The hiring process is very costly, employees are typically one of the largest portions of an organization's budget and without them many companies have little value to produce and sustain income or revenue. This is the number one reason why recruiting is so expensive and important. Successful recruiting is not something any recruiter can jump into at an organization without knowing a consistent process, receiving consistent training on it, as well as getting foundational organizational and compliance information.
The recruiting process creates the recruiting brand for a company. The leaders cannot understand the process to value the metrics if it is not consistently defined in the ATS system as the metrics generated may be skewed. An organization that does not invest proper time, ongoing reviews, financial oversight of a talent acquisition budget or does not have a process and review of all spending can let money go out the door. A talent acquisition budget can include many things such as expenses from resources, IT, attending events, recruiter and talent leadership salaries, staffing agency costs, trainings, etc. It is surprising when a Talent Acquisition budget does not exist or there is no formal budgeting process as it is results in a large portion of company spend. As one of largest parts of the organizational budget spend it should be managed with a strong fiscal oversight and the outcomes measured for Return on Investment on an ongoing basis like a budget process.
The recruiting process is built to attract highly qualified diverse candidates to convert to employees with the goal to retain the talent. The fact is many organizations fail to create or test their recruiting process for consistency or effectiveness. There are not always organizations providing consistent process training to recruiters and hiring managers. Organizations operate differently and processes change so whether they are new or seasoned everyone in an organization hiring team needs to be on the same page using the same process. The cost of time for employee wages spent on ineffective processes is high, a recent study results reported this does not happen in 70% of the case with the respondents reported they did not receive training on recruiting process in their role. The partnerships can fail at a high rate if the hiring, recruiting and onboarding teams are not talking the same language to each other and candidates. This can create barriers to communicating information to the candidates who may then lack trust in the process. In addition, leaders need training as they spend hours upon hours of expensive organizational budget for compensated time in meetings talking about numbers which they should understand process results. Metrics are as good as the validation behind them, and results may be skewed when a process is not consistent.
An effective recruiting process is also tested on an ongoing basis for candidate experience and communication about the organization, company and recruiting brand. A strong brand is known for its consistent messaging and many candidates are attracted to organizations with strong recruiting brands. A recruiting process that incorporates a strong DEI foundation should have consistent questions that enable the employees to answer authentically about themselves and be aligned to the company's goals, mission and vision. A process that does not encourage candidates to be comfortable interviewing and encourage questions from them to assure that they are aligned with the job and the organization can create a revolving door. Transparency in the recruiting process, consistency of communication about the process from all on the team creates trust. Trust builds safety and security in an individual (candidate) and connects them to an organization. When there is lack of clarity, or they do not feel valued they can easily go into fight or flight mode feeling insecure about the job or organization. The results are they may be nervous, not act as their authentic self in the interview process and may not feel secure at the company but take a job for the salary. This is fine to get an employee through the door, it is not however going to keep them from competitors, recruiters, performing at their best in their roles and retention will be very poor. There is a reason that processes must always be trusted to be successful.
In closing, retention is tied to a strong consistent recruiting and onboarding processes because the more security built by transparency enables candidates to become securely tied employees to the organization. The more consistent the recruiting process the more a candidate learns about an organization before accepting an offer. This is the foundation of building trust with a future employee, the onboarding is the second part where an employee will learn about the job and organization as well as how it is managed and operates. A person who builds on a consistent process is more successful at their job and knows for the most part what to expect, builds teamwork and encourages the employees to be true to themselves and feeling safe in the environment. Retention or flight from a company is not always tied to money, there are usually many different reasons employees leave. The interesting fact is a large portion of employees who leave for larger salaries return back to the same employer as a boomerang employee because they did not get transparency in the interview or recruiting process at the new company or did not ask questions about this leaving them uncomfortable with the new organization. Employees perform their best when they feel comfortable, confident, trusted, supported and valued. This starts with what they learn from their experience in the recruiting process.
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