How does recruitment work from the employers side?

[Netcurtainnelly]

A question for employers.
how does recruitment works from the employers side and what challenges do employers face.
We know alot about the jobseekwrs side?

Honoured, privileged, humbled, proud…

on that point why dont companies say if ai is allowed or not on the nhs applications they say to say how you use ai etc, but other companies dont usually mention it at all ?

but if they could be a better candidate then why is that bad ?

-Poor quality applications. Short, too high level.
-Not tailoring experience to the job description.
-HR not sifting people who need visas well enough, trying to navigate people who lie.
-People not researching the role/org well which shows in the application and interview
-not preparing well enough for interview, poor examples, not well structured, not doing the full STAR format

I hate recruiting, genuinely good candidates are like hen’s teeth. (My description above is for well paid, professional roles, I appreciate time spent on applications/interviews need to be proportionate to the type of role applying for).

I recruited for a couple of public sector roles recently, mostly WFH, earning above £60,000, amazing pension, out of 25 interviews I got ONE candidate worth employing.

And yes to add to that being public sector the level of paperwork and process for recruiting is PAINFUL. Someone can half arse an application and I’m still expected to mark it fully. I’m mostly recruiting contractors at the moment and while it is horrible to see from a public finance point of view, it’s dream to do in comparison.

I’ve got a bit more patience with the ‘essential criteria’ questions, given how many occasions I’ve seen candidates progress who don’t meet them.

Yes, a handful of organisations use them properly and sift out anyone who doesn’t fully meet all of them, but so many don’t that i can see why candidates seek to understand.

What I was told about recruitment (I asked recently) in my job and the manager’s job is it’s crucial they find someone who knows what to do but is also up for training, learning and some things need to be learnt on the job. It’s also a very people focussed role as we deal with landlords and tenants, sometimes about tricky issues like them not affording their rent. I think with me, they liked my experience but there was also a likability factor there, I immediately got on with both my manager, the higher manager in the interview and it’s carried on that way since. We are a small team so it’s crucial we all get along well. They also wanted a balance of professionalism and capability. I love this job as there’s no micromanaging which I’ve suffered in the past.

Ive toyed with the idea of stating AI applications will not be accepted but after chatting to others we all agreed that it does work as a pretty decent reject criteria.

Someone thinking its acceptable to use AI for a job application, so needing to be informed it isnt, isnt the sort of person we'd want to employ in the first place.

I agree. The number of jobs I’ve seen with a ridiculous level of ‘essentials’ for virtually minimum wage, I’m not surprised people are dubious!

How long do you all normally take to get back to candidates if they have got the job?

Normally within a couple of days max. Often theres a close second so it can take a bit longer to get back to them if the first candidate rejects the offer for whatever reason.

Depends on which stage of the process they've dropped out of the process.

If they haven't been shortlisted for interview, then they will get an automated email generated by our recruitment system as soon as we've finished the shortlisting process - and we usually set the application deadline within a day or two of the date that we intend to shortlist, so typically within 2-3 days of the closing deadline. But it might take longer if we are unable to shortlist as planned, e.g. if someone is sick etc. They will get automated feedback generated by the system but we can't generally provide any more detailed feedback than that.

If someone has taken the time to attend an interview, it is our policy to phone them as soon as possible after the interview to tell them the outcome and ask if they would like to receive feedback. The timescales on this do vary, especially for candidates who might be our second choice, as we need to speak to the successful candidate first to ensure that they plan to accept the role before telling the others that they haven't got through. Sometimes it can take a day or two to get hold of the first candidate, or sometimes they ask for time to consider their options etc. We would always get back to someone within a week of the interview though, even if it was only to explain that the process had been delayed for some reason.

I take the point made by pp above regarding some employers listing criteria as essential when they're not. But we spend quite a bit of time trying to get this right, and it's annoying to then have so many people just assuming it's irrelevant!

I actually don't mind a bit of AI if it has been used intelligently. There is nothing wrong with people making use of the tools available to them. However, if they have just submitted whatever AI has churned out without editing it appropriately, then that's a good sign that they are not actually using the tools effectively at all.

On a serious note, what are 'good' things to put in this section?

well, anything that indicate you are actually interested in working for my company, not just a company.

like we get so many people that haven't even bothered to replace "Turngin Bins into Homes Company" with "Donald Duck Hats Ltd" on their applications - easy bin.

This seems a good place to ask re at what point to mention difficulties/disabilities.
Eg
Anxiety
Dyspraxia
that may have limited cv up to now (eg amount of qualifications / work experience)

we had a guy that had a degree in a relevant subject, he got the job, turns out he relied on AI for EVERYTHING. Like literally "write an email to a colleague saying thank you for helping me" makes me think he AI-ed his way though his degree because it turned out he knew very little about the subject

I wouldn;t mention any health issues in your CV.

just own the inexperience and acknowledge it but you're willing to learn adapt etc did independant learning whatever

If you get the job and you think you'll need reasonable adjustments. But I appreciate it's a catch 22 situation.

Putting those on a CV is highly unlikely to make much of a difference if you dont meet the minimum criteria unfortunately.

Working with recruiters can be very frustrating for the applicant and the employer. Often recruiting agencies charge a fortune, promise high quality candidates and then send you completely unsuitable CVs and candidates who are appalling at interviews without the skillset you require but are asking for very high salaries.

I can honestly say in my many years as a HR director I probably only found one or two recruiters who were actually really good at their job and understood the sector they were claiming to be experts in. I remember I had one recruiter phone me up in tears shouting down the phone at me that I was so unreasonable to pull a brief from her and she now looked bad in front of her boss. I calmly reminded her she'd had months and had found no one suitable to even interview. That we could not wait indefinitely and were not willing to pay £20k in fees for a senior level position that she simply didn't have the client base to fill. I also reminded her we were the client and she was behaving very unprofessionally. Suffice to say I phoned her boss and told him exactly why we were cancelling the 3 positions we had open with them (so potentially probably £40k+ in fees lost by them). I heard she'd lost her job not long after so we probably weren't the only ones she had a melt down with.

In the end we devised our own internal recruitment process and were much more successful and saved a lot of money!

@Megifer @SamuraiSally Thanks so much for the insight. I have a question re AI filtering. Do all the CVs actually reach you or does AI filter down the list that does?

I have read that AI filtering criteria is pretty obscure and can at times be ageist/ sexist. Thank you!

Wacky CVs produced on Canva, including self-assessed star ratings of their skills

And then they give themselves 2* on quarter of these....

I once had a brief to reject anyone with 'O' levels as we were looking for someone who sat GCSE's. I think that would be illegal now, as it was a way of weeding out older candidates.

Same. In fact if I can see AI used well it would be a plus for me. We use AI in our work, it makes us much more efficient, I want to employ people who are comfortable with it and know how to use it well, so I’d actually value a CV with AI over one without if it gave me what I needed it to.

I dont use the AI function on our portal to auto shortlist but it can be handy to have a quick glance. I tend to look at the ones its rated down first and its fairly accurate but there are times it ranks someone down that actually has transferable skills.

One of my colleagues will happily click the AI auto shortlist icon and doesnt bother looking at any of them.