That there were some very fundamental mistakes made in the recent Fianna Fail Presidential bid, seems by now, to be beyond all question. While some might say the candidate’s actions may have drawn a lot of the humiliation onto himself, it’s hard not to feel very sorry for him and his family, in what must be a very confusing and hurtful situation for them. They are only human after all, whatever the circumstances which lead them to this point.
Yet it will come as no surprise, to any of us involved in the HR / Recruitment sector, that a selection process which starts off so positively, can so dramatically descend into such shambolic chaos – the stuff of nightmares. This level of peril goes with the territory of dealing with the people element of any organisation. Dealing with people’s careers, with their future hopes and dreams will always be fraught with danger, in spite of seemingly best-laid plans. The resonsibility for eliminating even the potential for mistakes however, rests squarely with the organisation as the ones who are in control of the selection and hiring process itself.
Learnings for SME’s for Their Hiring Procedures
It is therefore worth reflecting now on some of the relatively simple steps which employers can take for better hiring outcomes and hopefully reduce the risk of such disappointment in their own campaigns;
Start in Time – This is the No. 1 step for a reason. Get this one wrong, and everything else to come afterwards is straight away on the back foot. It’s hard to conclude the above campaign was afforded sufficient time from the get-go, resulting in what looks like a rush job.
At Midlandjobs, we encourage our regular customers to consider being constantly in recruitment mode, avoiding last-minute errors. Our affordable annual subsciption packages give unlimited year-round access to allow our employers to list jobs in plenty of time for any season or campaign at a flat rate cost.
Job Design – Before setting about seeking job applications for any new role, employers will think through in advance, what the key components of the job actually are. What is the job title, what are the key tasks and responsibilities? Who are the stakeholders with whom the new employee will be dealing? What will be their key objectives in that new role – and what will it look like if/when they are eventually carrying out their duties successfully and to everyone’s satisfaction? This detail will all be taken into account in the job description.
Work with line managers to establish what are the key competencies for the role. What are the all-important and key skills and qualifications which any prospective candidate must have? These are not nice-to-haves. These are the deal-breakers. If the candidate does not already possess these competencies in spades, they’re not even in the running – simple as that. Again, it seems the above-mentioned candidate may simply not have been sufficiently extroverted to be comfortable under the media glare of a Presidential campaign. The challenges he faced might have rolled of the back of a different candidate who was already accustomed to the day-to-day rigors of political exposure. In regular day-to-day recruitment, the final job ad wording should take any core competencies into account.
Recruitment Campaign Strategy – This is the point where third party recruitment providers may come in. Fail to prepare an appropriate netting and vetting process at this stage, and you’re preparing to fail.
In the private sector, a campaign to attract candidates does not have to be made public. Very often the best hires are discovered by word-of-mouth. But when such methods fail to yield results, the net has to be thrown out further and more publicly, typically across online channels nowadays which is where recruitment job-boards such as Midlandjobs.ie are designed to get your vacancy out across online and social media channels very quickly through job alert emails and social networking notifications.
Initial Candidate Screening – The relative ease with which this step can be completed, depends on the quality of the previous steps. If the job is properly designed, if key skills and competencies are properly identified, if the correct campaign has been run and there has been sufficient interest in the vacancy from enough suitable candidates, and all of this has been done in good time, then this next step should be a simple matching process; Key competencies in the Job Ad – matched with the characteristics identified in the candidates’ cvs.
Pre-Employment Screening – It goes without saying that this step in the process was also left wanting in the above case. It is the hardest task of all for HR professionals when it comes to recruitment. Very often, there is pressure from the operations and line management side of a business to fill a role and get a candidate in place asap. The temptation in such cases is to go with the first (best) person who comes along. While it can be highly inconvenient to rigorously run through all of the steps of the vetting and reference checks step-by-step, this due diligence must be fully seen through properly, for the sake of future potential enquiries into what process was followed, however tedious.
In so many businesses, the very success of an entire company’s operations depend entirely on the quality and suitability of the staff working in it. While it is only natural and perhaps beneficial to approach recruitment projects with a positive mindset, and be always hoping for the best, you nevertheless also have to go into it with eyes wide open and be expecting the worst until the candidate is finally in place and working out all to plan.
This is why at Midlandjobs.ie, we have always held that the selection and hiring of staff is literally the most important core function, not just for the HR department within a firm, but for the entire organisation itself.
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