Avoid costly mis-hires: How local governments can reduce hiring risk

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Taking on new employees in local government can have its challenges. While recruitment always carries some risk, the wrong hire can be particularly devastating for smaller Councils.

New hires make us wonder, can they work well with our existing team? Will they show the dedication required for their role? Will they leave after a few months?

While screening and onboarding new employees can be costly and time-consuming, following hiring best practices can help you reduce the odds of making the wrong hire, and increase the likelihood to place the right person in your role. 

Here are six tips to help you reduce hiring risk.

 1. Define the role

Attracting the right person means understanding your organisation and role requirements inside and out. Establishing set criteria before your start advertising helps you stay focused when you do start to receive applications.

Seek input from key people invested in the role: your hiring manager, and whoever the role’s new manager and team members will be. Write down the list of duties your new hire will be required to perform and the skills they need. Use experience and qualifications to narrow down your talent pool.

Then, tailor your recruitment advertisement accordingly. Culture is important in local governments, both for individual teams and your organisation as a whole. In your recruitment advertisement describe the work environment your new hire can expect. Sharing details about the way your organisation operates (and excels) will help both you and your candidates decide if your role is the right fit.  

2. Use the power of referrals

Reduce hiring risk through referrals. Referrals are one of the best ways to source talent you can trust. It’s faster, and often cheaper than traditional methods. To increase the number of referrals you receive, consider putting in place an employee referral program. These programs save time and money, as you won’t need to spend hours wading through resumes or waste money on job postings that don’t attract the right candidates.

Your current team knows what it takes to be successful, and they can be a fantastic asset when it comes to finding new talent. People who already work in your Council will typically refer people with similar work ethic. So if you have a high-calibre team, you’ll attract high-calibre talent.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on recruitment advertisements, you can spend as little as a quarter of that amount through referrals – costs associated with referrals typically come from employee compensation from successful referrals. This can vary based on your organisation’s needs.

3. Use smart interviewing techniques

Interviewing is not only an important opportunity to gain direct insights into your candidates, but having the right processes will save you valuable time and resources.

Develop a list of behavioural and skills-based interview questions to screen candidates over two-way recorded video interviews or over the phone before inviting them for a face-to-face interview. Use your list of interview questions to keep interviews fair and consistent.

While remote interviews are an investment, they save you time in the long run. By recording initial interviews (after obtaining permission from interviewees), you can share it with multiple team members to gain their feedback on which candidates to progress with. Gaining their insights can allow you to make a more informed decision.

When it comes time to the face-to-face interview stage, many Councils invite team members to conduct a panel interview. Each interviewer takes turns to ask questions individually, the remaining panel members have time to listen to what the candidate is saying and observe their body language. Dividing the responsibilities gives both strong and weak interviewers the chance to ask questions, increasing the likelihood that all appropriate questions will be asked.

Panel interviews reduce the risk of personal bias and ensure the validity of interview findings. It’s also an opportunity for candidates to interact with their potential coworkers, and gain a better understanding of the role as it’s seen from different employees’ perspective.

 4. Check references

After you’ve found a great candidate, it’s time for reference checks. Ask referees to confirm:

  • Education, certifications, qualifications and skills
  • Title or position in their previous role
  • More information about the nature of their former duties and personality.

Reference checks help you to narrow down your pool of candidates and reduce hiring risk, especially if you’re torn between several applicants who all interviewed well. Managers eliminate 21 per cent of applicants after speaking with their professional contacts (OfficeTeam).

Learning about an applicant’s professional background from a direct source can be a great way to determine if they’re a good fit. Cross-reference contact information through independent research. If they provide a contact number for their supervisor at a former place of employment, look up the organisation.

5. Establish trial periods

Many local governments engage in trial periods with new hires. This allows you to see how they perform, without making a commitment to permanent employment. It’s an opportunity to see how they interact with the rest of the team and whether they’ll be a successful long-term fit or not.

It can also save you money, and give you the time and proof you need to assess your new hires’ abilities – beyond their resume and interview.  

6. Conduct checks

Background and pre-employment checks give you the peace of mind to confirm your hiring decision, particularly in local government roles where employees are trusted with confidential or sensitive information. This can save your organisation from hiring mistakes that could lead to misconduct or fraud. 

Checks give you access to employment history, police checks, traffic checks, financial checks and more. Specialist support from a recruitment services provider like Employment Office gives you fast, easy-to-understand reports when you need it.

 Assessing all the data you can, gaining input from your team members and conducting checks ensure you make smart, efficient hiring decisions for the betterment of your Council. So make your next hire a great one, and lower the risk!

For support with Recruitment Advertising and Shortlisting Services, schedule a discussion today. Call us on 1300 366 573 or email info@employmentoffice.com.au.

Struggling with lack of capacity? Top tips for Council to recruit top talent

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A range of industries in Australia need more skilled employees than the supply of talent that is available, and local government is no different. In fact, according to a 2018 report by the Australian Local Government Association, 69% of local governments are experiencing a skill shortage, with occupations like engineers, project managers, building surveyors and environment health officers most in demand.

The local government recruiting process is driven by the need for skilled employees, but does your organisation have the resources to source and retain top talent?

As budgets shrink and demand for services increases, many government HR departments have been stretched to the limit. You may only have one or two HR or Talent Professionals who are tasked with evaluating dozens or even hundreds of applications for a single job opening. This makes it more difficult for you to quickly identify quality candidates and efficiently progress them – particularly if you aren’t leveraging the right processes, including automation.

Here’s how Councils can deal with lack of capacity and streamline their processes by implementing strong processes, automation and technology.

Implement recruitment best practices 

Solving a lack of resource capacity in local government comes down to securing the right technology and implementing the best processes. Lacking best-practice processes and out-dated technology not only results in your team experiencing an increased workload, you may be unintentionally delaying your hiring process. Quality candidates may then pursue other opportunities or become uninterested in proceeding further with their application simply because of poor response times.

To structure your local government recruitment process well, it needs to be efficient, effective and economical. Probably the most crucial element of a successful recruitment campaign is the screening, shortlisting and selection process, which generally involves:

  1. Screening – rating and ranking candidates against suitability criteria.
  2. Skills testing and behavioural assessments – to determine a shortlist.
  3. Face-to-face-interviews – usually undertaken by a selection panel. In many local governments, this may also involve role-playing and/or work sampling, where candidates carry out tasks similar to what would be expected in the position.
  4. Reference and background checks – to ascertain your chosen candidates’ suitability. This can involve qualification verification, ID, financial probity and criminal history checks, and working with children clearance if required. Some government departments also often require candidates to undertake functional health assessments and other checks.

Implementing recruitment best practices and establishing set processes for all team members to follow provides a consistent candidate experience.

Use recorded two-way video interviews, or hosting Group Information and Interview Days, and outsource background checks, reference checks, skills testing and other checks wherever possible.

Use the right technology

Streamline your processes by using the right recruitment technology; ideally, a Candidate Management System (CMS). Having a CMS give you full control of all your recruitment campaigns from start to finish, as well as:

  • review and oversee your entire candidate pool
  • manage, track and shortlist candidates
  • create and send branded, personalised communications to candidates
  • communicate with many candidates with the click of a button
  • evaluate your campaigns with data-driven reporting.

A CMS has added benefits such as allowing multiple team members to review applications for roles, change applicant statuses and add notes; all while keeping candidate data secure. Technology also eliminates your reliance on paper, saving you valuable time (no more waiting around the printer for hard copy CVs and cover letters) and resources.

Use screening questions

Screening questions are also an incredibly helpful tool in saving time. Include screening questions in your recruitment advertisements for candidates to answer when they submit their application. Screening questions also provide candidates the opportunity to showcase their personality and skills. Designing the right screening questions can reduce the amount of time you need to review hundreds of CVs. You can also create automations to eliminate candidates who don’t meet your requirements. (Check out our top tips for designing effective screening questions.

The right technology gives you more capability and saves you valuable time and resources. Combining a CMS with recruitment best practices to streamline your processes is the best way for Council to manage lack of capacity, from posting your recruitment advertisements to sending employees contracts.

Interested in learning more about Candidate Management System (CMS) software? Contact an Employment Office Recruitment Specialist on info@employmentoffice.com.au or 1300 366 573.

Recruiting for local government? Use Instagram to strengthen your employer brand

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Instagram is a great social media tool for employer branding. If you’re recruiting for the public sector, there’s no reason you can’t use it to attract more candidates to your vacancies.

It is a common misconception that working in the public sector means that there is no room for creativity when it comes to recruitment. With recruitment becoming more candidate-driven, being an employer of choice is becoming more important. 

Research suggests that 68% of active candidates look at social media when searching for work and 22% investigate the social media of the employer before applying.

As the fastest growing social media site, Instagram is becoming a critical tool for candidate attraction. Here are three reasons why your local government organisation should leverage Instagram as a recruitment tool. 

Instagram adds authenticity to your brand

Organisations and people who use Instagram for business are using it to promote themselves or their brand, so it’s an excellent tool for local government. By promoting the great work you do for your community, you can improve the way your community and potential candidates view your work.

Plus, when you create an open discourse about the positive work in your organisation (i.e. the fun events you have planned or the success and stories from your employees), it authentically communicates the type of work people do and enables potential candidates to see themselves in a role. Those who do not work in local government don’t often see what happens behind the scenes. By giving insights into the fun and positive aspects of working within your organisation via Instagram, you reach a large audience and improve the way your community views your work.

The visual aspect of Instagram

As an image-based social media platform, Instagram is great for graphic recruitment advertisements. Advertise your vacancies using an eye-catching image or graphic that will capture your audience’s attention and encourage them to apply. You can also make your organisation’s Instagram feel personal, speaking directly to your audience by featuring photographs of community projects that are underway or even a fun aspect of the working day (see example below of a local government post from Cumberland Council in NSW).

Plus, the beauty of Instagram doesn’t require you to always have professional photographs. While professionally taken images are going to enhance the look of your Instagram profile, images can also be taken on your team members’ phones. This technique can help to create the impression that your local government is right there in the action and present a more personal angle to your employer brand.

Your current and future audience is on Instagram

You may think Instagram is just for millennials and Gen Z. While a large majority are of this age bracket, 33% of Instagram users are between the ages of 30 and 49. That is a huge chunk of your mature community and audience that you want and need to promote your employer brand to.

Plus, with the majority of those on Instagram being a younger demographic, your future audience and voters are very likely to be present on the platform. Presenting local government as being an important aspect of adult life and a great place to consider starting a career, you can begin promoting your employer brand to your future workforce, earlier.

If you’re interested in having a discussion about strengthening your employer brand, Employment Office’s Employer Branding specialists can help you become an employer of choice. Read more about our Employer Branding services here, or get in touch to speak directly to our experts on 1300 366 573.