A company can only succeed when there are right people in place, regardless of the industry, seniority, and geography. A shortage of talent within the organization can lead to operational seizure, drop in productivity, customer dissatisfaction, loss of revenue, burnout of existing staff and etc.
Given that hiring is a major challenge, particularly for the healthcare industry in Singapore and Australia, how can one identify signs of failed talent acquisition policies and implementation, address what is controllable and set in place the right system or guidelines?
For a start, one must be able to identify signs of ineffective talent acquisition strategies. With an abundance of healthcare jobs in Singapore and Australia, alongside with a tight labour market, it’s fair to say that we are in the employees’ market for the healthcare sector. This means employers must up their game if they intend to hire well qualified and suitable talents from the healthcare industry. Below are 7 signs to watch out for:
1. Low Turn Up Rate For Interview
If your talent acquisition team frequently experience no show from candidates especially in the 1st round of interview, it could indicate a weak employer branding or low employer value proposition. This is a waste of your recruiters’ time and result in an unfavourable time to hire per role. There are various ways to address this issue. Short term solutions include setting up the interview quickly, sending out a reminder email 24 hours before the interview session, to mid-term solution of building a social media presence for employer branding and getting employees testimonials.
2. Offer Decline Rate Is High
While the rate of offer decline rate can differ from industries to roles, the best way to track is to measure it over a period. (Ideally across 3 years if possible) This will give you an idea if your organisation is improving or deteriorating is this regard. Concurrently you can measure it against your industry peers if such information is available to you.
If the offer decline rate is high, it could mean a few things. Is the job offer competitive? Did the recruiter screen the candidates correctly during the early stages? Has the recruiter been communicating and being upfront with the candidates? Is the candidate being treated well during the entire recruitment process?
3. Poor Glassdoor Review
It’s common for job seekers to visit Glassdoor for reviews of their future employer prior to the interview. That said, Glassdoor review serve as a report card of the organization by existing or past employees.
According to Glassdoor’s State of employer branding report. 68% of hiring managers felt their employer brand gave them a competitive edge when it came to recruitment, and 75% of talent acquisition or employer branding specialists said they were aligned with what their employees wanted.
Glassdoor reviews can have a direct impact on an organization cost of recruitment and time to hire. The only way to improve Glassdoor review is to address the underlying issues within the organization e.g. transparency, management approach, organizational work culture, compensation, working arrangement and etc.
4. High Turnover rate
Typically, an employee turnover rate of >15% is considered high. Of course, this is subjected to the location, industry and role itself. A high employee turnover rate is a symptom of underlying issues within the organization. While this itself may not be within the control of what the talent acquisition team can do, there are ways to mitigate such issue.
One effective way is for the recruiter to be radically transparent with the candidates about the issues they are likely to face when they joined the organization. E.g., work environment, the competitive business landscape, working style of the reporting manager and sub-culture of the business unit.
At the same time, it’s important for recruiters to communicate with the hiring manager about their hiring needs and wants in a frank manner. This only makes sense if the recruiter has a good understanding of the role requirement, working culture, business landscape and needs of the business unit.
A high employee turnover rate can lead to decreased productivity, low morale, loss of sales and high recruitment cost and etc.
5. Main Recruitment Channels Yielding Low Results
If you have been using these popular job boards e.g. JobStreet, LinkedIn, Career Future Singapore, SEEK and constantly face challenges in attracting suitable job applicants, perhaps it’s high time to consider alternatives.
When it comes to healthcare jobs or hospital jobs, there are many alternatives’ channels to consider, such as career fair, specialist job boards, social media recruitment to career conversion program. Using a specialist job board such as Healthcare Career Groove can be effective for healthcare jobs in Singapore and Australia.
The only way to evaluate the effectiveness of it is to constantly test out new channels, new marketing approach and evaluating the result over time.
6. Lack of Diversity and Inclusion
A homogenous workforce can have a limiting effect on the organization culture, innovation and problem-solving abilities. The lack of diversity can cause a company to develop an inward looking and restrictive culture.
As the world economy becomes more globalized, the distribution of talents becomes more internationalized as well. Advanced economies around the world are constantly on the hunt for top talents. 2 good examples are Silicon Valley where the brightest tech talents are drawn, and Singapore where the government is pro-actively aligning policies to lure top notch talents. A good example is the Overseas Networks and Expertise (ONE) Pass introduced by MOM.
7. Ignoring Candidate Feedback
Feedback from candidates can be an overlooked source of important information. Candidates may have good insight about the industry, along with the talent acquisition practices from your industry peers. By listening to their feedback, you can identify areas where your talent acquisition process can be improved. If you are not collecting and acting on candidates’ feedback, you are missing out an opportunity to improve the candidate experience and attracting top talents into your organisation.
Conclusion
Talent acquisition is an ongoing organizational activity once a company reach a certain scale or seek to achieve a certain growth rate. It requires insight from analysis and constant finetuning for it to be effective.
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