Advertising job vacancies on Facebook and Instagram for engineering roles
Advertising job vacancies on Facebook and Instagram is an effective way to reach technical staff who aren’t actively looking for work, as Meta allows you to target people based on role, region and interests, rather than waiting for them to visit a job site themselves. This allows you to reach precisely those technicians, operators and welders who appear satisfied but are open to […]
Which recruitment KPIs are suitable for hard-to-find candidates?
You can post the same vacancy across two teams and see completely different results: one team fills the role quickly with a steady influx of candidates, whilst the other keeps trying for weeks to get “more responses” without ever getting anyone to start. When it comes to hard-to-find profiles, the problem rarely lies with a single setting in your campaign. It’s down to your benchmark: if […]
How can you set up a short pre-screen without losing talent?
You’ve finally received applications for a challenging vacancy. You’ll want to filter them quickly, as your diary (and that of the hiring manager) is full. At the same time, you don’t want to miss out on a candidate who can deliver, but who doesn’t quite fit the standard mould. Setting up a quick pre-screen is the most underrated tool in your arsenal: it can help you […]
Setting application knockout criteria without missing out on talent
You want to filter candidates quickly, but you also don’t want to rule out the candidate who settles in within 8 weeks and goes on to perform exceptionally well. This tension makes it difficult to set knockout criteria for job applications: the stricter you make them, the less noise you have; the more lenient you make them, the greater the risk of a mismatch and […]
GDPR retention period for job application data relating to scorecards
A practical problem: scorecards get left lying around in inboxes. After a busy recruitment drive, there are often ‘mini-files’ scattered everywhere: interview notes in a note-taking app, scorecards as PDFs in a folder, and summaries in emails. It is precisely these scattered documents that make it difficult to comply properly with the GDPR’s data retention periods for recruitment data. The GDPR does not require perfect record-keeping, but […]
Structured sales interview questions for better recruitment
You’ll probably recognise this scenario: two candidates for the same sales role, both articulate, both energetic, and yet, when it’s all over, one particular impression lingers. A structured interview turns the question “who’s the most likeable?” back into “who delivers the most predictable results?”, and that’s exactly what sales teams are looking for. What you do want to measure in sales is […]
Which employment conditions do operators really consider important?
An operator rarely stays “because it’s a friendly atmosphere”. In production environments, what matters most is whether the work is sustainable: physically, mentally and in one’s personal life. If you want to attract and retain good operators, you need to offer terms and conditions that are suited to shift work, safety, predictability and recognition in the workplace. Why employers often get it wrong Many organisations […]
How do you compare candidates fairly using different tests?
You have three strong candidates and a wealth of information: an interview report, a practical case study, a personality test, a reference check and perhaps a driving test or aptitude test as well. Everyone wants to make an “objective” choice, but in practice this is where confusion arises: scores aren’t comparable, managers assign different weights to each component, and the discussion ends up being based on gut feeling after all. Comparing fairly […]
What is the difference between recruitment marketing and recruitment strategy?
You can receive a lot of applications in a single month and yet still find yourself with the same vacancy six weeks later. Or you might have a strong narrative about your employer brand, but it doesn’t reach the people you really need. Situations like these often arise because recruitment marketing and recruitment strategy are used interchangeably, whilst in practice they are two […]
Debriefing interview structure for decision-making meetings
Why the debriefing meeting often goes off the rails You schedule the decision-making meeting straight after the interviews, everyone has their notes, and yet the discussion drags on. Usually, this isn’t down to the candidate, but to a lack of agreement on what to discuss, in what order, and based on what evidence. The result: opinions take precedence over observations […]