Recruitment and Advertising

Employment recruitment is one of the largest investments a business can make, particularly if it has ambitious growth plans. By investing in the right and best talent available, a business can improve its chances of success, but this requires a robust employment recruitment strategy. Ensuring the attraction of highly-motivated, skilled, and experienced staff, who can be instrumental to running and growing your business will take planning. Having clear defined roles, and the type of people needed to fill them, will result in a successful recruitment process.

At HR:4UK, we can support you with finding the right team members that your business is looking for using our in-depth experience in employment recruitment.

This employment guide outlines what you need to consider when recruiting staff.

Introduction

Employing staff tends to be the largest investment a business makes. Ensuring that you have highly motivated, skilled and experienced staff can be the foundation to running and growing a successful business.

The key to a successful recruitment campaign is planning and preparation.

Planning

You should ensure that you have considered the following when you need to fill a vacancy:

• Define the job role to be advertised.
• Decide how you are going to advertise the role.
• Consider what process you are going to use to assess the skills and competencies of applicants.
• Decide what you need to have in place when you have identified a suitable candidate who accepts your job offer.

Define your vacancy

Defining what job you are offering is a critical stage of the recruitment process. It sets out the key skills, experience and competencies you need from your new employee.

We recommend that you outline the key aspects and duties of the role in a job description. You may also want to draft a ‘person specification’ – this is similar to a job description but sets out the personal attributes you are looking for in a candidate such as specific qualifications, skills, experience, knowledge and other personal attributes.

Advertising the role

You need to consider where you are going to advertise the vacancy. This may be limited by how much money you are prepared to spend on advertising.

You can consider the following:

• Local newspapers and their websites.
• Job Centre Plus.
• Recruitment agencies
• Online job sites.
• Trade publications and their websites.
• Social media – Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin.
• Colleges and universities.

It is best practice to advertise internally, particularly if the vacancy could be a promotional opportunity for your existing staff.

Interview and selection

Once you have advertised your vacancy you need to be prepared to receive applications.

You should have a clear process in place to fairly and objectively handle and assess applications. All applications should be examined against the job and person specification. We recommend that you use a ‘scoring matrix’ which sets out the skills, experience, competencies and personal attributes you need candidates to demonstrate and rate each application against the matrix.

Once you have completed your review of all applicants, you need to decide which ones you wish to invite for an interview. It is best practice to send unsuccessful candidates a rejection letter.

In order to avoid any potential claims for discrimination, you should ensure that your recruitment process does not request any medical or health information from any potential applicant. When you invite candidates to interview you should ask them if they require any reasonable adjustments to the arrangements for the selection process.

You need to decide how you are going to assess potential applicants. This will largely depend on the role itself. For example, if you are recruiting for telesales you may wish to carry out a telephone test or exercise to check an applicant’s communication skills.

You could consider the following selection methods and – dependant on the job role – decide which one is the most appropriate. You may decide to use a combination of methods:

• Standard face to face interview.
• Role play.
• Group sessions.
• Presentation.
• Actual demonstration of skills and competencies.

Again, it is extremely important that you can demonstrate that you are using fair and objective measures to assess an applicant’s suitability for a role. If candidates feel that any part of the recruitment and selection process is discriminatory then they have a right to pursue a claim through an employment tribunal.

What to consider when your new employee starts employment

Once you have completed the selection process then you need to consider a number of issues:

• You need to make the applicant a formal offer.
• Do you want to include a probationary period as part of the offer?
• What pre-employment information do you need? This might include copies of qualifications, referee contact details, evidence of right to work in the UK, copy of driving licence, etc.
• How you will ‘meet and greet’ the employee on his or her first day?
• What initial training will the successful candidate require? Do you need to consider developing an induction programme?

Employment Recruitment Services

Recruiting staff can be a legal minefield and the costs of making mistakes, however innocently, can be extremely high.

HR:4UK can help you by providing advice and support to ensure that you do not fall foul of your legal responsibilities when recruiting staff.

Enquire now to HR:4UK if you would like a powerful and efficient employment recruitment strategy, or any advice, support, and guidance for any recruitment needs for your business. Our preferred ‘hands-on’ collaborative approach to working with businesses will enable your employment recruitment strategy to produce the impressive team of employees that you and your business need.

Our expert guidance will provide clear instruction for what you need to consider and can make a lasting, long-term difference to your business success. If this sounds like the kind of support that you need, contact us.

For further help and advice, speak to one of our advisors by calling 01455 444222 or complete our contact form and an advisor will be in touch shortly.