Employers having regrets over recruitment decisions

A recent survey conducted by Online HR consultancy firm Reabur.com, has found that around 74% of employers regret some of the decisions they have made over hiring employees who underperforms.

22% of respondents said that they were undecided whether the workers they had bought in were performing well. This left only 4% of respondents happy with the choices they had made over recruitment.

Traits that made respondents feel they had made the wrong decision were based on;
- A new recruit exaggerating their skills and qualifications.
- Exaggerating their experience.
- Underperforming and having a poor attitude towards the work they had to do or those they worked with.

It is important to take time over filling vacancies and finding the right candidates. Recruitment can be very costly and if an employee doesn’t take the necessary procedures to separate the wheat from the chaff.

This will take away the necessary procedures of terminating an employee’s contact, wasting both yours and their time. It is in both parties interest to conduct a robust assessment process, giving you more confidence in hiring the right staff for the organisation and cutting recruitment costs, with Estimations of £4,000 per job.

Graduate recruitment over-supply

A current problem for graduate recruiters is that for every job they post they are getting inundated with applications. Although this may sound like recruiters are able to pick from a wide variety of skilled graduates, many see that the majority of these candidates are unqualified and in-experienced for these roles.

This has made recruitment costs soar because of the amount of time needed to assess and interview all the potential graduates, and searching for the top graduate among many. The competition among graduates has meant that they are applying to many different roles and will maybe receive many offers, meaning that top graduate you finally found accepts another job offer.

Claire McCartney, from the CIPD, underlined that: “High levels of unemployment have boosted quantity, but employers are still struggling with quality.” Many companies are finding it increasingly difficult to find skilled graduates, and end up spending a lot more on advertising to find the perfect graduate.

Employers will have to become increasingly savvy on social media to up their networking with graduates, and liaise with universities in their recruitment drive to find the best talent early. With 60% of companies upping their recruitment in 2011 companies will have to go the extra mile to attract the best.

Apprentice Episode 6 – Getting rid of the rubbish

The apprentices are given the task of waste disposal, given steel toe capped shoes, high visibility vests, a truck and two days to clear as much waste as possible and make a profit.

There weren’t many volunteers for this task, many had no clue about the industry and felt it was going to be a difficult task so didn’t want to put their neck on the line. However Helen put her head forward stating she has won the last five and is not going to lose the next one. Zoe was team leader for Venture after everyone else on her team stated why they shouldn’t do it.

The two teams left to go and hunt for waste and also went to meet two potential clients that Lord Sugar had set up for them. Interestingly here, neither team had any clue about waste management; this task was more geared around sending the apprentices into a maze and see who gets out first. Susie was saying they should pay for someone’s waste (granted it was old office tables and chairs), but Zoe saying that was a stupid idea. The other team just said they would do all the jobs for free in a bid to earn more from the metal, and sell the office and chairs onto an office supplier. Not surprisingly then Helen and team logic won the clients and looked to be gaining the lead early on with Team Venture not having secured any business.

It was an interesting task, making use of the teams to make something from nothing and to see how quick they learn from their mistakes and how well they perform when they have no previous experience in this role. Yet there was no sales involved really, it was just getting as much rubbish as you could, part from this it was all manual labour.

Team Venture after their abysmal first day did manage to secure a very lucrative contract with a plumber who had a yard to clear, and 5 copper cylinders that are worth quite a bit. This gave them a fair whack on money, although melody did try her selling skills after finishing the deal to get more money, to which the guy responded we have already shook on a deal. Sadly the task was won by team logic by £6, £712, to team venture who had profit of £706, which could have been recouped when a builder whose waste they took decided to add to the load whilst they took the first to the waste disposal center.

Zoe and Susie managed to survive the boardroom, with Susie having blamed Zoe for the loss, yet Edna was the candidate to receive the dreaded words 'you're fired' from lord Sugar for doing next to nothing but claiming having won the deals for the team. Helen has won

Apprentice Episode Five – Barking up the wrong tree

This week’s task is to come up with a pet food that is unique, and one that finds a gap in the market place that hasn’t previously been done. With this done the Apprentices were tasked with creating a TV commercial and pitch the idea to an ad agency. It is shocking that Lord Sugar expects them to come up with new ideas, when he himself cannot think of any new tasks to test the apprentices with, are we not bored of seeing the same tasks over and over again.

That aside the task was quite intriguing; Lord Sugar chose the team leaders (Glenn project manager (PM) for Venture, and Vincent PM for Logic) such as Glenn who performed well in the previous tasks, which is probably why he was nominated.

Glenn’s leadership didn’t leave much for the other team to do; he sent the other team to do some research for the brand name whilst he cast the animals and mixed up the food. Sadly once the branding team came up with an idea, they informed Glenn who said no he had come up with an idea which is better.

Vincent did very well brain storming and getting some good ideas, however he managed to decide against all of them and target ‘Every’ dog in the world with their pet food, ignoring the advice from many dog enthusiasts and even a vet.

The presentation skills of Leon were excruciating to watch him stumble through, even though he had 5 hours to work on it. Strangely all the team lied to him afterwards saying how good he was, I am sure they had an ulterior motive.

I think Lord Sugar realised that this task was too similar to previous ones and so managed to spice it up in the boardroom. Vincent took Ellie and Natasha back into the boardroom, and none surprisingly he fired Ellie, but then rather surprisingly fired Vincent who was seemingly the only one who provided some good telly.