What outcome are you expecting if you make recruitment decisions based on a CV?

We have been approached by a few new potential clients lately who are all struggling to recruit the talent they need but ultimately won't shift their process from "send us CV's"!! They have already tried that approach and failed but try and continue with it assuming they have just been using bad recruiters.

Having filled 97% of the roles we were retained on last year, here are my top 4 tips if you want to maximise your investment in a recruitment partner;

1. Collaborate Form a collaborative face to face partnership. Get away from emails flying about risking making bad decisions based on misinformation. Agree the data you expect your recruiter to present to you and use it and their expertise to make well thought out decisions.

2. Make time Far too often recruitment becomes the poor relation for many leaders. Investing in your team is one of the biggest and important decisions you will make and so give it the time its deserves.

3. Think outside the box Far too many companies start out with a Job Description that they use as a tick box exercise to assess candidates. What if the boxes you have created actually can't be ticked. What if even better candidates exist and could provide even more value to your business if you would only think outside the box.

4. Develop a fast moving and enticing recruitment process No candidate is sitting waiting to work for you. They are on the front foot and have lots of career options currently. You must give your recruitment process a lot of thought to ensure it will inspire candidates as well as assess them effectively. Needless to say that we have rejected the opportunity to work with the CV transacting enquiring companies and don't expect their vacancies to disappear in the short term!!