It’s time to consider your ‘aftersales’ strategy

Discover how talking to new starters about their recruitment experience can improve your processes (and turn them into committed members of the team)…

You can breathe a sigh of relief – the recruitment process is over. The candidate has accepted the role, signed the paperwork and maybe even started work.

But you shouldn’t just forget about recruitment until you have another vacancy to fill. By making small improvements in a number of different areas, you can give yourself an edge over competitors.

Here are just a few of the marginal gains you can make to improve your process for next time.

Introduce a referral scheme

Your employees are highly educated people, so it goes without saying that they’ll know a lot of like-minded people themselves. By mapping out their first- and second-degree acquaintances, as well as friends from university and past employers, you can create a significant, ready-made pool of potential candidates. One way of exploiting this is with an internal referral scheme, especially if you attach a reward or other incentive.

Get referrals to headhunters

An employee might be happy to refer a close friend, but somewhat less comfortable referring a casual acquaintance of their wife’s second cousin, for example. One way of overcoming this barrier is to get them to refer potential candidates to a headhunter. You’d pay the headhunter a reduced rate, and the referrer would receive an incentive from the headhunter.

Document your process

Are you losing candidates because you’re taking too long between the first and second interviews? Are you conducting technical and competency-based interviews in the right order? How quickly are you sending out paperwork? By documenting the recruitment process for every candidate that interviews, whether successful or not, you can spot patterns and make improvements.

Carry out surveys

You can glean more information by surveying candidates after their interest in the role has ended. Ask them if they knew enough about the role coming in, and after the first interview. Why did they accept an invitation to a second or third interview, or why did they reject the role at this stage? Asking them to score questions out of ten makes it easy to import the results into a spreadsheet to compare.

Stay in touch with candidates

For every person you employ, there will be several more who didn’t get the job. It’s worth staying in touch with them, particularly the “close but not quite” candidates. They’re the people who might share your news story on LinkedIn, for example. Or they could come back to apply for another vacancy in future, once they’ve gained experience elsewhere.

Talk to successful candidates

A successful candidate with their feet under the table is a great source of information. Since they can’t damage their career by being totally honest, you’re likely to get useful constructive feedback on what could be improved. The best time to do this is after three months, after they’ve passed their probationary period and while it’s still fresh in their minds.

This blog is extracted from our ‘Improve Your Process’ Insider’s Guide. For your free copy, get in touch.