Recruiting is an investment for a company, no matter its size. In fact, for many organizations, recruiting will bring about one of their biggest costs. Optimizing employee retention therefore is a key strategy to ensure that businesses are getting a return on their recruitment investment. In fact, not only does employee retention save financial resources, it also enhances company culture and employee team bonds, as well as saving you time, minimizing risk and enabling management.
Despite the importance of employee retention, many companies still aren’t recruiting with employee retention as a key goal. Here are the key reasons that your recruiting efforts aren’t optimized for employee retention.
- You’re Not Recruiting with Company Culture in Mind
If you’re focusing your recruiting efforts on skills, capabilities and ability to do the job, and you’re forgetting about hiring for a good fit in company culture, you may have an employee retention problem.
A candidate can seem talented and you could see the benefits that they could bring to your company. However, if they can’t get on with the team and fit within the way your company works, you’re not hiring for the long-term. Company culture matters when it comes to your employee’s job satisfaction. Job satisfaction can be either a major asset or serious threat to your employee retention.
- You’re Not Clear on a Candidates Future within the Company
If you’re not entirely sure about what the future could look like for a particular candidate or employee, there is likely to be a significant risk that the employee doesn’t see the job as a long-term career move.
Ideally, each candidate should have a career progression plan within the company, and this should be outlined clearly during the recruitment process. If you are unclear, make future promises that you can’t keep, or don’t make any solid plans, you’re at real risk of losing employees as they secure their future roles.
- You’re Recruiting Over-Qualified Candidates
It is possible for a candidate to be over-qualified. The current job market may lead to more and more candidates tempted to apply to roles for which they are over-qualified. This can seem like an ideal situation for many businesses.
However, there are serious problems when you begin to recruit over-qualified professionals.
Firstly, an over-qualified employee will naturally want to seek greater challenges and better prospects to progress. They are more likely to be dissatisfied with pay, so will continue to seek a more appropriate opportunity. It is also unlikely that any training that you can offer to an employee in the particular role. This results in an employee that is difficult to motivate, incentivize and offer further internal opportunities to grow and progress.
If a candidate who is seemingly over-qualified appears motivated and passionate about the role, it will be crucial to explore the problems outlined above and find solutions on a case-by-case basis. It may be possible to review the role, which will transform the role and the requirements of the role, ensuring that the candidate is not over-qualified.