Written by Jodie Case | 5th August 2021

When we asked businesses through our recruitment survey if they were planning to take on new staff over the next 12 months, 78% said yes. It’s no surprise that a recruitment boom is expected this year as many businesses seek to rebuild and strengthen following the pandemic.

But are businesses prepared enough to succeed? A recent snapshot survey carried out by our team shows that just 1 in 5 have a process in place for recruitment.

Attracting and retaining staff is far from easy, especially in a pandemic – the recruitment process needs significant time investment and finding the right person can be difficult.

Whether you handle it in-house or seek support elsewhere, here’s why you should focus on your recruitment strategy.

To have a strong policy and process

To get off on the right foot when it comes to recruitment, developing a comprehensive recruitment policy and ensuring managers are properly trained in the recruitment process, can help prevent issues and build successful teams.

93% of businesses we surveyed manage recruitment in-house, and when asked what they found challenging when managing the recruitment process, more than half (52%) said it was time consuming for managers and over 50% said managers hadn’t received any formal recruitment training.

Other answers included sourcing good candidates (63%), cost (37%) and delivering a good candidate experience (26%).

Having a policy and process in place that is followed can not only help make sure time is spent effectively on recruitment, but also ensure the whole process is carried out in a fair and legal manner.

To ensure candidates are a good cultural fit

As well as ensuring inclusion and diversity and protecting your organisation against the risk of a discrimination claim, a good recruitment policy run by trained managers or outsourced specialists also helps ensure that successful candidates are a good cultural fit for your organisation. This can make the difference between a successful recruitment process and one which stores up problems for the future.

Also, promoting your company culture is going to help attract the right candidates to your business. That might mean putting more focus on work and life balance, flexible working and less on competitive salaries and on-site benefits.

Candidates may be searching for something new that offers them what they see as most important – for example flexibility – it’s a good idea to make clear how and where people are expected to work in your job specification to show that your business values this.

To find quality applicants

Sadly, many talented people have lost jobs during this period through no fault of their own. This is devastating for those businesses and individuals affected, but it does mean that the number of good candidates who will be looking for work in the coming months is greatly increased.

However, despite a larger pool of candidates out there, it’s clear this is still a major challenge for employers. Evidence in our survey suggests that businesses are finding it hard to find candidates with the right skill set.

When asked “If you are recruiting at the moment, are you finding it difficult, if so why do you think that is?”, comments include “Due to the pandemic we are receiving applications from a varied range of backgrounds that have been affected by the pandemic. Currently we receive many applications for each advertised role with probably a small handful being potentially suitable.”

Of the 78% of businesses that told us they plan to recruit in the next 12 months, the majority said they would look to take on 2+ staff. Here it’s vital that you avoid ‘distress hires’ or settling for second best because of the challenges you are facing.

If in doubt, seek HR advice before starting recruitment to help create the right conditions for success.

If you’re interested in finding out how recruitment has been impacted in the last year, then updates from the campaign can be found here: https://www.realityhr.co.uk/guides-downloadables/

We offer a range of recruitment services from full handling of the hiring process to help drafting job advertisements, screening CVs, interviews and more. For more information see https://www.realityhr.co.uk/recruitment-and-onboarding/