5 Reasons you must always be recruiting, even if you don't have a vacancy

A proactive recruitment strategy will bring great benefits to your company, yet many employers still choose to recruit reactively, waiting for a resignation before recruiting. A business can potentially experience major setbacks when recruiting in this way, both in terms of the quality of the person they eventually recruit and the time it takes to find them.

The 5 reasons why you must always be recruiting, even if you don’t have a vacancy

1. You’ll hire the best person

If you recruit proactively, you’ll have a much wider choice of people to choose from because you have built a pipeline of suitable candidates. Only recruiting in reaction to a resignation leaves you at the mercy of chance. Recruiting proactively will help you avoid the panic recruit, the outcome if a hiring manager becomes desperate!

2. You’ll be prepared for the unexpected

How much would your company suffer if a key employee left today? An unexpected resignation could have a significant impact on your team, your customers and your profitability. A year-round recruitment policy, will ensure you can quickly respond to any unforeseen incident.

3. You can involve the team

If you foster a culture of year-round recruiting, you can create an environment in which your employees find and engage good people too. Developing this culture will also help to reduce complacency amongst members of your own team, who know you regularly meet potential future recruits.

4. You can gain fresh ideas and knowledge

Regularly interviewing people will keep you up-to-date with industry trends, salary packages and may inspire new ideas. Knowledge that will help you attract new recruits and retain existing employees.

5. You’ll improve your own interview skills

It takes practice to become a great interviewer. Once you’ve decided that your interviewee could be good recruit, you’ll want the confidence to impress them. Interviewing people regularly and perfecting your technique, will increase your chances of achieving this.

1. You’ll hire the best person (not the best person who happens to be available)

If you recruit proactively, you’ll have a much wider choice of people to choose from as you’ll already have developed a pipeline of candidates who are potentially the right fit for the job. However, if you wait until the position opens up before looking, you’ll leave yourself with a limited selection of candidates who have consciously decided to make themselves available at that time, vastly shrinking the pool of talent you can choose from. This will help you avoid the panic recruit which can sometimes happen when a hiring manager gets desperate!

2. You’ll be prepared for the unexpected

How much would your company suffer if a key employee left or fell ill today? A sudden illness or an unexpected resignation could have a significant impact on your team and in turn, your customers, particularly if you’re working in a smaller company. By operating a year-round recruitment process, you’ll be in a much stronger position to swiftly bring another person into the business to take on the additional workload, relieving the pressure on the rest of the team and allowing you to maintain service levels.

3. You can involve the team

If you foster a culture of year-round recruiting, you can create an environment where your employees also play a part in finding and engaging good people too and reward them accordingly. Embedding this in your culture should also help to reduce under performance and complacency amongst members of staff as they’ll be less likely to take their own positions for granted, knowing that their managers are regularly meeting potential future recruits for the business.

4. You can gain fresh ideas and knowledge

Regularly interviewing people will help keep you up-to-date with the latest industry trends and inspire ideas for development. It’s also a good way of checking how your salary package stacks up against comparable roles in the industry and this knowledge will help you attract new recruits as well as retain existing employees.

5. You’ll improve your own interview skills

It takes practice to become a great interviewer. Once you’ve decided that your interviewee could have a future within your company, you’ll want to do everything you can to engage them and sell the opportunity to them so that they are as impressed with you as you are with them. By interviewing people regularly and perfecting your technique, you’ll increase your chances of achieving this.

Managing expectations

If you commence an ongoing recruitment system, you must be open and honest that immediate positions may not be available. As long as you’re upfront about this, you should be able to develop a strong network of contacts for the future.

In summary, if you wait until you "need" to recruit, you’ll always be playing catch up. By building an ongoing pipeline of suitable candidates, you’ll be in a stronger position to fill your jobs with high quality people, with the skill-set and personal qualities your business needs. Versus being at the mercy of who happens to be available.

Do you want to attract more talented employees?

Established in 2003 Ascendant Recruitment is a leading independent recruitment consultancy based in and covering Milton Keynes. We will introduce you to the best employees in the area.

We recruit for office, sales and marketing, finance, and HR jobs. Whether you are looking for a temporary or permanent solution, we can help you.

If you’d like Ascendant Recruitment to help you find new talent for your business, please contact us on 01908 200270 or email [email protected]

We will help you fill your jobs with talented employees