How To Recruit Good People

Companies want good people and good people want to work for good companies. But why it is so difficult to get the right match?

Time consuming

Senior managers spend endless hours of expensive time reviewing CVs and interviewing people when they need new staff. When a company grows to a certain size they develop a human resource department to manage the process of attracting and retaining high performers.

Finding and keeping the right people in the right positions is a tremendous drain on resources and distraction from the core business. The traditional approach to recruitment is unpredictable as there is no guarantee the effort will result in a successful outcome for company or candidate.

A recent and more reliable solution lies in the application of software driven by algorithms, machine learning and artificial intelligence. It may not yet be a perfect solution but it reduces the time it takes to find someone and increases the chance of getting a suitable outcome.

In this context detailed information is collected, scanned and analysed to identify an applicant’s practical and technical knowledge and judge whether their profile fits the requirements of the job and culture of the organisation. Hundreds or thousands of applications are examined with little effort or expense and a shortlist of those most fitting passed to the next stage.

Job descriptions are also drafted and disseminated with the use of artificial intelligence, as a way to communicate what the organisation wants to niche targets of applicants.

Social media

Information is also refined to appeal to different categories and sectors, which reduces costs and improves the likelihood of a fruitful outcome. Internet activity and social media profiles are also checked to help build a profile of candidates and test their skills and suitability for the job.

Even online videos are scrutinized to test if the language used matches the person’s behaviour and tone of voice when answering questions or describing their experience. Artificial intelligence also helps remove interviewer bias from the process, as interviewers are not always impartial when making decisions about hiring staff.

Companies understand that everyday measures such as exam results and university qualifications do not always predict how a person will perform. As a result businesses wonder why their recruitment efforts aren’t more effective and why it is necessary to spend so much without getting a satisfactory outcome.

Businesses also question why some of their best people come from unusual routes and without the required formal education or qualifications. As a result the rules of recruitment are rapidly changing as technology disrupts the old way of attracting talent.

So, companies will always need to recruit the best people but technology now makes the process easier and the outcome more successful.