Project manage recruitment for best chance of success

Poor project management is often the main cause of recruitment failures, says Dr John Jebb, Managing Director of Talent Management Innovation Consultants, Accretis
Fri, 20 Feb 2015 | Dr John Jebb

FROM MARCH 2015'S RECRUITER MAGAZINE

Poor project management is often the main cause of recruitment failures, says Dr John Jebb, managing director of talent management innovation consultants, Accretis

What does ‘recruitment failure’ mean?

For recruitment agencies this often means their candidate has not been appointed.

For HR or internal resourcers, a recruitment failure occurs if they don’t appoint a person to the role.

For the senior hiring authority, such as a head of department or higher, a recruitment failure can also occur if the person appointed doesn’t perform to expectations and has to be removed or replaced.

Whatever the viewpoint, something will have gone wrong or been omitted earlier in the process to cause this failure. To ensure success on all counts, a formalised path of critical points should be set out to designate each step that must be taken

in the recruitment process. Even if in hindsight, the project was practically impossible from the outset, the ultimate breakdown resulted from failing to define realistic and workable criteria for each recruitment effort.

Too often, recruiter training focuses on ‘candidate control’ and ‘client control’, and largely neglects to address effective process control.

This is where the introduction of a project manager comes in. Most project managers would say that their job is to control the process from ‘cradle to grave’, or ‘womb to tomb’. At any rate, in terms of recruiting business-critical talent, it is vitally important that an expert who understands the fine detail of what is required at every stage is involved right from the project’s conception — meaning a project manager.

Effective project management requires a strong compliance focus and an unerring attention to detail. On the other hand, advanced resourcing needs a more flexible approach and a relatively high degree of creativity. These different skill sets are practically polar opposites, therefore it is best to have different people filling the different roles. However, they must be appreciative of each other’s operational needs and be capable of forging a good working partnership to ensure success.

If such expertise of both types isn’t involved, then there is a serious risk of the project criteria being unrealistic and unachievable or the wrong processes and resources being employed.

In our research, we have identified 25 critical steps throughout the recruitment cycle. The first step requires the real business needs and future objectives to be fully defined. However, many failures can be traced back to the fact that the job and person specifications are typically based on the previous incumbent and their past duties rather than identifying the new and/or additional skills and attributes that are required for future success.

Just how common is recruitment failure when considering business-critical positions and why should we worry about it? 

Well, 28.6% of recruitment projects investigated during our ‘mystery shopper’ trials failed completely and a further 51.8% were seriously flawed, requiring the processes to be repeated or changed in order to secure a placement.

In the 2013 CIPD [Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development] Resourcing Survey, three-fifths of HR manager respondents stated that they experienced recruitment ‘difficulties’ particularly for managers/specialists. However, recruiters can prevent such issues by applying root cause’ and ‘reverse brainstorming’ techniques. During facilitated brainstorming workshops, we identified over 120 common reasons for process failure, all of which can be overcome or avoided by effectively project managing the critical path, applying best practice to talent acquisition and improved training.

All the business leaders involved in the brainstorming exercises said that in their organisations, the process has to have failed completely before a change of strategy would be considered, thus wasting a lot of time and money. The 25-step process we devised (see above), by highlighting control points, allows for flexibility with control and generates the capability for intervention if blockages or obstacles occur. By following the outputs of the workshop exercises, they were surprised that by monitoring activity at each step they could identify issues and predict failings much earlier, so that corrective action could be taken and/or different processes adopted.

Many stakeholders, particularly the business leaders and internal resourcers, have expressed their concern that the number of steps involved could lead to a substantial increase in recruitment costs and time to hire. However, by estimating the full economic costs of the probable processes and factoring in the average recruitment failure rates, the return on investment was likely to be greater in all cases where a project manager would be appointed and greater quality control exerted.

Currently, time-to-hire reductions are often the result of cutting corners which introduces greater failure rates. Project managing the critical path process enables a switch to measuring the gold standard of recruitment metrics, quality of hire.

Keep those plates spinning

Think of successful talent acquisition as a project management exercise — and a recruitment failing as failing to manage the project.

Take stock of the steps you must take to successfully identify, assess and bring new talent into an organisation, and you will find that at least 25 major stages, each containing critical control points, are involved.

This is regardless of the recruitment method being used — whether it’s advertising, internal resourcing, engaging a recruitment agency or commissioning a full talent/executive search process, among others.

At each and every stage several things can go wrong, resulting from errors, omissions, bad judgment and incorrect assumptions. Some will block progress completely and some are likely to generate additional problems further down the line. All are likely to cause or contribute to a recruitment failure.

However, three major common situations can have a major impact throughout the process:

• Bad project management

Each identified step involves at least one critical control point. Failing to complete each step effectively can cause serious issues. Bad project management will lead to omissions, errors and oversights or even missing out a step completely. Good project management streamlines the process.

• Wrong people involved in the process

Having the wrong people involved can cause problems at every stage. The wrong person at any stage is any player who does not understand, or is not fully capable of carrying out, the critical requirements at that stage, or who acts as a barrier in any way to acquiring the best talent available.

• Poor communication

Lack of, or poor, communication between stakeholders, and particularly with candidates, has been cited as a major cause of recruitment failings.

The 25 steps of talent acquisition

Step 1. Define the real business need and future objectives

Step 2. Benchmark, agree and write position and person specifications

Step 3. Sign off to recruit for the role as specified 

Step 4. Assign project manager

Step 5. Identify the appropriate demographic(s) to target

Step 6. Identify best recruitment strategy

Step 7. Develop business case and budget

Step 8. Sign off for strategy and budget

Step 9. Create project map and timescale

Step 10. Engage most appropriate resources

Step 11. Identify the target markets/talent locations 

Step 12. Market research and prospect identification

Step 13. Marketing to prospects

Step 14. Candidate engagement

Step 15. Decision on which candidates to progress

Step 16. Selling the opportunity and gaining candidate buy-in and agreement to progress

Step 17. SKUBA (Skills Knowledge Understanding Behaviours Attributes)-based screening and filtering of candidates (process continues through to offer stage)

Step 18. Background checks

Step 19. Interview arrangements 

Step 20. Interviewing, assessment & debriefing (multi-stage)

Step 21. Final decision and formulating the offer 

Step 22. Acceptance

Step 23. References

Step 24. Candidate starts

Step 25. Candidate stays and performs to expectations

Dangers of the 25th step

Once the new hire comes onboard, the 25th step comes into play, with its own critical danger points: your new hire could either fail to perform or leave of their own accord. Common ways that organisations cause new employees to fail to perform and leave include:

• Failing to fully support the candidate and his/her family

• Lack of effective onboarding

• Failing to provide support to meet/exploit the employee’s potential

• Failing to adapt/grow the role to match the employee’s strengths and capabilities

• Failing to recognise and reward achievements

Dr John Jebb is managing director, Accretis. The report ‘Emerging Best Practice in Talent Acquisition’ is available from hiring-innovation.com

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