‘Fit – Fit – Fit’ is to recruitment as ‘Location – Location – Location’ is to real estate…

I cut my teeth many moons ago as a young recruiter on the saying ‘Can do?’ ‘Will do?’ Will fit?’

This was our daily bread, our bible if you will, this dogma was our guiding light, not only did following this mantra teach me how to recruit using ‘smarts’ but it also put quality food on my table over and above my weekly base salary!

I was one of those people who were fortunate enough to be picked out of the crowd by one of Australia’s most successful recruitment operators and taught the age-old rules, techniques and tricks of those top recruiters who could be seen lunching at the best restaurants and driving luxury cars – ah those were the good old days when a person could make a good living from a combination of hard work, persistence and intelligent actions – not a robot or AI platform in sight!!

Don’t get me wrong, I actually embrace technology and have been really fortunate in being in a position owning my recruitment company able to experiment with emerging technology (yes I have to admit I am a bit of a tech nerd!) but never losing sight of those time tested truths about how to recruit really well – for longevity!

So, what are some of those ‘truths’ that lead to highly successful recruitment and selection?

1. Find out what makes the top performers in any organisation tick – what are their characteristics, their talents and skills, their temperament?
2. Build the above into the job description (JD) as ‘essentials’, often referred to as ‘person specifications’ (PS)
3. Use this job & person spec document as your compass when developing the advertising and promotion campaign for your recruitment process
4. Ask applicants to answer a couple of very specific questions in their cover letter and know what responses you are looking for – and stick to this fervently!!
5. Don’t be side-tracked by applications that look fantastic – too good to be true but they haven’t responded the way you are requiring or even worse, they haven’t even bothered to provide a cover letter – keep away!
6. Then look at the top applicant’s social media profiles – their footprints all over the Internet. Do they ‘fit’ the profile?
7. Passed all the above tests so far – then back to your compass (JD & PS) and develop about 3 to 4 very strategic questions that will probe and flesh out more information during a phone screening call
8. By now you should be down to one or two shortlisted candidates, if you are particularly fortunate you may have three and it is time to invest in face to face discussions

Of course, during the above process and at the start really, you have already checked off the technical skills and experience required as this can be easily screened using algorithms provided by many job boards and applicant tracking systems now. So the part that a recruiter needs to play and might I be so bold in adding, will always be needed to play, is in the deciphering – recognising and fleshing out of ‘Will Fit?’

How confident are you at the end of the process that your new employee will fit into your organisation’s culture? Because that is the key to it all!!

Authored by Cheryl McCormack, Recruitment & Human Resources Consultant at McCormack HR & Business Consulting. You can contact Cheryl on 0417899756 for a confidential chat about your organisation’s recruitment or other human resource needs.