Recruitment

[william]

Having a recruitment drive - this is being going on for two months or so.

Doing some of the interviews and undertaking some employment screening and reference checks. Been advertising on web and in local papers in target areas.

What a fucking mess we are in....if this is the standard of applicants that we have then something has gone wrong with education and with society.

The recruitment process is hard enough - going through the responses and drilling down who we want to come in for an interview.

The interview process - using a mix of competency based and practical then final panel interviews.

The positions have been for junior to middle management roles and have had a techincal focus. Christ help us ! from the applicants recieved to actual first interview were dropping around a good 45 % or so of the applicants. The next 35% are graded and checked through telephone interviews with a move to progressing towards a face to face. id say generally drop around half of the telephone calls. The final intervies id say weve been lucky in that most have been reasonable and then you get to the offer stage.

One position was for shifts and we started someone - a few weeks he just didnt turn up had 'other' more pressing needs. like unreal as I said. We got a request for a reference for him and I filled in the response that we would not re employ this individual.

Its bad out there so it is.....

[David Johnson]

Reading this, I am not entirely sure what your point is.

"from the applicants recieved to actual first interview were dropping around a good 45 % or so of the applicants."

This is standard in recruitment, I would have thought. Often in an employment world where umpteen people might be chasing one job, you will often find people applying for jobs on the off chance that there is a connect between their CV and the job advertised.

Besides the last thing a company wants to do is to spend a huge amount of time interviewing people who are clearly unsuitable for the job, so this level of filtering is perfectly sensible.

"The next 35% are graded and checked through telephone interviews with a move to progressing towards a face to face. id say generally drop around half of the telephone calls"

Again, there is nothing unusual in this.

"The final intervies id say weve been lucky in that most have been reasonable and then you get to the offer stage."

Okay so "What a fucking mess we are in....if this is the standard of applicants that we have then something has gone wrong with education and with society" is an exaggeration, if you end up with reasonable candidates for the job. After all, that is the whole purpose of the exercise, isn't it?

"One position was for shifts and we started someone - a few weeks he just didnt turn up had 'other' more pressing needs. like unreal as I said"

Well there could be a number of reasons for this. One reason could be shift work just didn't work out for the candidate. Another possible explanation could be your company's recruitment process is shite with inaccurate job definition, poor explanation of terms and conditions etc etc.

[spider]

Or perhaps he didn't like the people he had to work with and decided to get a job elsewhere.

[Dave Wells]

Recruitment drive for what ?

[william]

Recruiting for an industry leader and was at multiple levels within the business.

A few of the positions involved shift work - this explained in detail at all stages and was in the literature sent out to candidates -

as said the filtering process did what it was meant to do but from six years or more ago the standard of applicant has dropped somewhat. I found generally during the interview process the applicants I was seeing filled me with dread. If this is what we have to offer then god help us.

This is typical and can be seen in so many areas it seems that we are dumbing down and lacking respect.

So if they didnt like who they were working with fair dos but a job is a job.... a few that we started never made it to the three month point id say we let 5 go and 2 left of their own accord.

Looking for clean presentable persons

Persons with good knowledge of their business and an adapatable skill set.

Able to work to the requirements of the position.

its not hard but id hate to go through a recuritment process again lol

[Dave Wells]

You should try being on the other end !

[Arginald Valleywater]

Interviewing is harder for the interviewer in my experience. No wonder so many big companies farm out the initial screening.

[Peter]

Arginald Valleywater wrote:

> Interviewing is harder for the interviewer in my experience. No
> wonder so many big companies farm out the initial screening.

It seems the job centres, or whatever 'back to work' initiative they're running these days, don't help either, by encouraging anyone to apply for anything, just to meet their quota of three applications a week. People who can't drive being encouraged to apply for driving jobs, just so targets are met (and presumably outside contractors get paid)

[william]

This is what I mean exactly - recruiment agencies we used to use tried to fix us to get monies we got wise, we do use a few agencies now with recruitment and as they are doingt his day in day out they are very good at the pre screening.

the jobs ranged from around the 16k mark to around 60k for the senior roles. The numpties we had trying for the senior roles were classic. Gimme a job I can do that yosser mentality.

this has to be the first time Ive been scared with recruitment, and think that we need to take a long hard look at the results driven schools we have developed as they are not producing kids with life skills. No body seems to want to start at the beginning - they may have a degree but that is a starter point for us, not a card to putr on the table and demand a ?100k a year 15% bonus and a 5 series BMW. Christ the number just out of uni that needs good slap and told that the working career starts now and it usually starts low 20k.....

[Peter]

william wrote:

we need to take a long hard look at the results
> driven schools we have developed as they are not producing kids
> with life skills.

Indeed, this obsession with getting as many as possible into further education needs to be addressed too. I have a friend whose son, a decent lad, but not academically gifted, has been bullied and forced into going onto one of those pointless college courses.

All he wanted to do was be a bus driver, obviously he couldn't do that straight from school, but he'd found himself some labouring work with the maintenance dept to keep him busy until he could get a PSV licence. But the school have brainwashed him with this further education stuff, and now he's doing a 'leisure and tourism' course. Totally pointless and he'll end up on the buses anyway. But the school are happy they've chalked up a target, I suppose.