Comment
By Matt Alder
The pandemic is changing the rules of work by dramatically accelerating the adoption of remote and hybrid working, and this in turn is making employers consider more seriously than ever before how they retain valuable staff. But if companies want to make sure they are attracting the talent they need to their business, they are also going to have to challenge and ultimately change the long-held rules of recruitment.
Although the pandemic forced a new, much faster pace of change in recruitment – driving, for example, the mass adoption of video interviewing – the fundamental building blocks have remained unchallenged.
Most hiring decisions are still made on the basis of a CV and a series of interviews. This is set against a list of experience requirements that have little validity in predicting potential performance in the role.
READ MORE: Putting the right messages out by the correct channels
Changing the rules is not easy. Recruitment traditions and truisms are hard to challenge as hiring managers and senior leaders often hold strong opinions based on their experience of being recruited, or what they feel has always worked.
Job seekers want a fast-paced, personalised experience that allows them the opportunity to showcase their potential for the job they are applying for. As I've said before, this isn’t a transient post-pandemic trend, but a deep-seated systemic issue driven by demographics and changing attitudes towards work.
Attracting talent is extremely hard at the moment, and employers who are challenging the traditional rules and questioning long-held assumptions are the ones who are winning this new war for talent.
There is a mounting body of evidence that this new thinking is delivering results, and there has been a revolution in recruitment technology to support newer and more effective ways of working.
READ MORE: Ad hoc hiring is no longer adequate in today's market
However, real change can only come by questioning everything, truly understanding recruitment objectives and rebuilding processes from scratch.
If you want to get the talent you need, you need to ask questions continually. Why do we ask for this many years of experience? Do you really need a degree to do this job? Are CVs actually telling us anything useful? Where is the bias in our process? Do we really need to take this long to make a decision on who to hire?
The way companies recruit has been broken for a long time, and now is the ideal chance to shine a light on what is not working as we reimagine and reinvent the process. This kind of change is never easy, and it also takes time, but we are now at the stage where employers have no other choice but to do so.
Matt Alder, host of The Recruiting Future Podcast, is a guest writer on behalf of s1jobs.
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