As businesses, we are always looking to be as efficient as possible; whether within how our teams work, how we deliver to our clients, or how we bring new talent into our growing businesses. After 2020, now more than ever, efficient recruitment is essential to ensure you are getting the right talent into your team. For your business, you need to be making sure onboarding is as smooth as possible and making sure that the new member of your studio is settled and retained in your team.

As many studios and companies are preparing their 2021 recruitment strategies, we thought it would be helpful to compile some of the "oopsies" or "less efficient" approaches to recruitment that might be able to help your business.

• Work towards a clearly defined role. We often see a lot of briefs that are too open, vague, or wishy-washy. If you are working with a recruiter, an open brief can be challenging to nail down, and if you are recruiting on your own, too vague of a brief can lead you into too many options or possible directions. A clear, concise brief will make sure you only spend time speaking with the candidates that can do the job you need them to do.

• Understand your timeline. Work back from your ideal start date. For a permanent hire, think about notice periods (typically four weeks), and your interview process. Given this timeline, you should start recruiting about 6-7 weeks before you need that perm hire to start. Freelance is different, as many are available last minute. But if you have visibility over an upcoming project and know you will need additional support, it's always good to line up your freelancers in advance.

• Streamline and standardize your interview process. We totally understand that schedules change and sometimes you need to move interviews around. But having a standard interview process within your business will make recruiting a lot easier. Know ahead of time how many stages you require. Who do you need candidates to meet? Who needs to sign off on a hire? Do you need candidates to complete an exercise/test? Do you want a trial period? All things a recruiter and candidate should know.

• Provide timely feedback. One of the most significant sticking points we see is when a client provides little to no feedback following an interview. Whether or not you want to proceed with a candidate, giving feedback about a candidate shows the candidate you were invested in the conversation you had with them and helps your employer brand, especially if you have decided not to proceed with that candidate. It will also help guide your recruiter in their search if it wasn't the right candidate.

• Communicate(!). This will be a quick point. I can't tell you how many times a candidate has an interview; then we hear NOTHING from the client. The candidate assumes they haven't got the second interview or the job; so they move on. A couple of weeks later, the client comes back with a second interview request or an offer, but the candidate is already long gone. If there will be a break in your process for whatever reason (project deadlines, holidays, etc.), explain that to your recruiter so the candidate can be managed accordingly and kept engaged with your exciting opportunity.

• Don't undervalue a candidate just because of the market. It's easy to start under offering candidates in the current market, thinking that you are getting a "good deal". That candidate may accept your offer now, but when the market picks up (which it already has started doing), will that person stick around or leave to find their true value elsewhere? Just something to consider.

• Lastly, remember how you want your brand known. A really important point to keep in mind is how you want your employer brand to be known and perceived in the market. An interviewee who has a negative experience with your brand will remember that. They will avoid interviewing for your business in the future and will most likely tell their friends about the experience they had interacting with your business, which in the long run could damage your employer brand and make future recruitment more difficult.

Now can be mistaken for an easy time to recruit. We have heard clients say…

“I’m handling recruitment on my own” or “There are plenty of candidates, we don’t need recruiters” or “There must be loads of people out of work, recruiting must be really easy at the moment”.

Whether you are using a recruiter or going it on your own, recruitment right now is as hard as we have ever seen it. It’s not just about pinging out an advert and then picking out of the responses. (We had one advert that had over 500 responses - and only a small handful were applicable to the job. We’ve since stopped posting adverts.) Yes, there are many people out of work, but that makes your recruitment processes and picking the right candidate that much more important for your business.

If you would like to discuss any of the above advice or have us help you structure your recruitment process, please don’t be afraid to drop us a line for a chat! Looking forward to working with you soon!