Importance of Value Based Recruitment

(As featured on Recruiter.com [17/2/22])

45% of new hires leave their jobs in the first year. 50% of hiring managers feel like they could have hired a better candidate. These astounding statistics encompass the sad reality of the ongoing pandemic.

In an era with “work from home” gaining more and more traction, the importance placed on hiring has never been greater. Sourcing, recruiting, and retaining outstanding talent is extremely difficult, and every firm is painfully aware of the burden of competing for talent.

To find the right talent with the right values for the right roles is incredibly difficult. Despite the fact that acquiring top talent is a priority for HODs, many firms still consider recruiting to be solely the responsibility of the HR department. The culture of taking joint ownership for great hires hasn’t been fully promulgated within the industry. I’m not talking about simply sourcing and placing a candidate; Retention is every bit as crucial as placement. What happens when employee turnover rates continue to rise? Further pushed by our generation's greatest woe, the feared “Great Resignation” that everyone's heard of. There has to be a better way to boost employee retention and engagement. One possibility is hiring like-minded individuals that match the culture of the company.

Culture Fit

Today, many researchers believe that there are five core personality traits; conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, neuroticism and openness. This theory has been corroborated many times, starting as early as 1949 and is still constantly being built upon. These traits tend to stay more or less the same in every individual throughout their lives.  

As such, measuring for these five traits will give you more or less a viable representation of your candidates’ personalities. For every company, department and role, each of these ‘Big 5’ has varying significance. A salesman may have to be more extroverted and open. A doctor may have to be extremely conscientious. By assessing these traits, employers would be able to more objectively know whether a candidate possesses the required qualities for the role. Granted, it is nothing short of complicated since there is no standard, universally accepted way to define testing. Everyone has their opinion on what works and what doesn’t.

There is a plethora of ways to assess these traits. From using colour to indicate how well candidates exhibit these traits to star ratings and even as simple as a thumbs up or down. Regardless of the indicators, the true value lies in using such an assessment with the help of people around your candidates. The ones that have had the opportunity to see how well a candidate works in a role, observe their qualities and the values they uphold as well. This is, in my opinion, is one of the greatest ways to learn about your candidates before you even interview them.

Value-Based Recruitment (VBR)

So now that we’ve seen some possibilities on how to assess these Big 5 traits to put the ‘value’ in value-based recruitment, let’s discuss the benefits of VBR:

The biggest merit is in the name. It adds value. What I mean by this is that it strengthens the recruitment process. If a recruiter now starts assessing these traits as part of the screening process, any shortlisted candidates are bound to be that much more attractive to hiring managers. An employee that matches the culture of said company is more inclined to grow into their own and find work less of a chore. Having an engaging workplace promotes efficiency and boosts morale without a doubt.

That brings me to what we spoke about earlier. Retention. With the “Great Resignation” weighing heavy on recruiters’ and hiring managers’ minds, increased retention is a priority. A stronger recruitment process starts a domino effect towards increasing efficiency, morale and in turn retention. If an employee is happier at work, it leaves very little reason to leave the company. After all, employee engagement has become less about what keeps talent from leaving and more about what drives them to stay. “I have to do this” turns into “I want to do this”.

There is now an emergence of companies that believe that businesses win when they understand what makes their workers exceptional. They’re founded with the goal of assisting businesses to bolster their hiring to sieve out candidate strengths very early on. This mindset and methodology are carried into their own internal hiring as well. Every hire is carefully vetted based on whether they match the mentality the company hopes to cultivate. The traits they exhibit, the qualities they show and how complementary these characteristics are to the rest of the team. Going to work has never felt so “stress-free” before. It’s why companies like Google have grown so quickly and continue to do so.

Now that you’re equipped with hopefully some new knowledge and insights, get out there and start making a difference. It just takes a handful of us to adopt such strategies and begin a domino effect towards making our workplaces more engaging and something worth looking forward to!  

It’s time to break the mould and hire to go the distance.