1. The advantages of collaborative recruitment
Better formalisation
You’ve read our article on recruitment errors – once an employee is on-board, the worst thing is realising that you made a mistake, that the employee doesn’t fit, or that they resign after a few weeks. An experience that can destabilise the balance of the team and is also costly.
With collaborative recruitment, you are no longer the only manager involved in the process. Your line managers will almost certainly be more aware of what the role entails and which skills are required.
Line managers will be directly impacted by the recruitment process so it’s in their best interests to take part and assist in writing accurate and detailed job descriptions. Being able to actively participate in interviews will also mean they have some ‘control’ over who gets selected as the ‘best candidate’.
Cost reduction and time saving
By involving managers in the recruitment process, you open up your decision-making spectrum to several different viewpoints: HR, executives, managers, and employees, will all have a different perspective of the candidate, which can be very useful when it comes to assessing them individually.
Of course, recruitment – even a collaborative one – is never 100% guaranteed, but you can do all you can to limit possible mistakes. Being able to select the right candidate the first time means you recruit more effectively and will ultimately reduce your recruitment costs in the long run.
Better buy-in and involvement
Poor internal relationships are one of the first reasons why employees resign. It therefore seems logical to presume that a gloomy atmosphere during the recruitment process will have a negative impact on any candidates you interview.
Since it takes different teams in the company to work together, collaborative recruitment contributes to the development of a common culture and will therefore help build a positive, professional, and much more attractive employer brand.
And that’s not all!
The more you involve and empower an employee, the more they will adhere to the company’s values, and the more they will share a positive image of the company to the outside world. And what better way to involve an employee than to give them your trust in important decisions – the recruitment of a new employee.
As you can see, setting up a collaborative recruitment process also means getting your teams involved in a joint effort – not only on an operational level, but more broadly in what makes up your company’s culture; an inclusive culture where everyone is valued for their actions and given appropriate responsibility in-line with their know-how. A good way to avoid employee turnover.
Encourages team decisions
With collaborative recruitment, there are many ways to involve your employees:
- get them involved in the drafting of the job description and job advert
- ask them for opinions on candidates,
- encourage them to apply themselves – it’s called co-opting.
One for all and all for one!
The final decision when choosing THE candidate will be made together and the different stakeholders will need to take responsibility and support its success (or failure).
Let’s dig a little deeper: you should be able to understand that this type of process can be set up for reasons other than recruiting; once a group has been formed and is used to working together with a common goal, it is likely that their general process of working together will be much, much easier.
Reducing hiring risks
As we explained in a previous article, onboarding is crucial to the integration of a new employee. Since collaborative recruitment involves several people, from managers to employees to HR, the hired candidate should hopefully be a familiar face to some people in the company when they join.
Therefore, you are able to shorten the integration period for your new employee, which means they are able to get stuck into their role a bit quicker. Everyone’s a winner!
Internal transfer of recruiting skills
Collaborative recruitment seems to be an excellent way to recruit better and faster. Yes, for many, recruitment is HR’s responsibility, however it’s not about passing a task from one team to another, it’s about encouraging collaboration across the business!
You will be able to support employees in learning about the recruitment process, which in turn means they have a better understanding of your role, and the role of HR.
To guarantee “fair” selection of the best candidate, don’t forget to put in place a tool which will support decision making – it’s essential to ensure the final decision can be justified.
To do this:
- Develop a standard questionnaire and checklist to assess each candidates’ skills
- Set up a scoring system
- Compare the results of the candidate(s) with a weighted scoring level
2. Challenges of collaborative recruitment you will need to overcome
As we have seen, the benefits of collaborative recruitment are many, but with it, also come some challenges.
A longer process to set up
Remember the African proverb: “only we go faster, together we go further”.
Coordinating with several stakeholders in the company is bound to take you longer than if you completed the process by yourself. But to avoid prolonging your recruitment process too much, here are some solutions:
- have good collaborative tools
- arrange several interviews in the same morning
- conduct multiple interviews
Employee involvement can be complex
Involving your employees is not always easy and with good reason:
- Loss of time and slowing down of their productivity
- Lack of experience in recruitment processes and minimal knowledge regarding applicable legislations
- May be unlikely that they will do a better job at recruiting than you
You will need to ensure you support your employees throughout the entire collaborative recruitment process.
Create ‘buddies’ to benefit from each other’s skills. An employee could work with a HR manager, so that they both fill in knowledge gaps regarding the others’ role. The HR manager can gain a deeper understanding of the role requirements, and the employee can better learn the recruitment process.
You should now understand that collaborative recruitment has many advantages – it can develop team spirit, and by calling on the right operational people, you will be able to find talents better suited to the role and the culture of your company.
So why not try it in your company?
