Aiming hire

Competition is fierce when it comes to attracting the right staff - something that is critical to the success of any business. It is essential for any growing firm that wants to attract the best and brightest employees to invest in techniques to gain the edge over its competitors.

The best way to ensure the highest-calibre personnel will be drawn to your business is to consider the 'employer brand'.

Employer branding is the concept of applying to the recruitment process the same marketing process that is used in the management and segmentation of customers. The employer brand is the sum total of what customers, staff, potential staff and even former staff think about your organisation as a place to work.

The employer brand comprises many facets and improving it results in greater motivation, less absenteeism, lower staff turnover and greater productivity. It is everything that a firm's employees and potential future employees consider the company to be.

To begin with, it is worth considering what it is about your organisation that makes people proud to work there. Indeed, are you proud to work there yourself? The same can be asked of other employees: personal assistants, recent sales recruits, people in the post room, telesales operators and receptionists.

If you are convinced that all of the above would respond in the affirmative, your employer brand is probably in good shape. If not, action is advisable - particularly as the incumbents mentioned deal directly, on a day-to-day and often interpersonal basis, with consumers.

So what can be done to change, build or strengthen an employer brand? In truth there are only a few companies that can truly claim to be an 'employer of choice'.

When attracting potential employees, the value of an employer brand is crucial. Whether they have been recommended by a current employee, have read a job advertisement or have been approached by a head-hunter, the employer brand is critical.

Ensuring that all advertising campaigns give potential applicants an insight into the company's culture helps to attract the right people and highlights incompatible candidates. A strong campaign should promote the strengths of an organisation.

An effective recruitment consultancy can help to influence candidates' opinions should they have preconceived ideas about an employer. It is critical that the right recruitment consultancy is chosen for your firm as you are putting your credibility in their hands. An consultant from an executive search firm interviewing initially makes a positive statement about the employer.

Employer brand is also partly determined by the office environment. In particular, the office environment should reflect the culture of the company. It is common sense, but an untidy office - with cups lying about, papers or folders strewn haphazardly around and dust - reflects poorly on a company. A potential employee will rightly question whether this is the type of company they want to work for. The candidate's, or consumer's, first impression while waiting in a firm's reception area can be very telling about the wider culture of a company.

First impressions

Another obvious consideration, of which many fall foul, is how potential employees are initially greeted when they meet a prospective employer.

The first impression of the office environment is as important as the initial impression you make on the candidate as the potential employer. Being late for any meeting is impolite and reflects poorly on the company. Being unprepared and unprofessional will contribute to losing the battle in the war for talent.

Being prepared for the meeting is another seemingly obvious consideration; being familiar with the candidate's background, experience and career aspirations. Reading through a candidate's CV for the first time in an interview creates an extremely poor impression of you as a manager, and the company as an employer.

If the candidate has been head-hunted, the need for a potential employer to sell the company and the specific opportunity for them is even more important. The extremely talented and sought-after professional who has given up their valuable time to meet with you may have been approached and persuaded to see you to find out more. Being impressive on these fronts will help in your efforts to win them.

The interview

An interview should, ideally, be a structured but relaxed conversation, not an overly formal review of the candidate's CV or an intimidating question-and-answer session. By preparing professionally and having a conversation with the interviewee, the candidate is more likely to be honest and an interview in which both parties are frank is likely to lead to a more positive outcome.

There is no value in misleading a potential employee about the company. If a high-calibre person is recruited under false pretences, they will soon see through it and may leave and will almost certainly speak negatively about the company. This will not only incur the cost of losing them and hiring a replacement, but rectifying the incalculable damage this may cause to the company's reputation.

In the interview, it is important to take ownership of the meeting, painting a picture about the company, the role, future prospects, career development, the team members they will potentially be working with and how and why their contribution will add value to the company.

It is rare for potential employees to be attracted solely by money and the potential pay packet at the end of the month. A company's responsibility within society, out-of-hours social activities and other prerequisites - such as pension, healthcare, gym membership, childcare and the company's recognition that employees have lives away from the office - are only a few elements that will affect whether an employee accepts a position or not.

Ensure that the selection process is well organised. Keeping candidates waiting for weeks without hearing anything damages the firm's reputation and candidates may accept other offers in the meantime.

One method that is becoming more popular with companies is for a potential employee to spend half a day in the office working with the team with which they could end up working. This provides the new employee with a real opportunity to experience the culture of the office, and it gives the employer a chance to assess the candidate's potential.

Psychometric testing

Psychometric testing is also becoming more and more popular and, while it can often be expensive, the benefits usually far outweigh the costs.

The attraction of many of psychometric tests is that they can provide an objective and impartial assessment of candidates beyond their qualifications, skills, experience or background. The use of such tests has proved particularly effective in improving the success rate of new appointments by ensuring that the individual and job will be a good fit (see box below).

It is an exciting time for a business when it is undergoing a period of growth and additional staff are required to help build a successful team for the future. However, it is also a potential minefield.

Having advertised a position, CVs begin to arrive, with some applicants appearing to have the right qualifications and experience. After the interview stage, recruiting begins. But what happens if the new incumbent fails to perform, does not fit in, or is not as they were expected to be and leaves? This may sound familiar, and the more senior the role the more costly and disruptive this becomes.

This experience and research shows that a CV and interview alone are a poor way of identifying whether a candidate will perform effectively in the role to which they have been assigned. This is why organisations are increasingly using psychometric profiling in conjunction with a structured interview process.

Psychometric profiling can help to ascertain, more effectively than a CV and interview can, by assessing the following: a candidate's ability achieving goals and objectives (enterprising potential); short and long-term performance (achievement potential); fit into the organisation; retention and coaching needs (independence potential); relationships with others (people orientation); and their approach to learning and the transfer of that knowledge (investigative style).

Psychometric profiling can be applied to recruitment activity of any scale, ranging from a single post to a multicentre or multinational recruitment campaign. The profiles can be bespoke and the resultant reports used to only interview the best from the pool of potential candidates.

Psychometric profiling and validation studies of the profile with on-the-job performance helps an organisation create the 'ideal model', leading to predicting the performance of candidates. Using these profiling techniques organisations can gain competitive advantage as they can be used to predict the performance of candidates.

There are numerous strategies to attract the right candidate into your company and it is important to the ongoing success of the business that your strategies achieve the results you want.

Ian Hopwood, Aaron Clarke Group

Mark Leonard, Director, Self Management Group

WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A PSYCHOMETRIC PROFILE

Many companies offer psychometric profiles or tests and it is essential that you check their validity by asking the following questions:

Does the provider carry out validation studies?

How bespoke are their products?

Who are their clients?

Do the profiles contain predictions on job performance and retention?

Do they provide a continuous improvement model that provides an ongoing knowledge of the effectiveness of recruiting sources, screening criteria, selection tools and retention strategies?