Is phone a friend working for you?

With somewhere around 80% of roles being filled without any advertising, the so called ‘hidden job board’ is alive and well. Indeed the likes of monster or seek would dearly love to increase their listings by even a quarter of this amount. Yet the science behind selection and recruitment warns us of the dangers of carrying out selection processes in this manner. In deed the sole purpose of recruitment is to gain a qualified applicant pool, from which to select the most suitable candidate (experience, qualifications, cultural fit etc). Are we trading the potential to get the best candidate currently available, for the ease of phoning a friend and doing our recruitment and selection over lunch?

In a discussion I recently had on LinkedIn this topic was discussed on a job seekers board, my contribution to the discussion was the assertion that companies operating on the ‘hidden job board’ simply don’t comprehend the predictive validity of best practice selection practices. With a history having its roots in the selection of US Air Force pilots, why are so many companies refusing to engage with recruitment professionals either in house or external recruitment organizations. As a HR Professional I speak to alot of business people, and the primary reason cited is unfortunately cost. When done correctly, recruitment quickly turns from a cost to an investment which pays off, when done incorrectly however recruitment is an enormous cost to organizations. Indeed Human Resource practitioners like myself are often called to come in and clean up the mess, trust me its much cheaper to invest in a high quality recruiter, than to have to pay the fees of HR Contractors to assist in exiting that hiring mistake.

While many may thing that I should be encouraging poor hiring decisions as they contribute significantly to my lifestyle, I would far rather spend my time talking with high performing employees and employers, discussing their training needs as they look to open new markets, discuss their recruitment requirements as they look to expand their operations, or indeed discuss their executive recruitment needs as they expand their management structure.

So please, prior to phoning a friend for all your hiring needs, consider the pros and cons of selecting from a limited pool of candidates. Are you making recruitment into a cost, or are you investing in the future of your company?