• Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 9 subscribers
  • Views 9892 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Options
Related

Lengthy recruitment process

Andrea

Does anyone else experience pressure from managers to "corner cut" when recruiting?  We have a relatively high turnover of employees in 3 key areas of the business, 2 of which are from highly skilled sections.  We know what the contributing factors are and are  working to resolve as much as is possible and  we are in a very competitive market.  Anyway, I digress.  The issue is one  of Managers constantly hassling me with an expectation to "get him/her in" within ridiculous timescales i.e 3   days from initial offer letter!  They just don't want to be bothered by the whole issue of references, medical questionnaires, right to work documents, notice periods (heaven help me if there isn't any notice to serve) or by the fact that the "keen as mustard" potential new employee STLL hasn't returned their acceptance of our conditional offer nor have they made any contact regarding presenting required documents.

Often I am experiencing delays as a result of misinformation/lack of information on behalf of the applicant...incorrect details provided for reference purposes, boxes ticked incorrectly on medical forms that require me to investigate further ; does it need to go to OH or is it an error as I suspect? .  I could go on and on.  As a Standalone HR Manager, with all Payroll Responsibilities and with no Admin Support I simply do not have the time to repeatedly  chase up the amount of missing info.  Despite all of the foregoing all I keep hearing from Managers  is that recruitment agencies; don't get me started; and themselves think we have a lengthy process.  Well we don't, as simple as that.  By the way, in the case of one person for whom all went smoothly and referees responded extremely quickly, I did onboard within 5 days.

Would be interested in hearing from someone on this.

Parents
  • Ahh good old managers with unrealistic expectations.

    In my previous role we often recruited staff who required visa sponsorship and I often had to deal with managers wanting to know why the person couldn't simply start next week! Well for starters the visa process could take anywhere between 1 month and 4 depending where the employee was coming from...Brazil at the time was my least favourite country for recruiting from!

    In that role it was easy to push back as more often than not our response was "do feel free to call UKVI and tell them their process is too slow for you..."

    That aside, where I am now (also standalone so I understand where you're coming from), I've tried to cut as many corners without actually doing so. For example rather than using the referencing company to do the references I gather these instead and just use them to do the right to work check - they are horribly slow at getting references but surprisingly quick at the RTW checks.

    I also stress to the candidates that we cannot confirm their start date unless they get all the information back and completed in time and also get them to send their medical form straight to OH themselves - this means OH get the form quicker and our report to us a lot sooner.

    I've also managed to build some good relationships with our agencies so I use them to do some of the chasing for me when needed. I make sure they know when I've sent the offer and follow up with them a couple of days later if I don't hear from the candidate directly.

    I've found that giving managers an update regularly as to where we are with each candidate helps as well. Even if its something as simple as "they've signed their offer, I'm getting references" Sometimes all they want is an update, past experience has taught me that some of the managers with very unrealistic expectations stop stomping their feet when they get updates regularly and start understanding about how long the process does actually take and why!

    Not sure if any of that is of any help to you, but hopefully it's helped in some way or another :-)
  • in reply to Gemma
    Hi Gemma
    very helpful as I see that we have a similar approach in regards to updating managers. They do like their little shows of foot stomping though. I am trying to engage more with our chosen agencies, some more successfully than others. If I could get them to cease calling a conditional offer letter a contract that would be a starting point " Fred says he's signed your contract and sent it back but you haven't given him a start date". Hmmmm I wonder why? :-)
Reply
  • in reply to Gemma
    Hi Gemma
    very helpful as I see that we have a similar approach in regards to updating managers. They do like their little shows of foot stomping though. I am trying to engage more with our chosen agencies, some more successfully than others. If I could get them to cease calling a conditional offer letter a contract that would be a starting point " Fred says he's signed your contract and sent it back but you haven't given him a start date". Hmmmm I wonder why? :-)
Children
No Data