Understanding The Hiring/Recruitment Process | Youff Mag
Understanding The Hiring/Recruitment Process
by Phakeme Mtheku
Why Is It Important ?
Understanding the hiring process offers direction and context to not only acce your search, but also your conversations with hiring managers - remember our last article? GREAT. Understanding the recruitment process allows you to position yourself and impose your candidacy into the recruitment process at any juncture, using well calculated activities. Lastly, gives you the opportunity to make yourself a known candidate.
A lot of your productivity in a job search depends on your understanding of the hiring process, just as success in sport depends on knowing how the game is played.
In the employment “game”, what is important is not how the game is supposed to be played, but rather, how it is really played.
There are only 3 Scenarios that describe how the Hiring Process Works.
1. The applicant/candidate pool.
An employee leaves or moves, creating an open vacancy, to fill that vacancy an organization collects a large pool of candidate and screens them. The candidate is selected from the applicant pool and then shortlisted and interviewed by the hiring manager. The hiring manager then makes final selection and hires.
2. The Created position (NOT so common since 90’s and early 2000’s)
A job seeker identifies a need within an organization. The hiring manager and job seeker discuss the need, the job seeker develops and presents a business proposal to meet the need. The hiring manager creates a position around the job seekers skills and interests, and the job seeker is hired to fill it.
3. The known candidate.
The hiring manager knows several qualified people and has them in mind as possible additions to the staff in the event that a position opens up or a new one is authorised. When a position becomes available the hiring manager may go through the motions and processes of collecting, screening and interviewing a pool of candidates. But then hires one of the known candidates OR the hiring manager simply hires a known candidate without creating any candidate pool at all.
The candidate pool scenario is often perceived to be the way hiring happens, but actually only accounts for about 25% of hires. The created position scenario, according to research, is the reason in less than 5% of hiring, however usually produces outstanding results for the person hired. The third scenario, hiring a known candidate is how most hiring actually happens.
Talk to the hiring manager before openings occur.
In essence, if you want to cover 100% of the job market, your search strategy needs to take all three of these scenarios into account. The common factor in all 3 is talking to the hiring manager, since hiring virtually never happens without this step, but how and when that hiring manager conversation happens differs in each scenario.
Happy hunting folks!
For more info and more career resources, please visit the 189Xchange website.
Phakeme Mtheku: Founding Director of 189Xchange