Our Ghastly Guide to Game-Changing Recruitment
Do you sometimes feel that finding the best talent for your team is like trying to raise the dead?
Recruitment can be a monstrous task. But fear not. As a special Halloween treat, here is our latest Atkinson HR guide to the hottest trends and ideas in recruitment.
We will help to ensure you leave no gravestone unturned in your quest for talent.
Play the Ghosting Game: Your time as a leader or recruiter is very precious. And the candidate experience is overrated anyway. If you don’t have time, there’s no need to worry about following up with candidates after interviews or applications. Just leave them in suspense – they’ll move on.
The Vanishing Salary: The only transparency we need to see round here is through Casper the ghost. Publishing the salary on a job just means all your existing employees will get upset and ask for a pay rise. There’s nothing wrong with advertising a job with ‘competitive salary’ and if those do-gooders at #ShowTheSalary think otherwise they can go spend the night in Dracula’s coffin.
The Phantom Job: If you just want to test the job market, why not advertise a role that doesn’t actually exist. You can collect the CVs and use them next time you have an opening. Don’t worry about misleading candidates and wasting their time. It’s a recruiter’s market after all, so it probably won’t come back to haunt you.
The Eternal Wait: Job applicants need to understand that things can be hectic in an organisation. Hiring takes time and if that means a lengthy process, that’s fine. Also, it’s important that you get the right person. So, if you need to add in different stages to the process at your whim, then so be it. The candidates will just need to carve out the time.
Casting the Youth Spell: Your ‘HR Department’ will probably tell you that you shouldn’t use words like ‘young’, ‘energetic’ and ‘dynamic’ in your job adverts. What do they want – for you to hire the walking dead? You should feel free to exorcise your right to use whatever language will help you recruit the ‘best’ people for the job. If you actively discriminate at least you can’t be accused of unconscious bias.
The Dead of Silence: Your HR Department will also insist that you must give feedback to unsuccessful candidates. Why? You’ll never see these people again in your life. And if you do give them feedback, they’ll just get defensive and argue with you. Better for everyone that you just witch them the best for their future career and leave it there.
Interview Questions – Trick not Treat: Interviews are supposed to be tough. You shouldn’t be afraid of putting your candidates under pressure and really testing their resilience and ability to think on the spot. After all, if they get the job they’ll have to respond well under pressure. Want to ask whether they prefer Jason or Freddy Krueger? Fine. And as for this nonsense about sharing interview questions in advance? Honestly, it’s woke gone too far. Whatever next - women Ghostbusters?
The Curse of the Chosen Few: The best kind of recruitment is no recruitment at all. If you’ve got a mate that you know can do the job well, why bother with the risk of bringing in an external. Your recruitment policy will probably say you have to go through a ‘proper process’. But don’t worry, there’s always a way to creep around the rules. For example, in the assessment you could do a niche task that’s really specific to the organisation and that only an internal candidate could possibly understand.
Creepy Contract Clauses: In our experience, it’s best to start off with the assumption that you can’t trust your new hire. Better to be safe rather than sorry, so make sure your employment contract is super robust, detailed and restrictive. Ensure you have plenty of opaque, non-compete clauses that can trap your new employee long-term. And forget about things like enhanced sickness and leave. Do people not realise you’re trying to run a business?
Leaving New Hires in the Dark: Someone got the job. Well-done, fangtastic work. That’s the hard part done – now you can kick back and put your feet up. Someone from HR will probably tell you that you have to plan out the new starter induction, but surely that’s their job. Honestly, what do HR even do these days? Even if HR dig their heels in, there’s no need to worry. Our advice is that sink or swim is always the best policy when it comes to onboarding and induction. You need to know that your new team member is a self-starter anyway, so what better way than letting them sort out their own induction?
Happy Halloween; Happy Hiring!
Trick or treat? The scariest thing about this recruitment guide is that, across the team at Atkinson HR, we’ve experienced or seen examples of most of these ghastly practices at some point during our careers. Fortunately, we now get to work with amazing clients that take a value-based approach to recruitment.
If we can help you avoid a recruitment horror show feel free to get in touch at enquiries@atkinsonhrconsulting.co.uk.
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