Winnowing is the age old practice of sorting the wheat from the chaff and is a process that has probably been deployed in recruitment processes for a similar period of time. It is undoubtedly the most difficult aspect of the process to get right and sadly over the years many supposed professionals never perfect the art.
Let’s get one thing straight here, every recruitment project has clear wheat and the chaff will undoubtedly be another projects wheat. There should in reality be a job for everyone looking for work out there.
One of the greatest priorities of a recruit business is to deliver the solution required by their customer and not achieve this by simply feeding across multiple CV’s and hoping that a compromise will be made.
There have been and always will be bad recruitment decisions made and blame can be apportioned equally between recruiters and recruitment consultancies. The problem has been compounded as the recruitment industry has expanded massively and true professionals have become rare and thinly spread.
There has been a massive growth in “in house recruitment” and this has slightly compounded the problem as inexperienced recruiters adapt from hunters to farmers.
The art of winnowing takes a while to develop, as do most skills, and some sadly never manage to totally perfect it and move on to other careers.
Recruitment processes are now changing with many companies looking to advertise positions themselves either on recruitment sites or their own sites. This is understandable as the potential cost savings can look very attractive at the outset. It is often not as easy as it looks and in particular this applies in the lower and middle salary bands where there are multiple similar positions available at any one time. Adverts need to highly attractive and the whole recruitment process needs to be swift and highly proactive to avoid losing the best candidates.
Recruitment has never been easy and can be very stressful and time consuming for both the job seekers and the managers involved in the recruitment process. It is easy to forget that with a first and second interview and maybe a psychometric stage a candidate may need to take 3 days holiday or vanish from their current employer with a limp excuse.
The winnowing process is and always has been highly complex and recruiters need to understand right at the outset how to set out the criteria for the process to work and also ensure that the package and prospects on offer are strong enough to attract the right candidate. There is nothing more frustrating than a candidate changing their mind at the last moment or accepting either another offer or remaining with their current company.
We now work closely with UK businesses to provide consultancy and project management services that support both recruitment and ‘search and selection’ processes. We spent 32 years as recruitment and search and selection consultants before evolving and transforming our business into what we believe better suits the demands and requirements of the market place today. We now no longer source candidates directly but work closely with and advise companies who have embraced the digital candidate sourcing route and need to incorporate a blend of traditional methodology and proven experience alongside it.
We can offer unbiased and purely objective input into a recruitment process utilising expertise that has been gained over 30 years in the business. The projects we are involved in often balance internal candidates and external candidates when external input can view all options in a totally objective manner. We work closely with senior management and HR teams within businesses of all sizes and at all stages of the process. We are able to tailor our services and input around each and every individual project and are used to working within tight time constraints.
We strive to keep costs to a minimum and charge by the day and even by the hour when required.
