7 Symptoms that show its time for a recruitment audit

We all need help from time to time, however help may be needed more now than ever. 

If you’ve got a pain or discomfort, it’s best to go see a doctor to determine a course of treatment. But when does it make sense to bring the outside in, and review how you are doing things without bias in terms of your recruitment function.  Rather than just expanding your recruitment team, you could work smarter by refining your systems and processes. 

Here are seven symptoms that suggest it might be time to bring in the experts to conduct a recruitment audit across your company.

1. A new leader needs help to prioritise and implement solutions 

You may be experiencing general complaints about the quality and speed of recruiting from Hiring Managers, and there may be questions around the capability of Recruiters in your talent team. Additionally, there could be a lack of metrics and dashboards giving a meaningful picture of talent acquisition and active jobs.  

For a new leader of a talent team walking into this scenario, red flags are waving. They need a helping hand to hit the ground running in order to manage the business as usual, as well as oversee the change management process that needs to occur.  

An audit provides an unbiased roadmap of projects and tasks, prioritised to speed up the implementation and – more importantly – the acceptance from Hiring Managers and other major stakeholders across the organisation. Think of this audit as an insurance policy to recruiting your new Head of Talent.  

2. Every Hiring Manager doing things their own way 

When Hiring Managers complain about the quality of their internal recruitment team, they may take the recruitment process into their own hands.  

The tendency for this can also be greater with geographically dispersed or remote Hiring Managers. They no longer request recruitment through normal means because they lack confidence in the recruitment team, and begin searching and sourcing talent any way they can to find the right people for their team. The internal talent team then end up doing the administrative aspects of the hiring process and, over time, become glorified Administrators.  

The benefits of an audit in this situation is that you gain acceptance from Hiring Managers to transition to a different approach. With a rapid injection of expert hiring efforts and best practices from an outside expert, Hiring Managers can understand the gaps in what they have been doing.  

It’s also often an opportunity to rebuild the talent team in terms of capability, skills training, and improved systems and processes. In this way, the recruitment team become true strategic partners with the business – becoming more credible, equipped and responsive to Hiring Managers’ needs.   

3. The talent team are “order takers” rather than consultants 

You might be hearing complaints from your Hiring Managers and Senior Managers about the quality and speed of recruiting efforts. Coupled with this, your talent team may contain advisors who do not adequately consult with Hiring Managers, or lack the capability, experience and skills to source and screen candidates effectively.  

In this scenario, there can often be a tendency to use agencies for recruitment efforts, or the over-use of temps in pockets of the organisation. Investment in recruiting technologies also end up being underutilised. The bottom line is Hiring Managers are unsatisfied and costs are high.  

In such circumstances, a talent acquisition audit delivers you a method to consolidate your resources and use them more effectively in a rapid timeframe.  

Financially, you have a roadmap for how to go about your improvement efforts without blowing out the budget with unnecessary costs. With an audit, you also get the involvement and buy-in of your Hiring Managers as they see a way forward in terms of improvements.  

4. Outdated or non-existent talent technology  

You’re experiencing complaints from Hiring Managers about the quality and speed of recruitment, and your recruitment team lack the capability or resources to jump into finding talent that your business needs.  

These may be symptoms of not having the right systems for your team. You might even be using an excel spreadsheet or whiteboard to keep track of a dashboard of work in progress. You may have outdated platforms that can’t cope with the volume, or lack the capabilities to ensure fast and high quality delivery and management of the recruitment process.  

If you’re looking to secure up-to-date tools for your recruitment team, an external party completing a recruitment audit will help to build your business case. As part of this process, you get best practice advice on what’s available in the market and is most suitable for the type of recruitment your business needs to do.  

5. Lack of involvement by Hiring Managers  

Currently, your Hiring Managers may be expecting to have all aspects of the recruitment process completed by the internal talent team. They are not willing or have time to partner, consult or be part of the hiring process. They see this as the job of the HR team.  

In this situation, your recruitment team will most likely be overworked and feel buried in a sea of recruitment activity. The “world” will rest on their shoulders, and their hiring decisions could make or break their success.  

One significant benefit of a recruitment audit is that it helps build a case for true partnership between the Hiring Managers and the recruiters, providing clarity around their respective roles and responsibilities in the hiring process. If you’re after speed of acceptance for a different approach, an external unbiased expert can pave the way forward by more effectively managing stakeholder expectations.  

6. Impending re-structure   

You may be experiencing a merger with or acquisition of another company with its very own recruitment function. There may be a directive to centralise the talent function, or questions around whether recruitment should be outsourced completely.  

In this case, a recruitment audit help clear the path for a new operating model, with recommendations on how to transition. Additionally, with this roadmap, the speed of acceptance of the new model is faster due to stakeholder involvement in the recruitment audit process.  

7. Industry changes and conditions  

Your industry may be embryonic and in go-mode, it may be changing rapidly, or it may be impacted by government regulation. Additionally, talent may be hard to find and scarce. In a competitive market for candidates, you may require a more strategic approach to talent pooling and managing your talent acquisition process.   

Hiring Managers in these circumstances will be making lots of “noise” about recruitment not happening fast enough. Your Recruitment Advisors will also be over-extended and feeling like they are failing. Without a smarter approach, your company will remain uncompetitive.  

Do any of the above sound like your business, and can you complete a recruitment audit yourself?  Possibly, but there are some questions to ask:

• Do you have the time and the internal resources to pull it off properly? 
• Will business as usual suffer with your time devoted to such an intensive project?  

A prescription for better recruitment

Even if you can clear those hurdles, do you have up-to-date best practice knowledge to provide recommendations in a timely way? You also need to consider how best to build your business case internally. Sometimes a review by an outside unbiased organisation can achieve greater cut-through when change needs to happen. Particularly with getting stakeholders involved during the process.  

Recruiting is in our blood – our income depends on it every day. We keep our finger on the pulse of all the latest industry trends and technologies emerging in recruiting and talent acquisition. Our processes are improving every day. For more information on how we can help you get the best recruitment audit – without the pain – contact us today and let’s get those symptoms seen to.