For many small businesses, recruiting more staff as the business expands is a difficult and time-consuming task. If not completed skilfully and successfully, it can lead to poor hires and more serious time and cost implications. As well as having a negative impact on your employer brand, staff turnover can distract and demotivate other employees.
BEST member, Sarah Bass of Oraculum Recruitment, gave a presentation on recruitment bias and how to avoid it. Recruiting without bias is not only essential if you want to build the right team but also if you want to avoid falling foul of discrimination legislation.
Sarah explained the need to have more than one person conducting the interviews. She outlined six types of bias, conscious or unconscious, that many business-owners suffer from. ……………………….
Ways to avoid and overcome bias are based on establishing a professional recruitment process. This includes producing detailed, specific job descriptions, that should have the approval of your team, not just the owner’s idea. Collaborating and evaluating a job description also gives you the chance to look at how your staff’s jobs interact with each other and can expose gaps which need to be filled.
Have set, consistent, interview questions that are asked to ALL candidates and a formal matrix-based assessment system for responses.
Completed well, recruitment will bring the full range of skills, experience, and talent that a business needs to thrive.
Avoiding bias is not easy and those responsible for recruiting and interviewing need to be made fully aware of what bias is and the implications. Training and support can be offered. Again, this is something that Sarah can help with.
Oraculum clients include leading SMEs, Corporate Clients, Charities and Non-profit organisations across the UK. You can learn more about what Oraculum offer by going to their website www.oraculum.co.uk .