Friday, March 29, 2024

Initial research holds recruitment key

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As recruiting staff becomes more complex with different assessment methods and checklists, a recruitment specialist is urging farmers to keep it simple, and get the basics right early on.
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Fegan and Co director John Fegan said a referee check he conducted on a potential job candidate, before the candidate was interviewed, was recently greeted with surprise by the referee.

“He was gobsmacked that I would be checking him as a referee before even interviewing the candidate. It was not something he had come across before.”

Yet Fegan maintained it was essential to conduct one referee check before interviewing a candidate. It could help remove any bias that could build during a face-to-face interview, and help save time when seeking the right person for the job.

Fegan recommended one referee check before an interview, followed by the interview, then followed up with another referee check. It’s a simple enough process, but one that puts some safeguards around the selection process.

“It can happen during a job interview, you start to think this is the right person for the job, and intuitively want to like them, and employ them, and you risk becoming biased when you do go and check their referees after the interview. That can affect how closely you question the referees.”

He recounts several calls he has had from employers seeking a referee comment from himself about a potential candidate they had already interviewed, and failing to ask more than the “would you employ this person again” question.

“They would move onto the next question, seeming to not want to hear the answer they have got. In bigger organisations it is almost like they have ticked the box and moved on.”

Fegan advocates more of a “guilty until proven innocent” approach to assessment.

“We would typically only have one referee call before an interview. If it is negative, we may do a second, and if that is negative also, we won’t proceed to interviewing and the time that takes up.”

Fegan said there will always be some negatives about an employee when doing a referee check, but these can be usefully used in the interview process.

“You can raise them in a way that does not breach any confidentiality, but just use the comments to probe the candidate, and get their interpretation of that aspect.”

“Then you can consider the first referee’s response, the candidate’s response, and then take a second referee’s view – you should start to get some consistency about your feelings towards the individual.”

Fegan said initial process risked boiling down to “not finding what you are not looking for”, and referee checking was part of the information-gathering process, to verify, or nullify, what the employer might be feeling about the candidate already.

‘They would move onto the next question, seeming to not want to hear the answer they have got.’

He also cautioned being wary of the old chestnut where an existing employer may be a reference, but is only giving a positive reference in order to get rid of the employee.

A typical example of this situation could be an employee whose reference source describes them as being a good worker. However, because further questions are not asked, the enquirer does not find out they are only a good worker when they are sober.

It also pays to calibrate what sort of benchmark the referee or reference is for the candidate’s ability.

“They may describe them as ‘good’, but is their good the same as your good?

“So you need to subtly find out perhaps how they might describe the season at present – if you know it’s been awful, and they say it’s not so bad you then know you have to recalibrate their ‘not so bad’ to your ‘awful’ when it comes to their answers to questions about the candidate.

Dropping a personal desire to get a certain answer to questions at the interview phase is also a recruitment pitfall.

“We remind farmers when interviewing to listen more, talk less. Avoid asking a question that has the answer within it.”

That could be something like ‘so you feed your calves twice a day?’.

When an answer is delivered, don’t make your response to the question visible, or you risk the candidate will start shaping their answers to the response they think is most positive to you.”

Key steps for initial recruitment

  • Ask for referees before the first instance.
  • Conduct one referee check before the interview.
  • Check the referee source for validity.
  • Look for consistency in answers from referees and candidate.
  • Skype is good for initial contact, but use face-to-face for second interview.
  • Unless candidate is self-employed, the employer is expected to fund the cost of an applicant attending an interview.
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