Finding the best staff will give your business a head start in development and quality of service. We look at the current issues, with a particular focus on women employees and the dangers of discrimination
Recruiting the right staff for your business is critical but risky, so it is important to get it right. Hiring the best people to perform well-designed jobs can make the difference between your business growing into a high-performing organisation or lurching into a dysfunctional nightmare. Worse still, you could end up at an employment tribunal facing accusations of discrimination if you operate unfair selection practices.
Getting it right
‘Hiring is one of the most important jobs a manager does and getting it right is absolutely vital,’ according to Angela Baron, an adviser at the personnel professionals’ body, the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). ‘Companies are getting smarter and beginning to see recruitment as a strategic issue, rather than simply a process,’ she adds. Effective hirers look at a vacancy with the business’ future in mind, and use it as an opportunity to refresh skills and perhaps revamp the way the organisation works.
‘Recruitment issues for business women shouldn’t differ from those facing other employers, although if one of your objectives is to recruit more women, take care not to discriminate against men in the process. Focus on introducing policies and practices to make your organisation a good place to work for all, like flexible working arrangements and a healthy work/life balance, and you should attract top female candidates,’ she adds.
Litigation: in perspective
Hiring staff is a legal minefield and of course legislation varies from one EU member country to the next. Discrimination law is complex and evolving – age and religion are the latest aspects of equality to be covered by employment legislation. But it is important to see the risk of litigation in perspective, and not let it affect your approach to hiring. Baron acknowledges that discrimination law is complex, but has some words of comfort: ‘As long as you’ve looked at your recruitment processes, and focus on a person’s ability to do the job, you should stay on the right side of the law.’ This means, for example, not asking women applicants if they plan to have children, or how they expect to manage childcare: ‘You can ask these questions, but you must ask all applicants, men and women.’
Steve Williams, head of equality at the independent though UK government related employment relations agency, the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) believes that the risk of litigation from an unsuccessful job applicant, although present, can be cut by preparing a detailed job description and candidate specification, and crucially by keeping good written records: ‘I can’t over-emphasise the importance of good records, held for up to 12 months preferably. Records of interviews are the framework and justification for your recruitment decisions. If someone subsequently makes an accusation of discrimination, you can point to a contemporary record showing how you’ve reached your selection decisions.’
The job description
So what about the process? Before you can begin to attract the right person, you need to describe the job – its purpose and the key skills and personal attributes you need the post holder to possess. This job description should be supported by a person specification, setting out the skills, knowledge and qualifications you expect the post holder to possess. One of Angela Baron’s bugbears is a job advertisement asking for several years experience doing a similar job to the one being advertised: ‘Asking for this kind of experience limits your recruitment pool – why would someone already doing the same job for another organisation come and work for you? Businesses should be looking to recruit those with the potential to learn new things and grow with the organisation, not those that have done a similar job for years and years,’ she argues.
The range of media available for advertising your job vacancy is wide and expanding rapidly beyond the traditional trade and specialist press, and local and national newspapers. Recruitment websites that match employers’ needs with individuals’ specified skills and experience are now commonplace, but do not forget your own corporate website – a recent CIPD survey found that corporate websites are now as popular as local newspapers for advertising vacancies.
Framing the questions
Despite the rise of the Internet for advertising jobs, interviews remain at the core of most employers’ selection practices, and need to be planned well. A semi-structured style works best – agree a set of questions, but allow time for follow-ups and for the candidate to expand on their responses. Include some ‘behavioural’ questions that explore how a candidate has reacted to a tricky situation in real life, but be wary of this tipping over into aggressive or disparaging interrogation –a deliberately stress-inducing interview style may have its uses, but can easily backfire, leaving candidates with a bad taste in the mouth. Telephone interviews are a useful way of sifting out no- hopers, or drawing up a shortlist, but are never a substitute for face-to-face interviews.
Although still dominant, research shows that interviews are not a good predictor of performance in the job. Interviewers tend to prefer candidates in their own image, or let their impressions of one candidate affect how they interview others. ‘Interviews are not fail safe, and are open to bias, so employers are looking for ways of making the process more robust,’ Baron points out. Support interviews with job-related exercises, presentations or psychometric testing, but make sure you can justify the expense because these tools can be expensive.
Giving a reference
References can have their difficulties – the CIPD argues against asking previous employers for a subjective view on whether the person you have selected is likely to do the job well, as any information provided is likely to be unreliable or even misleading. Employers have become much more wary about giving references in the light of legal cases for negligence taken by former staff. Use references to check factual information, such as qualifications (one in eight candidates exaggerate these, according to CIPD research) and job-related data such as time-keeping.
Finally, don’t forget the ‘thanks, but no thanks’ letter. Give unsuccessful candidates feedback to make sure they retain a favourable view of your business – they, and their family and friends, may be your customers so it makes business sense to keep them on side.
