Recruitment and Employer Brand - #4 Look in the right places

Where you go to find candidates for your freshly made job vacancy communicates a lot about what sort of organisation you are and the type of people you are looking for.

Is it so surprising that you will get job hopping candidates if you advertise your opportunity on a job vacancy website? Who goes to those websites anyway?

Smart companies think about the type of people they are trying to attract and a target their search activities to type of candidates they are looking for. These days in Viet Nam there are many option for finding candidates.

• Self advertising,
• database search,
• search firms,
• employee referrals to name a few.

The channel you use to get candidates will send them a message about who you are as an organisation. So think about it and match your job to the method.

Who should candidates contact with? Is it clear? Does your recruitment have a face? A name? or do you choose to hide behind “…only successful candidates will be contacted…” Obviously your choice of method depends on the job and number of candidates you expect to have.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

General Director Wanted

A large international professional services company came to Viet Nam a few years ago. Before contacting HR2B - Vietnam Human Resources service company, they had placed ads in the newspaper and on Vietnamworks.com for their General Director position. The response rate was very low and the few people that did apply were not qualified.

By the time we began the search, candidates we contacted knew our client had been searching for a long time. Their salary expectations went up as a result. The companies overseas competitors contacted us to begin similar searches, having been tipped off about their strategy by the advertising.

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Recruitment and Employer Brand - #3 Have a plan

Consider each recruitment as a project.

In fact you can consider a recruitment the same as ‘purchasing and installing’ skills and experiences from the market place. Your recruitment process in the same as your procurement process where you spend a lot of effort selecting and buying a major piece of equipment for your organisation.

1. Start with the end in mind. What would you have achieved at the end of your recruitment process?
2. Next list out who should be involved. Start with a long list of everybody possible, then cut this list down to the people who are essential. You should aim to have sufficient opinions and vetting rather than complete.
3. Give each person a clear role. Decide ahead of time who is responsible for what (more about that in the next session)
4. Finally set some timings and dates. Having a clear beginning, middle and end will help your organisation make timely decisions in relation to each candidate. If your recruitment process is off track it may indicate you have other problems that need attention. 

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

FMCG success easy to copy

We have a large fast moving consumer goods company as a client. They are very disciplined with their recruitment process.

• Managers in the company know clearly what will happen next.
• Candidates that attend interviews feel valued, even if they are unsuccessful.
• Feedback to stakeholders such as recruitment agencies is done in a complete and timely way.

What is their secret? Checklists.

Each recruitment step has a simple checklist and a person responsible for completing that list. The HR manager oversees the process, but he hiring decisions are made by line managers. Checklists are easy to create and add a lot of value to the teamwork required in a strong recruitment process.

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Recruitment and Employer Brand #2 Make Someone Accountable

Recruitment employer branding suggestion #2 is to make someone accountable for the recruitment outcome.

If everyone is responsible no-one is responsible. Treat your recruitment as a project with a timeline, activities and resources. Make someone accountable for delivering the results (preferably the line manager).

What do I mean by accountability? I mean the "thin line separates failure and success, greatness and mediocrity" (see the Oz-Principle concept here).

Above the line are the steps to accountability ( See It, Own It, Solve It, and Do It. ).

Below the line is where you find the 'Victims' with excuses and behavior such as "it's not my job", "let's wait and see", and people who play the blame game.

If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

Does not compute

One fortune 500 computer company client of ours has confused responsibilities between the Country Manager and the Regional HR Manager. Telephone calls are not returned, interview feedback is not given, candidates are confused as to their recruitment status. The end result is that our best candidates take other opportunities while our client sorts out their accountabilities.

Who is responsible for what in your recruitment process?

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Recruitment and Employer Brand - #1 Write things Down

Corporate Memory

A Real Estate company was looking for a country manager in Viet Nam. After a lengthy executive search in Vietnam and interview process the hiring manager verbally offered our candidate the role. Our consultant could not contact the hiring manager about a written offer. Calls remained unanswered, emails unread and the manager was not in his office when we visited. On calling to the head office overseas our consultant found out that the hiring manager had left the company. When she told them about the job offer, the regional HR manager said that our candidate was not on their system and they knew nothing about his case. The company started the whole recruitment process again. Our candidate took another offer at well managed competitor two weeks later.

When you approach the outside world with your needs it is better to be organised and have a clear idea about what you want from a particular job / person. At the same time you need to keep an open mind and listen to suggestions from HR experts and others who might have useful information to help you.

Write it down. A job description, email, text message, anything! Get your ideas down in words so they can be shared with stakeholders. Keep track of changes and write them down too. Keep a record of your ideas for later reference by yourself or other people involved in the recruitment.

Keep a record of the candidates you have contacted, their stage in your recruitment process and any actions that you have taken with them. This will help you keep track of this recruitment. It is also a vital tool in discovering what went wrong or right with a candidate so you can repeat your successes and avoid making the same mistakes again and again

Consider using an applicant tracking system to centralize all your recruitment information or any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

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Recruitment and Employer Brand

You never get a second chance to make a first impression. Who said that?

How you treat people during recruitment says a lot about your employer brand. Not only to your eventual employees, but also to all the people you interact with during recruitment.

Smart organisations use this opportunity to build a positive image of themselves in the minds of all the people they touch during recruiting new staff.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

People Touched during Recruitment:

•

• Successful candidates
• All applicants
• Job ad readers
• Search consultants
• Families / Friends of the above
• Computer Social Network site users of the above

The way you treat job seekers is shared by their family and friends.

Bad news spreads faster than good news.

It is a fact that in recruitment we have to share more bad news than good news in total.

Learning how to treat candidates in a polite and professional way is an important skill in building your employer brand.

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What is 'employer brand'?

An employer brand is like a hair-style. All organisations have an employer brand weather they like it or not. Smart organisations take time to define a style for their brand which is easy to recognise and add value to their goals and objectives.

As with your company brand, your employer brand is made up of the many small things you do when interacting with your employees. Your brand is a promise. It gives people an expectation of how they will be treated.

Actions speak loader than words. Your brand is not defined by glossy brochures or a great video, but by the actions of your managers and staff.

Over the next few weeks we will take a closer look at the actions you can take to build your employer brand. We will use the ‘employee life cycle’ as a roadmap to the opportunities you have as a professional to add value to your company through employer branding.
If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact HR2B Executive Search in Vietnam

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Importance of life planning in Career

If you don't know where you are going any road will take you there.

Your job search will be more effective and rewarding if you do a little life planning before rushing out and applying for jobs.

Recent science research has shown that in the absence of visible landmarks or cues from the sun, people who are lost can not walk in a straight line (Current Biology 2009). Dropped in the forest on a cloudy day, people will indeed walk in circles, and the same is true for people dropped in the Sahara desert during the day and at night. We are genetically programmed to wander around.

I have seen the same thing in people's careers. A 30 year old mid-career marketing professional I interviewed recently is an example. Without any clear focus this person wandered around from job to job in different industries and locations with out any clear direction of focus. Each time the person was seeking happiness and each time they ended up back where they started, unhappy and looking for change.

So if you want to walk the straight line to career success, don't count on luck or your own sense of direction, create a 'career compass' and set your direction. Of course it is true that the map is not the territory, so you will have to accept that sometimes you will be 'off-course', but overall knowing your direction will help you make smart career decsions when opportunities come along.

This post was inspired by this Scientific American 60 second science podcast.

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