RECRUITMENT
Finding the right candidate for a role can be tough, but follow a few tips and you’ll be scouting out the top talent in no time, says Busy Bee Recruitment director, Kayleigh Bysouth
Going it alone In today’s job market there are many direct approaches to finding staff for your team, from digital routes – such as advertising on sites like indeed.co.uk or social media – to using your own connections and, of course, internal promotions. You may find you have success with these approaches, and question how and why bringing an agency into the mix adds value. I would say that the key benefit of using a recruitment agency is that it saves time: a good agency will spend hours, if not days, sifting through hundreds of CVs in the hunt for the right person to join your team. An agency will filter the CVs down to the most relevant skills to match your requirements, as well as finding a personality to fit your team and company culture by conducting the first interview for you. This allows you to spend time interviewing only the cream of the candidates, leaving you free to focus on your business. A helping hand Just as finding the right candidate for your role is crucial, so is finding the right agency to fill it for you. There are a glut of agencies even just in Cambridge, and you need to look for professionals who are willing to truly invest their time in understanding and becoming part of your business. If an agency doesn’t understand what your company is about, it doesn’t have a hope of finding the best people to help you grow your team. Ensure that the agents are experts in your sector and will go the extra mile to source or headhunt the very best candidates. And make sure that the consultant you are working with also has the necessary tools to do this, including access to big job boards like reed.co.uk, CV-Library and Total Jobs, but also connections with the top local bodies, such as Cambridge Network. Furthermore, I’d strongly recommend working with a consultancy that is industry accredited and affiliated with governing bodies, eg Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC) or the Institute of Recruitment
It's hard to overstate the importance of getting the job advert right: this is your opportunity to sell your vacancy and your company to prospective candidates"
Professionals (IRP). Before committing, you should enquire as to whether the agency holds their Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) certificate, enabling it to securely handle both candidate and client data under GDPR regulations. Ad value It’s hard to overstate the importance of getting the job advert right: this is your opportunity to sell your vacancy and your company to prospective candidates. You need to bring the role to life to attract the right applicants, while also making your requirements crystal clear – after all, you’re looking for quality over quantity, and it’s always better to have 20 suitable responses than 500 irrelevant or substandard CVs. A good recruitment agency will be able to assist you with the preparation of your job ad, but if you’re creating it yourself, you need to include the following as a minimum: job title; a succinct description about the vacancy to include responsibilities, tasks and duties; a description of the company; the location; any USPs that make the role appealing; salary and benefits, plus details on how to apply and any deadlines that candidates should be aware of. Twenty questions You’ve got your top candidates cued up and it’s interview time. But how do you get the most out of these pressurised chats? The kind of questions you need to ask can be broadly grouped into two categories:
biographical (which are used to investigate the candidate’s working history) and competence-based (which determine specific behaviours, characteristics, knowledge and skills). Good routes of questioning for biographical information include discussions about employment history, education, training, work cultures the candidate has experienced and their flexibility and personal motivations. This style develops a comprehensive picture of an individual and is most commonly used by organisations. For competency- based information, key things to cover are knowledge, skills and attitude. A competence-based interview is most beneficial when an ability to perform the specifics of the role is more important than the candidate’s personality aligning with the company culture. This interview style is less commonly used on its own and often undertaken after a biographical interview. Busy Bee Recruitment is an accredited agency with the (REC) Recruitment & Employment Confederation, holding an ICO certificate and able to provide written advertisements and interview guidance on a more in-depth level. busybeerecruitment.co.uk
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ISSUE 01
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