New Employee Success

Because you want to hire people that give you what you need

Over the last couple of newsletters, I’ve talked about an ideology for good candidate experience and provided some examples that are already in the wild of putting candidate needs first.

But unless you implicitly see the nature of candidate experience being the keystone that bears the weight of your recruitment – this may all feel like nebulous make-work.

So today I’d like to look at things in a slightly different way and focus on a subset of candidate experience that enables you to recruit the best people.

I call it New Employee Success. If you can think of a better term, let me know.

Imagine an ideal new employee starting in January.

By ideal candidate, we mean a brilliant professional whose skills were in-demand and selected you over many different employers who had similar jobs. And they chose you, not just because of your vacancy, but also how you recruited them.

What did your recruitment process need to look like to support this?

Was it happenstance and luck that got them on board? I don’t think that’s a good or replicable way to do anything.

So instead, why not look at a systematic approach to answering this question, which you can replicate for any vacancy?

We should start at the beginning, and then work back from the end.

The 'start' is to clearly define what your business needs are for your vacancy and to establish what ‘good’ actually is in your successful employee. Drill deep, be realistic, with no assumptions. The next newsletters focus on these elements.

Then work back from the end:

- what does your timeline look like to ensure this January start? Notice period, offer process, interview stages, attraction and engagement stages all add up. Plan to the critical path and be realistic. If candidates are likely to be on three months' notice, January is already impossible.
- what does your preboarding, onboarding and induction process need to look like to bring your new employee on board successfully?
- what does your offer management process need to look like to give them the confidence to accept?
- what does your interview process need to give your next employee to bring them forward?
- what do your communications need to look like to keep them keen?
- what of your ATS? Have you tried being a dummy candidate to see what the application steps are? Would you apply?
- what does your agency approach need to be to find (simple), engage (less so), and attract (harder still) them? Before they even qualify and correctly represent their candidates (they do, don't they?)
- if not agencies, then what of your own outreach?
- how about your advertising? Does it appeal to your ideal candidates, or is it a generic job description in disguise? Would you apply?
- what of your job description? Is it clear, accurate and representative?
- and your website, or social media. Don't people check these out before applying, or before thinking about applying? How do these support the journey to employing your successful employee?

- what if they are married to that person you didn’t bother rejecting? What kind of experience will be shared?

There are many more touchpoints which are situation-dependent.

I haven’t touched on how to find people, as actually, this is a simpler challenge with today’s tools and technology than engagement and experience.

If you look at each with this ideal new employee in mind and find the optimal way to both attract and suitably assess them – this is a good recruitment process whose consequence is not just good candidate experience, but the experience needed for that new employee to start successfully.

And since you’ve done the hard work to get this person on board, you may as well aim for consistently good candidate experience across the board.

The next newsletter is about defining what good is in your candidates.

Thanks for reading.

Regards,

Greg

p.s. If you’re still here, like the idea of improving how you recruit, lack capacity or need better candidates, and are curious how I can help, these are my services:

- recruitment of key hires in commercial, operational and technical leadership disciplines

- manage part or all of your recruitment on an annualised service basis (Cognate)

- recruitment coaching and mentoring (if you need a periodic steer in the right direction)

- recruitment strategy setting (for single vacancies through to programmes of work)

- outplacement support

Just hit reply if you want to check if my approach is right for you.