As PIE looks to welcome our latest addition, I have been sitting with my Operations Director designing their induction – or onboarding as some might put it.
This has got me thinking.
Although still on the 'right' side of forty (!), I started to harp back to my own rather bumpy landing into this industry some 15 years ago. Don’t get me wrong, whilst there were nuggets of information handed to me daily from the more senior members of the team, the induction at the time basically involved…the Yellow Pages and a phone!
For more junior staff I would love to do this now - make them learn from mistakes, create a drive and hunger to hit their targets, put a fear in them that drives them on.
This worked for me – but there is no room for it in today’s market.
Becoming a skilled recruiter takes time and investment from both parties. In fact, in my opinion, it can take at least 5 years to mature into a bona fide Consultant.
Let’s see what the dictionary says.
Consultant: “Experienced professional who provides expert knowledge”
There are some half a million recruitment “consultants” in the UK. How many genuinely fulfill this criteria?
THE MINORITY
And why is this?
Low barrier to entry, lack of talent, high staff turnover, too difficult, long hours, perception of the market…there are many reasons, but I would put it down to the way consultants are brought into their companies in the first place.
It is now 2016, in the next few years generation Z is about to hit the workplace. A generation that is going to be more informed than ever with more choices available to them than we had. If the recruitment industry wants to harness them, then we need to wise up on how we train and develop our people on an ongoing basis.
Successful recruitment businesses are built on their people. Simple.
When hiring new recruits I firmly believe that if we fail them, they will fail us. Simple.
Monster.com reports 30% of external new hires turn over within the first two years of employment. Retention statistics from other organizations, including the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), show that turnover can be as much as 50% in the first 18 months of employment. Two decades ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average number of jobs held in one person’s career was six. Today, the average number of jobs held is 11. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost for replacing an employee is over 25% of their annual salary (some say 50%), so it is very costly when you don’t get it right.
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