Recruitment & Selection - The Good and the Bad

By Georgiana Mihalache -2012-

Copyright 2012 by Georgiana Mihalache. All rights reserved.

Table of Contents
Main Activities in the Recruitment & Selection Area ................................................................................................................ 3 Skills You Need ................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 5 The Good........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 8 The Bad.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................10 Employers to Look for............................................................................................................................................................................................... 13 Useful Job Description for the Position of Recruitment & Selection Specialist .............................14

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Main Activities in the Recruitment & Selection Area

As a recruitment and selection specialist you will be performing the following activities: monitor open positions; get involved in designing the recruitment plan for the following period together with the managers of each department in the company or the clients sometimes, plan which will include the number and type of positions to recruit; help managers prepare job descriptions for the positions they have in their departments; use the job descriptions to create and post ads on various recruitment channels; select appropriate recruitment channel depending on positions open (skills needed, number of positions); read the resumes received and compare to job requirements; select candidates to be invited to interview; invite and conduct a first interview with selected candidates; prepare together with specialists and managers a set of practical tests to be given to candidates; be part of the team assessing the candidates during these tests; write down as much information as you can concerning candidates performance; offer managers a initial list of best candidates for them to interview; give feedback to selected and rejected candidates type of feedback is chosen according to source of candidates internal candidates will always receive face to face feedback, the external ones will receive phone or email feedback; keep an updated database of all positions and feedbacks to use later during recruitment; this will help use previously rejected candidates on other positions or the same position after a while after skills have improved or most important of all, avoid embarrassing situations where the same candidate gets invited to a second interview, after being rejected after the first one the week before;

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 participate in public presentations at the University, conferences, student gatherings to introduce your company and recruit people; participate in job fairs for students, fresh graduates or skilled workers if you work in a production plant; get involved in the creation of promotional materials to be used for students and during official presentations, either alone or with the help of the marketing department; manage relationships with recruiting partners like recruiting agencies, student organizations, University representatives, job portals contacts; organize internal assessments either for an open position or to select candidates to be involved later on in development for a certain position i.e. select internal candidates who have team leader potential, candidates who will be enrolled in leadership trainings; prepare various recruiting reports; prepare various recruiting estimations requested by managers i.e. the total cost of recruitment for a team of 30 FTEs (FTE = full time employee), French speakers with Linux skills and the deadline for such a project; prepare newsletters for candidates in database to keep them informed about new positions or changes in the organization that might interest them; prepare recruitment policies and work instructions;

in some organizations, contact the selected candidates for employment offers; in some organizations, conduct trainings of recruitment and selection with managers, internship students, other employees interested or required to participate (i.e. a technical agent who will be part of the final selection process for members of the IT team);

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Skills You Need

Intelligence level over the average.

Highly responsible person will be taking the initial decision concerning a candidate being rejected or selected for next stage. Someones fate depends on his/her decision, experience, skills, mood sometimes or state of fatigue.

Great decision taking skills will take decisions concerning candidates being selected or rejected, will change the strategy in a project if things dont go well on the initial path, will take decisions concerning recruitment channels and will be responsible for the success of decisions taken, will take decisions concerning partnerships with recruiting agencies (if to use or not and when since costs are very high).

Very organized person will manage hundreds of resumes (sometimes thousands!), hundreds of candidates, will give hundreds of feedbacks all on time and to the correct candidate; will prepare daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports.

Good communication and presentation skills will give information to candidates, will deliver presentations to general public, and will represent the company.

Pro activity will have to come with solutions for problems that havent yet appeared; will always be searching for ways to improve and make work more efficient.

Mature person closely connected to the amount of decisions to take; will be responsible for own actions.

Strong analytical skills will have to analyze resumes, recruiting channels efficiency, market reports, recruiting agencies reports; will be carefully analyzing a candidates skills and if they fit to the job or in the new team;

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Flexibility will have to change recruitment strategy as often as necessary to meet targets and deadlines;

Great time management skills must be aware that requested resources and reports must be delivered on time;

Highly sociable person will be working daily with a lot of people; must be sociable and must like interacting with people since there will be days with 14 interviews (situation not recommended by theory books, but different and inevitable in reality).

Some project management skills can be given a project to complete by himself/herself and will need to organize available resources. I.e. its not possible for a recruiter to recruit a large team of lets say 30 people alone. Ability to organize and conduct own work and available resources without too much supervision.

Professional attitude represents a first contact between candidates and the company, can influence negatively or positively the companys image on the market;

Some telephone skills will be conducting from time to time phone interviews;

Some technical skills will need to setup some software alone; will need to prepare and conduct a presentation with a laptop and video equipment alone in a different location than the company headquarters where an IT representative is available; will need to use a laptop, smart phone sometimes, conference equipment, video equipment, USB sticks, headphones, some software. A recruiter must be ready to learn how to use all these and how to make work easier.

Great resilience to effort will be reading sometimes resumes at 10 pm at home; will be carrying a large laptop around, will be carrying presentation materials around, flyers and others. Will be asked to work overtime from time to time, at work or at home; will be asked to give up vacation if a new project needs to start and reschedule own family time.

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Great resilience to stress will have tight deadlines and huge volume of work from time to time; will have stressed managers who will ask for fast results for projects.

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The Good
The recruitment area of human resources is one of the most rewarding ones. Its hard work, but it all pays off when you meet the people you selected around the company, when you give them their first tour, when they come to you on their first day for guidance or even later for advice since youre the most important person in the company for them the one who recruited, selected and put them on the accepted list. You are one of the first faces they see in the company and the one they always relate to. Recruitment can also be rewarding when you are given an important project for the company, a strict deadline and you manage to successfully deliver the project and meet the deadline. Planning time and human resources in a recruiting project can be a difficult task, so when you succeed and after 3 months of hard work you have all the 30 people you were supposed to hire in the company, you feel great. If you get a bonus for that, even better. However, dont bet on it. Budgets for HR are tight most of the times and bonuses rare. Imagine one more situation you go to a job fair and a TV crew comes to you for an interview because they have heard of your company and want YOUR opinion on the job market and recruitment problems that companies face. Doesnt that sound great? And how have the TV crew heard of your company? Well, it was still YOU having done previous presentations at the University, spreading flyers around, and successfully managing teams of HR interns, giving all feedbacks on time and creating a positive image. People want to work for your company and it is thanks to you too. And one more one of the candidates you selected and in whom you have seen great potential is great on his job and is getting a promotion the following month. His manager tells you what a great choice he was for the company. Well, doesnt that feel good? And some more:

placing ads on appropriate recruitment channels selected by YOU brings lots of valuable resumes from very good candidates: this feels good; one candidate who was rejected thanks you for a valuable feedback you have given him helping to improve for a new interview: this feels good;

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 you deliver a great presentation of your company and get lots of positive feedback from students and professors at the University: this feels great; you are pro active and have already selected some resumes for a position that you think will become available, even before the manager thinks of asking for them you deliver the candidates list to their surprise and delight helping them select a candidate faster: this feels good; YOU are invited to a student conference because they value YOUR opinion: this feels great; Your cost estimations of recruiting projects for potential clients help the company win a client: this feels great; You contact a selected candidate to make an offer he is excited and accepts: you feel great.

All the above are only a few of the potential rewarding situations that you might find yourself in as a recruitment and selection specialist. Smaller ones can appear each and every day with each colleague that thanks you for a small service or with each task that you solve efficiently.

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The Bad

Unfortunately, recruitment and selection is not all milk and honey. As I promised at the beginning of this book I will also tell you about whats expecting you if you decide to work in this field. Stressful situations can appear in all positions and every day. Its not new. Heres where the stress comes from, in recruitment and selection: Deadlines are sometimes too tight. A German speaker quit his job and the notice period is 2 weeks. You have to recruit a German speaker in 2 weeks, have no resumes, no candidates on hold, the ads placed on the internet brought no result, nobody knows anybody to recommend. You need to think fast what to do and act. Your colleagues from Sales promised a client that a team of 10 FTEs will be recruited for them in 3 weeks. Nobody in HR was consulted. The contract was won due to this silly promise, but theres nothing for you to do now but to start recruiting. You might say that this should never happen in a company where communication between departments goes well. Well, I agree, but it does. Your colleagues from Sales got a nice bonus for their sale. You will have unfortunately to start working asap and try to go over it by talking to them and hoping this will never happen again. You work hard to recruit a sales agent. You make the offer, present the current bonus scheme, the person starts the job. Unfortunately, management decides to change agents bonus scheme and the agent gets far less money than expected at the end of the month. He decides to leave and theres nothing you can do about it, but recruit someone else and hope it wont happen again. You feel bad. You need to recruit English speakers. You decide to place the ad locally, but your manager or the manager of the department where you have the open positions (20 positions lets say) tell you to place the ad in 4 other cities just to be sure. You explain that the local market is enough for what you need, but they insist or threaten to report you to higher management. You do as they like and end up with 1000 resumes. You need to read most of them so you take your heavy laptop at home and work the following days till 10 pm. You feel bad, but you need to move on. Your colleagues from a subsidiary on a different time zone organize a conference call you need to attend 3 hours after your work schedule should end. Its for the next 2
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months and it happens weekly. During the call you realize how poorly organized they are and how much time you are wasting, but theres nothing you can do. Also, the conference cant be moved due to their busy schedule. Your husband would love to take you out and your dog would love you to spend more time with him. Unfortunately, you carry your heavy laptop home and with the headphones on, you have to ignore your family. You feel awful. You have a very busy candidate that you need to interview for a management position. Unfortunately he is working late every day and you need to schedule him long after your regular work schedule should have ended lets say you normally go home at 5pm and the interview cant be before 7pm. You hate him, but have to do it. The same for those candidates who work all day again and can come to the office only very early in the morning. You get up one hour earlier and come to interview the important candidate who cares too little about you, your family time or your life to try to find a time spot suitable for both. You are at a job fair and an angry candidate comes to you in front of the large group of potential future candidates and asks why you havent sent him his feedback. If you have a great memory and remember stuff, like giving him the feedback over the email a week ago, then you are safe. If not, then you are dead and need to explain. You feel bad. You are a lucky professional to get all sorts of unpleasant candidates at the interview: angry ones, frustrated ones telling you about the awful jobs and managers they had, smart ones asking questions that they have read over the internet its good to ask to look smart like What are your companys objectives over the next 5 years?, What is the strategic plan for bla bla?, How do employees relate to your 7 values bla bla that I have read of on your website? and all sorts of smart ideas they may get and for which you need to be ready. Having to hire 30 FTEs and selecting 300 candidates for testing from the 1000 resumes you get. 300 tests mean 3 days of overtime at home till 10 pm grading tests. You get crazy most of the times. Theres nobody else to help and after 50 tests you can no longer concentrate. You have to do it at home since the deadline is short and at work you have 14 interviews/ day scheduled. You feel tired and awful.

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 You waste your time with hundreds of resumes that have nothing to do with your positions. You clearly specify for example that candidates should know SAP. However, from 100 resumes, only 10-15 belong to candidates who actually fulfill the requirements. The rest apply just in case they might get lucky. You are tired, annoyed and feed bad. You specify in your ad that the position is located in city X. 300 candidates apply. You select 50 and when you start calling them, 35 tell you that they dont want to relocate. They have just NOT read the ad and have just NOT bothered to notice your first line in CAPS mentioning the location. You are tired, annoyed and feed bad. You are searching for advanced French speakers. You place the ad mentioning advanced language skills. You get 100 CVs (CV = Curriculum Vitae = resume) all mentioning that the candidate speaks fluent French. When you start phone interviews to test their French, only 1 in 10 CVs gets an acceptable grade. You are tired, annoyed and feed bad. Candidates have the tendency to over evaluate their skills. You didnt manage to update the database for the past month due to the huge number of resumes coming in and managers pushing you to fill the positions faster. You call a candidate for an interview and the candidate tells you he has been at the interview 2 weeks ago for the same position and got a rejected feedback. You feel stupid.

Im going to stop here for now. There may be even more, but I dont want to discourage you for good. Recruitment and selection as all areas in HR has its good and bad sides. What you need to do is research, ask professionals about other situations and choose only when you are sure what you want.

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Employers to Look for

If you want to work as a recruiting specialist, you have 3 main types of employment you can look for. The final choice is yours.

Choice 1 - less risky and most comfortable - an ordinary company which has an HR Recruitment specialist position open. You will get a list of job openings and you will start recruiting. You will do mostly only recruitment tasks: posting ads, reading resumes, doing interviews. Maybe some presentations and recruiting events from time to time.

Choice 2 - medium risk and medium comfort - a recruiting agency. You will face 2 situations: - competitive, well-placed on the market agency where you will do mostly recruitment but at high volumes. You will work with multiple clients and a wide-range of positions. Great place to get lots of experience. - smaller company, struggling to survive. Since agency recruitment fees are quite high, you will work for a company struggling to get clients. You will do recruitment but you may be involved in sales and searching for new clients. By client I mean - company in need of candidates to fill open positions.

Choice 3 - high risk and not much comfort, but great satisfactions in case of success - your own recruiting company. You will do part sales in search of new clients and part recruitment. If you are successful you may find someone in time to do the sales, the recruitment or both for you.

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Useful Job Description for the Position of Recruitment & Selection Specialist

Here's a JD that I created for one the the employees in my team. You can use it. It is created for a medium - size company, but can be adapted to small and large companies:

Key Responsibilities:

Coordinating the recruiting process; Covering all new job openings as well as backfill requests according to specified deadlines; Maintaining a good relationship with Universities and student organizations; Promoting the Company via Internet ads, Job Fairs, other recruiting related activities; Developing the list of recruiting channels;

Typical Activities:

Working closely with the managers in order to receive and update job descriptions for all open positions; Discussing and selecting the best recruiting channels for each open position; Creating and placing ads on all selected recruiting channels; Developing the current recruiting channels; Promoting the company in students organizations, Universities and making the company more visible on the market; Selection and screening of CVs/resumes; Keeping the CVs database up to date; Organizing and holding initial face to face interviews and testing sessions;

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 Coordinating the recruiting and selection processes; Creating recruiting reports; Providing training for all collaborators involved in the phone screens process;

Key Relationships Internal clients contract managers External clients Employees Measures of Success Successful implementation of HR initiatives; All open positions and backfills covered within deadlines; Person Specification Essential Graduate caliber with minimum 2 years experience in human resources (recruiting); Ability to critically analyze status quo and propose creative solutions; Maturity, high personal standards; Strong analytical, organizational and project management skills; Ability to influence both internally with colleagues and externally with clients; Proactive and assertive; Communication and presentation skills (especially in front of large groups); Fluent in English; A second language (French/Italian/Spanish/German) great advantage.

Please contact me for further details at: georgianaflorina@gmail.com Take care, Geo
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