5 Legacy Workplace Recruiting Practices That Need to End in 2015

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

I’ve talked before about how traditionally HR and recruitment tends to lag 24-36 months behind consumer trends. We are slow to change because change equals risk, however I am of the mind that to not change, by staying the same we are not only opening up ourselves to more risk but have thrown in the towel and admitted defeat for our companies.

Legacy workplace practices are ones we have been doing forever for no other reason than it’s sometime that we’ve done because it has always been done that way. These legacy workplace practices in HR and recruiting need to end. We need to evolve and change.

Here are 5 that need to happen for your human capital efforts to move forward in 2015. You need to start doing these today.

The Post and Pray.
Reactive recruitment has a place and time, but just like forecasting our sales and operational needs, we should be planning and building proactive recruiting efforts into our strategy. Quit relying solely on the post and pray. The post and pray method has been proven to be extremely ineffective and when trying to prove the worth behind your human resources department.

When a recruiter posts and prays they’re using time and money on listing open requisitions in places that aren’t a proven method to show real results. This methodology in recruiting rarely works.

Candidate Hazing.
Creating a candidate experience so dreadful, inconvenient and difficult that candidates have to take off 3-4 days of vacation in order to attend all your in person interviews. Otherwise, you should be compensating these candidates for their time with pay. Companies who are wanting to perfect the candidate experience should condense their process and find better ways at attracting top talent.

The passive candidate is sometimes the most qualified candidate and it’s difficult for them to leave their job multiple times only to be not offered a job. Enhance the experience by offering a more condensed, effective interview process.

The Brush Off. 
It’s time to end established practices of not providing candidates with feedback or a candidate status in a timely manner. Employers should provide candidates with feedback within 72 hours. It’s unnerving and most importantly insulting. The candidate black hole has existed for way, way too long. Stop denying candidates the ability to improve their skills by providing real feedback on how they can improve.

Lame Job Descriptions.  
While I understand the need for job descriptions for a compliance standpoint, we need to make sure they accurately depict the work that is expected to be done. The job description should be one of the most important features of an open job requisition.  Planning and executing a well written and thought out job description will help you recruit for the job 100x better.

Ignoring Metrics and Analytics.
We need data, numbers and measurements to accurately understand how to engage and hire best in class. Using a drop down menu for your source of hire is not enough.  Understand the analytics and metrics behind your hiring process will not only save your department time and money, but it’ll give your HR more klout in how they do business. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell.