Executive Recruitment Coach Katherine Wiid writes:
Recruiting is an expensive process. In fact, research by Oxford Economics found that replacing a team member can cost your company as much as £30,000. So it’s incredibly important to get it right, and recruit the right people for your team, first time round.
Whilst I was facilitating a recruitment round-table debate at a charity headquarters recently, the topic of who will fit into your workplace culture came up.
Some of the leadership team were adamant that candidates must share their values and believe in the charity’s ‘cause’. The other half of the room asked why? Couldn't anyone with the right skills and experience do the job without having to be a firm ‘believer’?
To help them reach an answer to their dilemma, I asked some questions to define their workplace culture:
- At what pace do you operate? How fast is your organisation growing? How quickly do you make decisions? Fast-growing start-ups move and change quickly versus more mature, slow moving established companies,
- What is the depth and quality of the resources available to support this candidate? Will they be doing everything themselves / operating in a small team / have a larger pool of people and resources to call on?
- What is the leadership style of the recruiting manager? Do they delegate everything and control little or delegate little and control everything?
- How competitive is your sector and how are you performing financially? Highly competitive industries need people with drive. When money is tight, staff members who are not motivated by risk and crave security become stressed and under-perform.
- What do you stand for as an organisation? How do you operate? Organisations with strong beliefs and values may operate with more transparency, others may be more ambiguous and political.
If you don’t have £30,000 to risk, you may be interested to know that The LAB Profile is a tool that helps you to define your workplace culture and the motivations the ideal candidate needs to have in 14 different ways.
Want to find out more? Get in touch with Executive Recruitment Coach Katherine Wiid on 01223 659988 and find out how to avoid recruiting the wrong candidates.
Don't miss Cambridge Network’s Candidate Evening on Tuesday 29th November, which focuses on company culture - Katherine Wiid will be on hand to offer hints and tips to employers and candidates alike.