What kind of recruiter are you?

When recruiting for your organisation, what kind of recruiter are you? 

a. I open a CV, scan it and determine in 10 seconds or less whether to progress that candidate or decline. 

b. I test for competencies, assess personality characteristics and combine that with previous work experience to give a 3-dimensional view point of a candidates potential.

If you selected option A, you are not alone. A staggering 95% of people involved in the recruitment of staff are operating a one-dimensional approach as outlined in option A, using past employment to determine a person’s capability to perform in a similar role in the future. This, we have found, is a highly inaccurate way to recruit and means you are likely going to miss out on individuals who are far more suitable for a role.

For many jobs, past experience is not always a certainty that a person will perform well in the same or similar role in the future. For example, just because you have been a sales rep before, doesn’t mean you were a GOOD sales rep. Likewise for admin or reception roles, just because you have sat at a reception desk and answered calls for the past 2 years, doesn’t mean you have the skills or aptitude to perform well in this type of position.

At Talent Propeller we are encouraging clients to adopt what we have termed a “3-dimensional recruitment strategy.” This strategy doesn’t rely solely on past experience to determine someone’s suitability, but in equal parts assesses skills, personality characteristics, competencies and aptitude.

Here is a recent case study we ran to test this methodology:

We were recruiting for a role that required customer service, admin and sales ability. The role was advertised and applications were split into 3 groups. Group 1 were the immediate ‘wow this person looks great, I definitely want to speak to them’. Group 2 were the ‘not legally entitled to work’ group (so declined). Group 3 were the ‘hmm, this CV doesn’t wow me’ which made up the majority of all applications.

The reason most people ended up in Group 3 was due to not having any prior office experience, no prior admin experience and definitely no demonstrated sales experience. At this point, if we were using the common one-dimensional recruitment process, Group 3 would have also ended up in the declined bin.

However, in adopting a 3-dimensional recruitment strategy, Group 3 were sent a competency assessment and aptitude test before any further processing of their application was undertaken. Given a key component of the role was sales ability; applicants were sent a sales aptitude test. This test measures someone’s attitude towards sales, their confidence in making recommendations to customers, their initiative, motivation and drive and highlights their strengths in planning, goal setting, patience and self-confidence.

The results were outstanding and completely changed our perspective on each candidate. Firstly, 98% of the tests sent, were completed. Those that ranked highly for sales aptitude, were progressed to phone interview stage, whereas those that ranked poorly, were moved to Group 2 (our declined pile). When phone interviewed, all of the candidates who ranked highly for sales aptitude presented with the personality attributes and attitude required for the role. The interesting point here is in re-assessing their resume, none had held prior sales roles and many had never worked in a business-to-business environment before. Without the sales aptitude test, none of these candidates would have made an interview.

So what happened to Group 1 candidates who looked perfect on paper? None of them made it past the phone interview stage due to a lack of the required personality characteristics.

By taking our blinkers off to the mantra of ‘past experience predicts future performance’, we opened our options to excellent candidates who coincidentally are now part of Talent Propeller and working out fantastically! Had we continued with our single-minded ‘one-dimensional recruitment’ these employees never would have had a look-in.

For most industries and roles, we don’t believe we have a talent shortage. Rather, we believe that business owners and people recruiting have put their blinkers on too much and are not properly identifying potential. "If you really want your business to grow with talented individuals that will perform well in their role, I encourage you to adopt my 3-dimensional recruitment strategy." says our Managing Director Sharon Davies.