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Here are some of the most common and interesting blogs about Hiring and Recruitment.
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Nowadays, many companies are discovering a shortage of talent in their respective markets. Despite their best attempts to associate with the perfect employees, several companies still face difficulties in finding the ideal employees. And this is why they need help from a Recruitment Agency.
What problems do companies face while recruiting?
Each recruiter uses a unique strategy and experiences their own set of recruitment difficulties, but there are a few issues that affect majority recruiters. From not getting ideal candidate resumes to not being able to sift through applications properly, recruiters encounter several common hiring issues. Besides, many companies do not have the resources to evaluate each resume, clear candidate doubts or pre-screen the candidates. Luckily, you do not have to worry about this process and manage recruitment all alone. By taking the help of a recruitment agency, you can prevent common recruitment challenges which may fall in your way. A Recruitment Agency also enhances your chances of finding ideal employees.
What is a recruitment agency?
A recruitment agency works with companies and helps them find the right candidates for their vacant job positions while also assisting candidates in finding suitable job roles. Basically, recruitment is a process that involves attracting the right candidates, retaining them in the hiring process, assessing those candidates and then selecting the right one. Unfortunately, there could be breakdowns in any step of this process. In fact, even one single breakdown could be enough to prevent a recruiter from hiring the best employee. And, if you falter in all of these steps, your chances of finding the right employee diminish all the more. Hence, several companies now hire a recruitment agency to conduct the entire recruitment process. Moreover, the best part is that the companies themselves have the choice to select the agency they want to work with to search for candidates.
Their services/benefits
A few main reasons why companies now choose to build a close bond with a recruitment agency are as following:
Hire the candidates faster:
There exist two key reasons where hiring a recruitment agency could help save you as well as your company’s time.
Firstly, the recruitment process could pretty much be time-consuming. As such, considering a recruitment firm can save the time of your employees. Secondly, these agencies comprise of professionals that conduct the recruitment process for a living. Thus, they probably have the candidates already who are the precise fit for your vacant job position. This is a significant advantage that can substantially shorten the entire recruiting process. As such, you can recruit the perfect candidate much quickly.
Hire professionally and effectively:
A few companies, like start-ups, do not comprise of a dedicated in-house HR team or recruiter. Such companies most often lack the money or expertise to search and recruit the right candidates. Thus, to make sure that their recruitment process is carried out effectively and professionally, they incline towards the services offered by the recruitment agency. It’s best to leave the task to experts and avoid taking a risk if you lack knowledge about recruiting.
Hire highly skilled and qualified candidates:
Another primary reason why several companies now opt for a recruitment agency is to enhance the quality of recruiting. Most of these recruitment firms specialize in specific functions or industries. This means that they have a list of highly qualified candidates within their reach. Besides, a recruitment firm holds expertise in not just finding ideal candidates but further ensuring that they meet your needs for a particular position.
Retain your new recruits:
The most significant benefit of hiring a recruitment agency is that it helps provide additional security in terms of retention of a new hire. All reputed recruitment firms present a guarantee period. They guarantee that your newly hired candidate will serve your company for one particular period. If the new hire leaves before guarantee period expiration or gets terminated, the agency will offer you a replacement candidate without any extra charges. In a few cases, the recruitment firm may even provide you a complete refund if the new hire leaves before the guarantee period.
To put it in simple words, opting for a recruitment agency can aid your recruitment process and retain the right candidates much quickly.
So why wait? Hire the right recruitment agency to find the appropriate candidate who can fill in your company’s vacant job position.
What is an Employee Handbook?
An employee handbook basically is a document that outlines the policies, rules as well as expectations of a company for its employees. It is also referred to as a staff handbook or employee manual. An employee handbook also lists out what an employee should expect from its employer. It is generally handed out to a new hire along with a form that they need to sign. The form acts a proof that they have read through the handbook and have no objection to the terms.
Why use it?
Knowing your company’s rules and policies are significant for your employees. As such, developing an employee handbook portrays to the employees that the company follows undeviating policies for each employee. It implies that the same guidelines and rules will apply to all employees and everyone is treated equally. Employee handbooks thus help promote a productive and positive work environment in companies, free of harmful or improper conduct.
Things to be included in an Employee Handbook:
Some of the crucial sections that companies must include in their respective employee handbooks include:
Employment laws:
The handbook should consist of a segment on local, state and federal laws that your company follows. Cover your company’s employment opportunity management and drug, alcohol, and harassment policies as well.
Code of conduct:
This section outlines how your staff should dress, behave as well as represent your company. A company’s ‘code of conduct’ could include an array of things like workplace safety and dress code. For instance, you may want a professional business outfit. So, ensure to list down the dress code you expect from your employees in the ‘code of conduct’ segment of your employee handbook.
Attendance:
Incorporating a section based on your company’s attendance and time policy is essential. The employees must know the various rules on holidays, unexcused absences and rest breaks.
Time off policy:
The time off policy segment should be listed under the attendance section. Be sure to include vacation time or PTO (paid time off) policy in the employee handbook. Explain how much vacation or PTO time an employee can receive, how they can schedule their time off and the PTO approval policies. This section should also include other kinds of leaves, such as sick leave, bereavement leave, etc.
Pay:
All employees wish to know the payment structure of a company. So, clarify how often you pay your employees and the no. of pay periods your company has in a year. Make sure to even include your company’s overtime policy.
Benefits policy:
Offering benefits can enhance employee engagement and retention. So, list down small employee benefits in the handbook to help the employee know the benefits that are being offered to them like retirement funds, employee discounts, etc.
Acknowledgment:
You should make employees sign down an acknowledgment to ensure they understood everything listed in the employee handbook. Ask your employees to return back the penned acknowledgment after reading the handbook. Maintain two separate copies of it: one will remain with you and one with the employee. This form will help you in case you happen to fall into some legal dispute.
The recruitment or hiring process needs a great deal of innovation nowadays. The job market is hugely candidate-driven these days, which is why recruiters need to be extremely attentive to find the right talent. This includes staying aware of the present trends followed in the field of recruitment. Conventional recruiting strategies aren’t enough anymore, as firms face fierce competition to attract the best talent.
Fortunately, we have selected nine latest recruiting trends in 2019 that can help firms shape their hiring strategies this year:
Use recruitment marketing strategy:
One of the top growing trends in 2019 is recruitment marketing. Low rates of unemployment make it tough for firms to fill up vacant positions. However, a recruitment marketing strategy could help your company stay ahead from others to grab top candidates. The goal of a recruitment marketing strategy is to get and engage the best job candidates by making the vacant position much more appealing to them. So, use the current trends and develop a productive recruitment marketing strategy.
Modernize recruitment approach using social media:
Knowing social media platforms your candidates use most often can help you aim your job vacancies to those networks. Though LinkedIn is one of the most widely used social networks for recruiting, firms should not avoid sites such as Facebook. Such sites can help you promote your job openings to ideal candidates.
** Go mobile:**
Mobile devices now are predominant and utilizing them to recruit candidates can help firms take on their competitors. For instance, texting is quicker than sending an email and could help speed the hiring process up. Besides, it can also help increase the response rate of a prospective candidate. A few firms even offer tablets during job fairs in order to let candidates fill applications there and then.
Use chatbots as recruiters:
The use of chatbots to perform basic tasks is an emerging recruitment trend these days. Chatbots can instantly engage with applicants and help arrange in-person job interviews once they complete the process of pre-screening.
Automated recruitment takes away talent sourcing load:
Reviewing a lot of job applications can consume a lot of your time and effort. This is the reason why a few firms are now automating the review process. Besides, automation can further help identify the passive candidates, which might be an excellent fit for vacant positions.
Adopt video interviews:
Video interviewing lets recruiters interview more job seekers than thought ever before. It also can allow the candidates to frame perfect answers for questions that may be asked in the interview. However, the possibility of technical difficulties and bias may pose an obstacle during video interviews.
Flexible work options boost applicant pool:
Many job applicants now cite flexible work policies, like the option to operate remotely, as a top-notch priority while selecting a job. However, not all employers have adopted this approach yet. Those employers who do provide flexible work policies use tools such as Slack to enhance collaboration between the employees.
Create a positive candidate experience:
A study has revealed that recruiters can lower their turnover costs by developing a positive applicant experience. Footwear retailer Foot Locker did just that by letting candidates send in applications using their smartphones. The firm also kept suitable candidates in mind for future job positions if a vacancy is not available immediately.
Barriers exist for blockchain, but there is still a potential:
Blockchain has witnessed a tremendous amount of popularity in around every industry, starting financial services to travel. As an employee recruitment trend, it isn’t without its own set of challenges while firms seek to utilize it for verification reasons to accelerate the recruitment process.
The responsibilities of recruiters or HR has changed in recent years. Their role will continue to enhance in the future, and so it’s essential to stay aware of the latest trends. The above listed are a few of the trends which you should try to implement this year in your recruitment process. Apply them with the perfect strategies and move your recruitment game plan to the next level.
Globalization and the rise of technology have led new hires to synchronize their skills with those of the existing companies. Most companies tend to avoid training of employees, which often leads to the position of dogs in the market. So, if you wish to know the importance of training employees in your organization, this article will help you.
Training and development is an essential part of all human resource management practices implemented in an organization. To understand the importance of training employees in an organization, we need to know what is meant by the terms training and development in the organizational sense.
The word training refers to the process of providing a program for an employee or a group of employees, a system of instructions to carry out tasks within an organization. This training carried out in a company occurs when an organization has set goals for itself to achieve in a certain deadline allocated to the management.
Information and communication technology demands for training new hires and experienced workers to achieve the goals of the organization. Such programs developed for training employees, brings about a progress of positive change in skill level, resulting in the development of skills in the workforce of the organization, leading new hires to be empowered with knowledge.
### Why is training employees important for Organizational Performance?
Training is important for Improving Efficiency of New Hires
Provision of effective training to new hires increases the confidence of new employees. Research revealed that a trainer is known to have transformative leadership skills which enable him or her to enlighten, mentor and coach the newly hired employees with skills needed for various projects. This on-job training provided especially during apprenticeship and internship enables the new hires to experience increased efficiency levels, contributing to organizational performance.
Training leads to Increased Productivity
The task specific intervention used for training employees, help to increase productivity levels in an organization. For example, when a company needs to be upgraded with new technology to increase the production results, it involves the use of various training programs based on the new technology to empower employees in the specific department in operations and production of goods. This helps to increase organizational productivity and meet with the demands of the market.
Training leads to Increased Employee Satisfaction
Employees who are given access to training and development programs at the workplace, experience increased employee satisfaction. Training employees enable the management to tackle the shortcomings of each employee. Moreover, storytelling involved during training and development sessions helps in sharing of knowledge, which empowers employees and provides them with competency skills needed for progressing in their career, increasing their satisfaction levels. More employee satisfaction means more employee retention, which adds to the pros of training employees in your company.
Overall, training employees is very important and should not be ignored among all the human resource management practices carried out in your organization. So, get ready to devise programs for training and development of skills of your employees now.
FAQ
Why do organizations providing training programs perform better than organizations that do not engage in training employees?
Training employees leads to empowerment of knowledge among new hires and workers, leading to increased employee satisfaction, and employee retention rate. This, in turn, increases productivity and organizational performance as a whole, making organization providing training and development programs to outperform those companies not training employees in the industry.
Employee experience forms a huge vortex when it comes to the management of human resources in a company and fostering a positive workspace in your organization. This article highlight why is it important in the sphere of management.
It is the reality of the employee’s perspective regarding what it is to work in an organization. You can call this as a long-shot of the employee engagement carried out in employee management practices in a company.
It is more important than anything and trickier than you think it to be. Lack of proper practices in employee engagement could lead you to experience poor performance. So get on to provide them with a positive workspace, by creating those employee personas, and keeping the things they love, and getting rid of that which is difficult. Promote your employee experience with the use of workplace analytics tools and technology, empowering your team with skills and increasing its level at your workplace.
It Attracts Quality Talent like Bees
Employee experience of an organization is known to have a direct impact on talent acquisition and management of a firm. More the experience, the more the talent pool recruited by the company. Research reveals that the perception of the talent status in employee experience of a company results in potential employees to align with the work culture in the workplace. The positive workplace culture attracts more talented workforce.
Low Experience Calls for Strategies for Better Employee Engagement
Employee experience level calls for strategic HRM practices in employee engagement. Both of these are related to each other. Lack of much employee experience demands remedial measures, where the trainer, an employee of a company needs to train the novice or unskilled workers with the help of employee management and engagement practices in on-job training to promote experimental and reflective learning. So, concentrate on providing training to use employee engagement to promote a higher level of employee’s experience in your company.
More Employee Experience Means Top-Notch Customer Experience
“Our priority was to take care of our people because they were the ones responsible for communicating our passion to the customers. If we did that well, we’d accomplish our second priority, taking care of our customers.”
– Howard Schultz, former CEO of Starbucks
The employee benefits reaped from employee management practices, lead workers to know more about the products and services, helping in improved communication and transparency with customers, leading to top-notch customer experience for the company.
More Employee Experience Means More Profits and Revenue
6% of companies in the world invest more than anything on employee management and experience. This investment of the companies leads to recognition and sharing of experience through storytelling among employees, making them feel acknowledged by their co-workers and leaders. The result is better performance, and inflow of profits and revenues, compared to companies not investing in promoting employee experience.
To sum it up, employee experience is more important than we all think it to be. So get ready to apply employee management practices for employee engagement to promote employee experience and reap profits in business now.
Talent acquisition managers, you need to get very creative yet analytical to assess enthusiastic candidates. Here, are the top 10 interview questions that you can bombard your interviewees with, to find the right candidates for the job roles in your organization.
### Best Interview Question to Ask the Candidate at the Time of Recruitment
1. What One Skill Makes You the Most Qualified for This Position?
Asking this interview question you get to learn about the core competency skills of the new hires. Like if he has knowledge of CAD but you are hiring a candidate for the job role of a front office, you give the red flag, as this skill is irrelevant.
2. What Professional Achievement Are You Most Proud of?
By asking this interview questions you get to know whether the potential new hires have worked in any big projects in their current or previous organization and what their success milestones are so far.
3. Tell Me About a Time When You Overcame a Challenge?
You should ask this one of the interview questions when hiring a candidate. Asking this question to the potential new hires lets you know how they would react to challenges in the company and whether they will resist any change in the environment.
4. How Would You Describe Your Working Style?
Asking this interview questions, lets you get a glimpse of the approach used by the candidate when recruiting the new hires. Get to know if he or she is methodical or not when hiring a candidate.
5. What Three Words Would You Use to Describe Your Ideal Work Environment?
Ask this interview question to check how the new hires describe themselves.
6. If Hired, What Is the First Thing You Would Tackle in This Position?
Get to know if the new hires will bring a positive change to the company! All you need to do is tactfully ask this interview question!
7. Why Are You Leaving Your Current Employer? / Why did you leave your previous workplace?
Get to know what led to employee dissatisfaction in the previous job place with this interview question. Asking this will let you know what the new hires expect from your company as well.
8. What One Skill Would You Like to Improve?
This little interview question lets you know if your new hires are aware of their weaknesses.
9. What Excites You Most About This Position?
Get to know what led the candidate to apply for this vacancy with this interview question during recruitment itself! You may even get to know if the new hires are looking forward to gaining new skills!
10. Describe your favorite supervisor and your least-favorite supervisor — and why.
Asking this interview question lets you know about the team dynamics and which type of supervisor to put the candidate under right in the recruitment stage itself.
To sum up, ask these top 10 interview questions to your potential new hires during the recruitment and start hiring a candidate for your company. Happy employee hunting to you!
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