Recruitment strategy – At a time when skills shortages are wreaking havoc, employment rates are creeping up and competition for top talent is fierce, it’s not enough to rely wholly on one element of your recruitment process to attract and retain the best people. It’s important to utilise a Total Recruitment Philosophy which incorporates all elements of the recruitment puzzle.

What is a Total Recruitment Philosophy? It’s a strategy focussed on reaching out to, and engaging with, the best talent for your business. It’s about having your finger on the pulse when it comes to attraction AND retention. It’s about understanding what good looks like now as well as predicting the employment needs of the future.

Our Total Recruitment Philosophy (TRP) recognises the journey recruitment has taken over the years – no longer is it enough to just look at attraction and assessment to find the best candidates. Our philosophy recognises the importance of employer branding, including its influence on candidates and how this needs to be reflected throughout the recruitment journey. It demonstrates that the journey doesn’t end once a person has been offered a position, but continues through the onboarding process and beyond. It is only through looking at all of these stages as a whole that you can truly influence your recruitment strategy to reach the right audience, engage with them in the right way and ensure you retain the best talent.

Our TRP is changing the face of recruitment by transforming the way companies approach and view the process, which results in them being able to both attract and retain talent in their business who are not only staying longer, but performing better.

We completely re-engineered recruitment processes for one healthcare organisation by working with them on a new online application form, introducing them to a range of new sourcing streams and moving them away from the more traditional and expensive advertising methods using conventional media.

We introduced values-based screening and assessment methods through the use of telephone and video interviews, which assessed candidates on their values and behaviours and how these matched the role, the client’s customers and the organisation. Candidates were engaged with throughout the process and had a regular point of contact. Managers were no longer interviewing irrelevant candidates and they saw a rapid decline in the number of ‘no shows’ – this was replaced instead with a high attendance of quality candidates achieving a 79% conversion rate at the face to face interview stage. By incorporating our TRP we were able to fill over 100 vacancies in 3 weeks, a tenfold uplift when compared to previous campaigns.

The feedback from our client speaks volumes:
“The service you have provided has completely transformed our healthcare recruitment process; we simply could not have achieved what we have without you”.

We often see recruitment campaigns fail where organisations do not have a TRP because they still believe recruitment activity can exist in its own silo. We often have to re-advertise roles for our clients- when we ask why, we are often told that the candidate did not start. After following up with the candidates we find this is because they have been left in the dark- sometimes waiting for 3 months or more with no contact from the company. In some cases, candidates have had to continually chase for updates. For example, they may have had a contract but had to chase for a start date.

There is simply no point in creating a fantastic recruitment experience, only for your onboarding and induction process to let you down. This can be one of the most frustrating parts of the process for the candidate – it requires engagement, consideration and reassurance.

Do you know what your onboarding process looks like? How often do you engage with your potential new starters? Do you know why they don’t start? What would your candidates say about their
recruitment experience with you? Time to think and reflect – have you got it right?

A total recruitment philosophy can be adopted by anyone, and it really works!

Written by Hannah Ratcliff, Marketing Executive