Exciting new service from leaders in the field of Organisation Performance

Hunter Kane have developed a new service to compliment its existing Human Resource and Organisational Development services in the area of Outsourced Recruitment.

With a wealth of combined expertise from all our consultants, we are able to offer truely unbiased and objective expertise in the area of improving corporate recruitment processes.  Even modest improvements in this area can have significant fiscal and performance benefits.

We have included below our current thoughts and findings in this rapidly expanding area.

Recruitment Processes
The recruitment industry is changing. Over 75% of all appointments are sourced through the use of 3rd party recruitment agencies. Quality from these agencies has always been, and remains, a concern. Many organisations are inundated with large volumes of CVs from agencies that take no interest in building client relationships, and hence provide no added-value services. Other agencies make limited attempts at working on their assignments. Over 50% of all CVs submitted to companies are "binned" upon receipt and recent studies show that candidates often apply up to three times to each company in an attempt to secure employment.

Meanwhile Human Resource departments rarely have the time to invest in improving recruitment processes - focussing instead on managing the myriad of operational issues that they face. However, it is recognised that a well structured and professional recruitment process will often reduce employee dissatisfaction and poor hiring decisions, in the long run.

Furthermore, with issues revolving around legislative compliance, the recruiting process is littered with traps and minefields, which may not be so well known to those without day-to-day experience of them.

The Issue of Cost and Innovation
The cost of recruitment is always under scrutiny, more so than ever given the current economic climate. Having recognised that many agencies do not "earn" their fee, companies have striven to both reduce costs and improve service through the introduction of Preferred Supplier Lists.

However, the cost to an agency of acquiring a candidate often does not justify the price that they charge, especially with the advent of low-cost Internet media. Consequently many organisations are now looking to develop their own competencies in improving their supply of candidates over the Internet.

Cost is not the only consideration. Innovation in attracting, assessing and retaining new staff is currently topical, but few organisations have either the skills or the experience to change their classic recruiting methods to branch out and attract new talent. Examples of this have been the widely publicised recruitment from both the "senior" and "disabled" candidate work force.

Resource Pool
Market changes (such as recessions and redundancy programmes) tend to create a phenomenon where organisations believe that they gain greater choice in selecting candidates. Rarely is this the case.

Although the supply pool is often greatly increased, the quality of candidates does not change substantially. This creates an added burden on companies, who are now faced with spotting "the needle in the haystack" among the very large number of candidates on offer.

Even in such conditions, organisations still exist in an aggressive market. In a highly competitive and product-saturated market, where availability and quality of staff form key differentiators, the ability to identify and hire quickly and accurately is critical - failing to do so either results in frustration in the sales and customer service functions, as client expectations fail to be met, or expensive staff are under-utilised 'sitting on the bench'.

The Internet
Lastly, there is considerable proof that candidates (especially among the semi and professional workforce) are demanding greater involvement over the process and experience of their next employment move.

Candidates want to control where, how and to whom they apply. They have a "right" to understand what is said about them, and they want to be confident that they are being presented to organisations, as they would wish.

The development of client to candidate Internet had long been considered to be the panacea to such involvement, but experience has shown us that these Internet sites rarely provide the process improvements and return on investment as expected.

The way forward
Moving forward, the focus for organisations remains their ability to develop a recruitment competence in house. Organisations will need to acquire tools and skills to generate their own applicants. In so doing, they can reduce their cost of recruitment by 30-40% immediately.

Further, by developing a recruitment strategy focusing on quality, speed and cost, organisations need to consider the cost v benefit equation of the various methods of recruitment. Internal Referrals, for instance, consistently prove to be one of the best and most economic mechanisms for new appointments; but are rarely developed as a resourcing channel.

Understandably, organisations may look at the options around outsourcing. Here, however, there are many pitfalls (some already described) - the search for an outsourcing partner often lead to signing up one recruitment agency to supply all candidates.

Even with limited resources and little time to develop an in-house capability, a company can ill afford to hand over control completely to long term outsourcing solution provider.

The Solution
The solution lies in using a highly skilled and knowledgeable organisation to provide short-term professional input into your Human Resources function, enabling a shift from “passive” to “active” recruiting. This process improvement can then be fed back into the organisation, with this knowledge transfer being the key to ensuring that the organisation grows in skills and knowledge, and is best equipped to move forward.

In short, Hunter Kane can help you build a recruitment capability, which will fundamentally affect your organisation's ability to generate competitive advantage and subsequently add and deliver greater shareholder value.