Candice Au Eong Employer Resources

Flip The Switch On The Reactive Recruitment Model

Newton's Cradle

​As the name suggests, reactionary recruitment is reacting to the unexpected departure of an employee by kicking off a candidate search to fill the vacancy. With the clock ticking in the background, things start to go into a slight panic mode and begins a scurry of activities to assemble a talent pipeline for the role. The hiring process is usually never as straightforward as imagined and there are always lurk obstacles which slow things down - Vacation plans, divided opinions among decision-makers, multiple interview rounds… just to name a few.

Meanwhile, the pressure on the remaining team starts to build, one or two team members start showing dips in motivation, perhaps due to the resultant overwhelming workload, or lack of guidance and direction. The level of urgency is elevated, and search efforts are intensified, and weeks fly by. Finally! An offer is made to the only candidate who really fits the bill. Being a sought-after talent, this candidate decides to accept one of his competing offers. Great. A major project is looming and there can’t be any further delay, so the next best candidate wasn’t the best fit but will do. And then this less-than-ideal candidate takes the job and departs after a few months. Before you know it, the painful cycle of replacing the vacancy has come back knocking.

Does this all sound familiar? Evidently, a reactionary approach to hiring can cost your business big time, in many ways: Time, opportunity costs, productivity levels, employee morale, business outcomes…

How do we then move away from this, towards proactive recruitment?

The key here is anticipation and to pre-empt hiring needs and seek out talent before you have vacancies to fill. If you want to keep your business running at optimal levels, you must be able to access the right talent at the right time. On the contrary, if a recruitment approach is reactionary in nature, the candidate pool is now limited to applications and active talent on the market within that short timeframe. And so are the chances of securing the best person for the job, who could really value-add and make the difference to the business down the line.

Here are some ways you can ditch reactionary recruiting:

Understand Your Needs

The fundamental first step is to map out and understand your business needs, both current and future - and how this intersects with the capabilities in your existing and prospective teams. If similar jobs already exist in the team, devote time and resources to interview current high performers from various functions on their daily job scopes, personalities and skill sets needed to do the job, so that you can construct an accurate profile of an ideal performer for the roles you’re looking at.

Maintain an existing talent pool

Now equipped with the knowledge on the nuances to help identify the best talent, keep those relevant applications or resumes on file. In the event of a sudden staff shortage or growth of the company, you can then tap on this existing pool of potential candidates immediately.

Active engagement with your recruiting teams

The job of recruiters is to assist businesses to source and hire talent - but to achieve that higher return on investment on the hiring efforts, businesses need to actively engage with the recruitment team.

At 33Talent, we have seen great success with our subscription service model where we partner with our clients on a long term basis, to provide recruitment support and HR consultancy services. This involves ongoing 2-way conversations for our clients to share their people challenges, specific sets of criteria for talent, and upcoming business plans with us. And with this continuous knowledge sharing and elevated understanding of the business beyond the job description, we are better able to bring the most relevant talent and market insights to their doorstep all year round.

By viewing your recruitment team as a strategic partner, what you’ll get in return is their expertise, increased quality of hire, and reduced time to fill vacancies - That is proactive or strategic recruitment in play.

Keep employee engagement high

Of course, besides looking outwards into the candidate market, sometimes the very best talent already lies within. A huge focus of any company should be to keep the satisfaction levels of existing employees consistently high. Even the best proactive recruitment strategy will be rendered useless if employees leave in drones.

What’s next?

Enough said, ditch reactionary hiring and start thinking ahead! If you want to get the ball rolling on a proactive approach towards recruitment, but not sure where to start, chat with any of us here at 33Talent and find out how our subscription model can help you ditch reactionary hiring.

Read more on our subscription services here.

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