Your worst enemy in recruitment isn’t a bad job market, clients insisting on a purple squirrel, or whatever other employment hurdles. It’s actually you; specifically, your bad recruitment habits.
Human beings that we are, we tend to settle into practices that may have routinely succeeded in the past. The problem is that sometimes, we really just got lucky and the wrong approach worked that one time.
One thing is certain in recruitment: everything changes. A supposedly “sure-fire” method that worked well enough a decade ago is pretty much obsolete today. If you stick to the old ways, you may just end up spinning your wheels.
To avoid wasting your time, effort and resources, here are several bad habits you should avoid when recruiting.
Concentrating on the same metrics
The metrics you monitor today will likely change some years from now; perhaps new ones will be introduced or existing computations will evolve.
For example, you may eventually have to reexamine your sourcing channels. Maybe site visitors referred by Facebook would stop applying for jobs in the future, but those from LinkedIn will continue. Or maybe a new social network will emerge as more popular for job applications.
Whatever the case, adapting a different approach in such a scenario would affect how you compute stats like sourcing channel effectiveness. What’s important is that you’re open to updating your metrics use to give you a clearer picture of your recruitment efforts.
Making sweeping assumptions about applicants
Don’t paint applicants with the same brush. Generalising them is a cognitive bias that’s unfair to both you and the applicants.
For example, if some in your candidate pool failed to impress because their job histories are rather short (or maybe they job-hopped), don’t assume that they’re automatically poor candidates.
Why not? Because they might be scrappers who grabbed every scant opportunity and succeeded against tremendous odds. Remember Steve Jobs? He had dyslexia and hopped between jobs.
So yes, as long as a candidate is qualified, they at least deserve an interview.
When recruiting, you need to focus on discovering abilities and traits that translate well into your open roles. No one’s perfect; look for potential instead.
Not following up
If there’s one thing you should know about technology, it’s that it’s not 100% reliable. You might think that emailing or calling your shortlisted candidates is enough, but emails fall into spam folders and people aren’t always there when you call them.
Not receiving any response doesn’t necessarily mean the applicant isn’t interested. Unless a candidate explicitly said no, it probably just means they didn’t receive your message.
This is precisely why you need to follow up. You must rule candidates out first, otherwise you’ll miss out on a top talent because you didn’t make sure.
For best results, use a reminder app that will notify you when you need to follow up your candidates. You can download simple ones like Google Keep or Microsoft To Do, or go with your phone’s built-in personal assistant.
Limiting contact with candidates via email
People still use email to communicate, but this doesn’t mean it’s the only medium you should work with when contacting candidates. You have many channels at your disposal, including social messaging apps (e.g. Facebook Messenger, Viber, WhatsApp), SMS and the ever-trusted landline.
Granted, the effectiveness of each channel varies, but the point is that you shouldn’t use just one; go with several to maximise your efforts.
But take note that contacting passive candidates can be tricky because you don’t have their contact information – apart from what they choose to share online.
Try this workaround:
- Get the passive candidate’s complete name and current employer from LinkedIn.
- Visit google.com/maps.
- Input the candidate’s employer and its location – including its city if there are several locations.
- Google will give you the employer’s phone number
Just see to it that you contact your candidate during their employer’s office hours.
Using the same Boolean search strings
To make your sourcing more effective, you need to know how to put together a Boolean search, where you combine keywords with operators like AND, NOT and OR to get more relevant results.
You can use Boolean commands on search engines (e.g. Google, Bing), social networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook), and resume databases (e.g. OnlineJobs.ph, FlexJobs).
Depending on what you’re looking for, you have to use different search strings. You can’t keep running with the same commands and expecting them to yield the best candidates every time.
To get more relevant results, you can’t just use basic operators and simple modifiers (e.g. asterisks, quotes). You have to use advanced commands. For example:
- Want to search a specific website? Use site:domain.com [place search terms here]
- Want to search websites with specific keywords (e.g. resume, bio) in their URL? Use inurl:[keyword] like inurl:resume OR inurl:bio
- Want to narrow your search to certain file types? Use filetype:docx OR filetype:pdf
By knowing how to use all operators, you can combine them for precise search results.
Choosing a candidate right away
When recruiting, your goal is to fill the role with the best possible candidate, ideally at the shortest time possible. But if your business gives particular importance to your recruiters’ performance numbers, then they may end up hurrying through the process.
There’s nothing wrong treating the search with urgency, but you shouldn’t hire the first qualified candidate you encounter or the applicant who can start soonest. Instead, consider the entirety of the applicant pool before making your decision.
Avoid recruitment hassles
If recruitment isn’t your strong suit, or you’d just rather hand the task off to specialists, partner with Remote Workmate. We do all the heavy lifting for you, so finding the ideal hire becomes much more convenient.
You can actually choose from our pool of top candidates right away. Simply visit our Hotlist and browse a wide range of profiles there.
