Many CEO’s and business owners have made it their primary agenda to acquire the best talent; if this is done right, the rewards are great. Recruiters today face different challenges from their predecessors, and they have to be more proactive when it comes to hiring. They do not have the luxury of hiring the best student in a graduating class and expect that he will do a terrific job because that is not the reality. Because of the evolution of recruitment, employers face a major recruiting challenge that was unforeseen a couple of years ago
The Scourge of Unemployment
On the other hand, unemployment has become a social problem and each year, educational institutions churn out more hopeful graduates, eager to be assimilated into the corporate world. In reality, there are not enough jobs commensurate with the number of graduates annually. This means that for every one job opening, there is a long list of applicants. This sounds like good news for recruiters, but it is not; the major recruiting challenge facing recruiters in Ghana is that they are spoilt for choice.
The Challenge
When a vacancy advertisement to fill one position brings in 500 applications, that can be an employer’s nightmare. The applications likely contains 20% totally unqualified entries, another 35% are remotely qualified without the required skills or experience. The remaining 45% of qualified candidates may have poor communication skills, poor work ethics, or they may be a bad culture fit in many ways. To find this, a recruiter or employer will have to go through all 500 applications.
It takes a very good recruiter to immediately identify a ‘rockstar’ applicant from a huge pile. Good recruiters use clues, industry experience, instinct, and technological resources to better sniff out the alphas of the pack. The reality is that a person’s qualifications are not the entire equation. What is written on the resume is not enough; the task is to function well a specific office environment. There are so many factors that can’t be read in a resume that still have to be considered. Personality, sense of humour, social skills, and overall attitude are not something that a paper resume can reflect.
The Solution
Faced with the misfortune of having several options, how does a recruiter efficiently find the right candidate from the heap? Humans have a hard time accepting change in any sphere. Recruiters should understand and appreciate how analysing data can optimise the recruitment process and start investing in hiring tools that will save them much time. One such tool is AMCAT. The AMCAT is a computer adaptive test which measures job applicants on critical areas like communication skills, logical reasoning, quantitative skills and job specific domain skills thus helping recruiters identify the suitability of a candidate.
