I’d be invited along to the recent Talent Puzzle Seminar on the subject of “Assessing quality of hire across recruitment channels to deliver 'best value' recruitment”. However, unfortunately I couldn’t make it.
Luckily Virginia Raemy of Talent Puzzle has written up a summary of the event and as it contains some top tips and stats I thought it’d be useful to share it here:
More than 140 in-house recruiters from companies including Deloitte, MITIE, Legal & General, and Harrods attended our seminar last week at the Institute of Physics in London. The event gave delegates the opportunity to hear three industry speakers and discuss how to effectively assess the quality of hire within their organisation. The day kicked off with a spot of networking over breakfast, and it soon became apparent that the event was full of attendees eager to learn from one another and really make a difference in their own company. Up next, were the speakers, my highlights of each are below:
First up was Roger Philby of Chemistry who talked about building a value of hire model. Roger is truly passionate about his work, and began by telling the audience that they had the coolest job in the word! It is resourcing teams that have the ability to make a real impact on a business through the people they hire. The problem they face however is the deeply embedded belief in so many organisations that hiring should be done at the lowest possible cost.
This approach to hiring, Roger explained, led to the next statistic we were shown. An alarming 3 out of 4 hires are wrong. Businesses should be focussing their efforts on creating a values based hiring model. They need to define What Good Looks Like (WGLL) for their company and the predictors for success, which in the case of Chemistry is as follows:
• Intellect
• Values
• Motivations
• Behaviours
• Experience
By measuring potential candidates against these five factors (in the order above, which represent from the top the hardest to change, to the easiest at the bottom), a business is far more likely to choose the people with the correct attributes needed to fit the culture of a business. This, Roger explained resulted in a far better quality of hire. Full details of Roger’s presentation can be found here.
Following on from this presentation, delegates broke into groups to discuss the recruitment methodologies currently adopted in their company. It became clear that far too many were hiring on cost, not quality. And for those that were hiring on quality and assessing an individual’s values, the retention rates within their business were far higher.
Next up was Matt Alder of MetaShift who talked about the value of social media in recruitment. We held a similar seminar in February this year, and what was great to see this time was almost 70% of the room were now using some form of social media in their recruitment strategy. A great deal more than when asked by Matt earlier in the year. Matt sought to answer the question of whether organisations should expect a better quality of hire with social media. And the answer was yes. By engaging candidates, sharing information with them, and using existing employees to do so, they are far more informed about the culture and values of a business. An example we were shown was that of Unilever and their Facebook page.
Matt continued his presentation covering talent communities, how they can assist with quality and time to hire. The example he used here was of well known law firm Pinsent Masons. Through using a talent community the company has had 50% fewer applicants, of those interviewed for Pinsent & Mason, 71% interviewed were offered a position, and of those 100% accepted. A sure sign that by engaging with candidates and showing them what you have on offer prior to the application stage, the chances of a successful hire are far greater.
Matt finished his presentation with some sterling advice: ensure there is consistency in your brand across all channels, put the human touch back into recruitment (people like to talk to people, not a brand), and finally those that were in the room who were not utilising social media needed to act now! This doesn’t mean using every channel, experiment and see what works for your business.
Last up was Lucy Bunyan of Legal & General. Lucy’s own experience of redefining and evaluating the recruitment strategy at L&G was the focus of this presentation. What was particularly inspiring about the presentation was the ability of L&G to highlight their successes AND failures encountered along the way. The real focus of the presentation was showing delegates that by taking the time and effort (and at times this may mean working well into the night) to plan a recruitment strategy – businesses will be in control of all aspects.
Another key point was measurement and communication across the whole business. By continually measuring performance of internal and external resources, L& G has been far more able to see where they are making errors. Something that, through listening to the audience, was prevalent in many businesses. Lucy’s presentation was followed by a lengthy Q&A session; attendees were keen to hear from a real life case study.
If you want to know more about the event or future ones there is information on their site here.
