The rise of the job-board in the last decade was significant. Then the recession hit – what changed and more importantly, what’s next?
Most organisations use job-boards to attract candidates. Job-boards make it easy to post ads and even easier for candidates to post CV’s – a match made in heaven? Well, for many organisations job-boards became their only recruitment-strategy. Ultimately the quality of candidates reduced, numbers increased and HR departments lost control of the process.
In 2009 the recession hit the UK and recruitment virtually dried overnight up. Priorities changed and redundancies were made. Organisations reduced costs and looked at strategy in two distinct areas:
- Short term to make sure they were still in business
- Long-term to make sure they were ready for the upturn
So what was learned during this time? Recruitment can no longer be left to chance. Hiring the wrong person can be the difference between a company surviving and going-under.
In the UK we experienced a huge gap of experience in ‘what to do when things go wrong’. Most mid-level managers had enjoyed nearly 20 years of economic grow and had never been through a downturn, let alone the biggest recession in 40 years.
So what’s next? In my view, two strategies will change the way organisations recruit:
- Hire people with bad experience on their CV
- Don’t *just* rely on the opinion of others
Candidates who have faced tough times and prospered are a sought-after commodity. In today’s business environment you want people who have made mistakes and fixed them. Make sure you interview properly using how, what, why, where questions to probe deeper. Closed questions such as, “Did you manage to resolve the situation?” will only get one answer…
LinkedIn makes it simple to headhunt candidates using the most valuable of resources – your own network. Search for job titles on LinkedIn and those who match your criteria within your network will be displayed along with your contact to refer you. Simple.
