not help the organisation to hire better people.

Moving on to PSL’s, I have never quite understood what this is about, mainly because, if its more choice that you want, then opening up your candidate supply options is logical – businesses want the pick of the best people.  But then, for an employer to say that “we are only going to use 10 suppliers”, so if Agent X has a really first rate candidate, but the employer has decided not to use them, then they are closing their candidate supply options and this is tantamount to putting a sign up asking Agent X to send that candidate to any or all of their competitors.  This is bizarre.

Many people talk about the candidate experience and how important it is to ensure that the candidate always has a positive impression of your employer brand. This is often used as a reason to go down the route of PSL’s, but I don’t understand how this works, how does the candidate know which agency is on your PSL? Are we suggesting that candidates should find out who you have chosen to deal with if they want to apply to you for a job? Let’s say that a candidate has a relationship with their favorite agency and enquires about an employer and the availability of roles with that employer. The agent would usually just introduce that candidate and that employer has the choice to interview and hire, but in this case, as the agent is not on the PSL, he simply advises his candidate that there is nothing on the books and to look elsewhere.  That employer has lost the opportunity to se the star candidate who could have made a difference to their business. This limits the employer’s choice and also does not do anything for the candidate experience as they simply don’t have an experience.

The conclusion that I have come to is that the true justifications for PSL’s are firstly to negotiate better prices with suppliers and secondly to be able to have fewer suppliers in order to reduce the administrative burden. The side effects though are a limit in the choice of quality people to just those who are registering with your PSL.

I think you become a preferred supplier, mainly because you treat your clients like preferred clients. Surely in the current business climate we should be more open to new ways of conducting business; and with new people. PSL’s may be putting limits and constraints on your ability to hire; you may not be getting the pick of the best people by sticking to your list.  So why limit yourself with a select few?

Competition is good for business and in this current climate many new and existing agents are willing to be much more flexible on terms and price. This means you could be getting much more competitive terms with someone outside of your magic list. And it’s worth thinking about the fact that candidates do not always throw themselves into the arms of every large agency in town, sometimes candidates prefer to go to a niche recruiter who understands their particular industry, which means you could be missing a future asset to the business that may not even appear on the radar of your PSL. When a candidate on the open market looks promising, they look promising to you and to your competitors. To put in a deliberate policy of not interviewing that candidate because the candidate chose not to use your PSL is rather baffling and, in my humble view, a choice limiter.

Looking at the “direct” only brigade, “let me show you how to use social media”, “let me “train you to get more out of job boards” let me …..etc. If your requirements are pretty generic, then there may indeed be a better way for you to recruit rather than paying a recruitment fee to fill roles such as, customer services, general sales, or non-technical roles and you could save yourself from spending thousands of pounds that you do not need to spend. In this current climate, getting candidates through your door should not be the issue. So I can definitely see a huge value in the direct strategy, but only as part of a balanced diet, as they say. To limit the choice of candidates by only going direct is potentially very harmful to your business. But it is happening. Very recently, one of my colleagues went to see a potential client who had been told that the CEO had hired a “direct” trainer and decreed that the recruitment team had to stop using agencies immediately as a cost cutting measure and must have a direct strategy only. So this team has to go from making sure they hire the right people for the business to actually spending day and night finding people. They will be woefully resourced (believe it or not hiring an ex recruiter is not enough) to be able to deliver this strategy and are doomed to fail.

So, where am I heading with all of this, it’s simply to point out the obvious that there are so many vested interests at play.

The larger the agency the more likely they are to try and sell you a preferred supplier agreement which cuts out the competition and gives them a clear income stream. I have noticed that many recruiter courses have sprung up over the years on selling your way in to PSL’s and sole supplier agreements. Agencies are actually training their people to go and sell restrictive practices that limit choice because they can make more money out of it.

With the direct crew, what’s their vested interest? They make their money from running training courses to show you how to recruit using twitter and Facebook and then they have revenue share deals with the job boards that you are encouraged to sign up to. The more you spend the more they make. Once you have chosen to “go direct” they come in and train the additional staff that you will need to hire in order to deal with the volume created by your new strategy.

So, step back in time to when there wasn’t much choice around and we all spent time trying to increase our choice, now fast track to present day and you will no doubt have noticed that at each stage you are being advised to reduce your options, to go single channel rather than multichannel for your recruitment.

And here I must confess my own vested interest and what I did to solve the issue of choice limitation.

Having been in the recruitment industry for many years and having been lucky enough to work for some great clients gathering extensive experience in retained search, traditional recruitment as well as online methodologies. I spent some of those years thinking about how the recruitment industry could be more effective and also provide better value. This has culminated in the creation of Mypeoplebiz http://www.mypeoplebiz.com/ with the aim of providing a simple to use multichannel recruitment platform that allows you to introduce and implement an innovative and efficient, process driven, recruitment function, where you can manage your cost to hire very easily.

Central to the mypeoplebiz offering, is the ability for employers to access not just one recruitment channel, but all recruitment channels from one place. You can access a huge network encompassing traditional methodology such as recruitment agencies, as well as referrals, social networks and a range of previously untapped, conduits for talent, whilst providing greater control over costs.

As I have already highlighted, our multichannel approach is in contrast to those who continue to espouse the virtue of the “one channel” approach, but I believe that you have to achieve balance and that all candidate supply channels are valuable and need to be available depending on the circumstances, so that the employer has the choice. To limit choice unwittingly or not, is not going to help a candidate attraction strategy.

Mypeoplebiz is a totally impartial platform and, to ensure that it always remains so, we have built in to our model a set fee structure so that regardless of where the candidate comes from mypeoplebiz always charges a flat fee for the service we provide. We really are not biased as to through which channel the candidate arrives at your desk, but we are concerned to make sure that it DOES arrive at your desk.

Indeed to increase choice and reduce cost, we have introduced a huge previously untapped resource in the form of the “social network referrer” and given clients the ability to stipulate what they want to pay for each vacancy that they recruit, we have provided an easy way to create and implement an e-recruitment strategy as well as providing an agency management system that will help you achieve the goals that you set and stay within the budget that you set.
It is a choice enhancer not a choice limiter.

We can only do this by being independent, pragmatic, process driven and bringing a level of expertise that encompasses experience from expert recruiters.

The idea was to make this platform suitable for any organisation and that is what has been achieved already. We are helping large corporates and small start ups alike to access a talent pool of hard-to-find passive candidates whilst helping them to reduce recruitment costs and increasing the recruiting performance for their business.

So far the results are as follows:-

• Reduced recruitment agency spend by up to 50%.
• Reduced recruitment advertising costs.
• Reduce time-to-hire for high volume roles.
• Increase the number of direct hires.

It’s amazing what you can achieve if you set out to increase the choice rather than limit the options. The war for talent will be won by organisations that do not limit where the candidates come from, it will be won by organisations who manage the cost to hire in a practical way rather than trying to achieve it through the creation of inefficient strategies that create more work for their already overworked recruitment teams.

Multichannel recruitment – keeping your options open – is vital in this day and age.

1. Good preparation  -  Draft a job description that states clearly the skills and knowledge the candidate needs and the tasks they will perform.  Also, ensure that the requirements for the job are objective and well justified.  For example, a request for working weekends may discriminate against certain candidates, like those with certain religions or with young children.  You must be able to prove that working weekends is indeed an unavoidably necessary part of the work.

2. Advertise widely -  Advertising does not need to be expensive; you can try using your business or social networks or other online resources to save costs.  Make sure your advert is well written and specific enough to attract the right candidates.   (But be careful how you say things to avoid any potential accusations of discrimination; see more below).  Also, advertise the job widely enough to avoid accusations of discrimination and don’t forget to let your own staff know about the new job opportunity either.

3. Play fair  -  You must actively avoid discrimination in selection as well as the advertising process.  Your business can be taken to an employment tribunal by someone who believes you didn’t give them a job because of discrimination.  For example, looking for a ‘young, dynamic person’ or ‘mature, experienced lady’ could fall foul of the age and sex discrimination rules.  Also, avoid asking for personal details that are not related to the job, such as race, religious beliefs or marital status. 

4. Dig deep  –  Experienced job seekers are good at submitting “air-brushed” CVs and providing expected answers to expected interview questions.  Use the interview to get as much information on the candidate’s real suitability for the job as you can.  For example, you may want to include a skill test in the interview and ask the candidates to describe their past experiences with situations that are similar to those they will need to manage in the new job.  

5. Set evaluation criteria  –  Make sure you ask the same set of questions from each of the candidates during the interview process and use your detailed job description to assess them.  If you are accused of discrimination, this hard evidence can be invaluable in demonstrating that you have objectively assessed each candidate.

6. Find the right fit  -   Any new person you hire will need to adapt to your company’s style and work well with your existing team and processes.  Try to include in the interview process a brief tour of the work place and a quick meeting with the people with whom the new person will work closest with. 

7. Check the papers  –  You must check if the candidate is eligible to work on the UK.  If they are not, you could be fined.

8. Promote diversity  –  Make sure you have a separate equal opportunities monitoring document and put an effort into trying to recruit a balanced work-force.

9. Feedback  -  It is important to give feedback on the interview on request by an unsuccessful applicant.  Failure to do so can leave you open to claims that the rejection was for discriminatory reasons.

10.  Seal the deal  -  Every employee is entitled to a written statement of employment within two months of starting. This can either be a contract or a statement and set of policies covering the date they started work, their salary, hours of work and holiday entitlement, your policies on sick leave and pay, and pension availability. There should also be a statement on how you or your employee can terminate the job, and what disciplinary and grievance procedures are in place. 

About the author:  Aniko Zagon is the founder-director of Entelliz Limited, the entrepreneurial incubator and training specialist.  Follow her @anikozagon