It’s always great when a business is in a position to expand its human capital and grow a dynamic team. However, finding the right candidate for the role is not always as easy as it seems, and often mistakes are made and bad hires are procured. This practice will cost the company much more than investing in a proper recruitment and selection strategy.

To make things a little easier, we’ve put together some useful tips and insights on how to create an ideal talent acquisition plan to help guarantee your success in finding that perfect hire.

Advertising a position correctly

Let’s start with some essential information you should have when putting together your procurement post. Ideally, it should always include the following:

• Job title
• Type of contract
  • i.e. Permanent, Fixed, Part-Time, Temporary, etc.
• Location
  • Not the address, but the region. i.e. Western Cape, Gauteng, etc)
• Commencement date or preferred commencement date.
• Minimum job requirements
  • This cannot be arbitrary. For example, it cannot be a minimum requirement that all applicants need to weigh between 50 – 60 kilograms to apply for the position.
  • It can be a minimum requirement that all applicants have a valid South African drivers license if the position is that of a taxi driver or sales rep or one which includes driving as part of the applicant’s job description or job duties.
• Job description
  • Information regarding the position, its duties, responsibilities, tasks as well as required skills.

This information allows the reader to decide whether they can or cannot apply for the advertised position without them having to contact you and ask questions, which is time-consuming and repetitive.

Further to this, when job titles and duties are misleading or ambiguous, it often costs a company an incredible amount of money. Ineffective job advertisements cost a business as they may attract the perfect candidate for the position advertised; however, the position advertised is not the reality of the job and or company. Here are a few examples:

• Ambiguous job titles or overinflated job titles, for example, office manager, in reality, is a receptionist. OR
• Misleading statements of information such as “Room for growth”. Where one would rightfully assume this implies opportunities for growth within salary, role and position in the company and essentially promotion opportunities.”Room for growth” becomes the candidate’s role with responsibilities/workload growing and evolving however, the salary and overall position/status remains the same. OR
• (Smaller companies tend to do this often) Job titles which end in the word Manager with advertisement content referencing department, which implies the position is one of seniority and where the applying candidate will manage people within a department. All too often the expecting candidate arrives at his/her new place of work only to realize he/she is the only person of the so-called, department with nobody to manage other than him/herself.

The above practices often don’t result in a positive ending. It is only a matter of time before the new hire resigns as the job, in reality, was not the job advertised and what he/she was informed it would be or entail.

Do not discriminate!

Another common mistake business owners make when it comes to recruitment, is misunderstanding that this process is governed by the law, and has to follow due process. Something they often forget is that potential hires can not be discriminated against.

The discrimination clause of the Employment Equity Act (EEA), section 6, prohibits unfair discrimination in that:

“No person may unfairly discriminate, directly or indirectly against an employee in any employment policy or practice (from recruitment to exit) on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, family responsibility, ethnic or social origin, colour, sexual orientation, age, disability, religion, HIV status, conscience, belief, political opinion, culture, language and birth.”

Consider outsourcing your recruitment

Many business owners think that hiring a recruiter is reserved for large corporates or when a business has reached a certain amount of staff members. The reality is a sourcing specialist or recruiter is available for any company of any size and for any role.

Using Alignment Consulting for your recruitment needs can save massive amounts of time and money. Finding the right person, for the right role, takes an exceptional amount of time. Within this past month, we posted a job advertisement, and in less than 24 hours, we received over 400 CV’s. The time it takes to read, and screen applications can take days, if not weeks. A business cannot afford to have one or more of its employees set aside and ignore days of their core function and role to comb through CV’s, applications and queries.

A few benefits to highlight are: 

• We can save businesses time and money as we wade through all the applications and screen them to ensure that we only forward the top candidates and those that meet the job requirements and fit the role of the client.
• We have knowledge of the market, the resources and tried and tested strategies.
• We have access to more candidates.
• We can save your business thousands from bad hire mistakes.

A recent study done by Stats SA indicated that the true cost of a “bad hire” for mid to senior roles to be around R250,000.00. Factoring in the time and resources taken to undergo the recruitment process, which includes advertising. It also included the cost of risk, which may end in court cases or fines imposed by the CCMA, which often requires the reimbursement of a staff member’s monthly remuneration.

Our services extend to:

• Sitting on an interview panel
• Drafting of employment contracts
• Contract negotiation
• Monitoring of employee probation period

Our goal is to make life as easy as possible for our clients. Contact us today to avoid making any of these recruitment mistakes, and trust Alignment Consulting to manage all your recruitment and talent acquisition needs.