Spirus writes:
What’s good enough for global go-getters like Sir Richard Branson is good enough for us – so this month, we took our #AskSpirus inspiration from him. Quoted as saying “Our customers may be our heart but people are our soul,” he got us thinking: how are Cambridge businesses making sure they’re recruiting – and retaining – the right people?
With a lot of employment activity both underway and in the wings around Cambridge, we asked HR directors of organisations with between 11–100 employees in Cambridge how they try to find that ideal fit for vacancies.
The responses were varied, but there were some common conclusions, including:
- The seniority of the role often determines the process and levels of screening required.
- Industry is relevant: for example, the hospitality industry suffers from high staff turnover, and recruitment is often quite quick. One of the Cambridge Colleges said that they were usually lucky enough to be able to recruit from casual staff.
- Individual needs seem to be highly regarded in the modern recruitment process.
Ian Mather, head of law firm Mills and Reeve’s Cambridge office, is extremely proud of the fact that for the last 11 years, they have been voted one of the Top 100 Companies to Work For, with an impressive 96% of staff saying they would recommend them to friends and family. They have a very thorough recruitment and retention process and even engage the services of a qualified psychologist at senior level to ensure the best fit.
Intergence Systems Ltd feels that even though the interview process for employees are more stringent, it is also important that their associates and consultants, who don’t perhaps work on site, also feel very much part of the “family” whilst working together.
A well-known Cambridge Pharmaceutical company also stated that they feel it is very important to write specific rejection letters to those interviewees that did not get the job this time round. This is helpful for the interviewee in feedback terms but also shows the rest of the science community that they value their people. It seems, like Cambridge, the science community can be very small at times too.
We asked Claire Vane, MD of Cambridge HR consultancy Integrated Resources Ltd, for her opinion on this matter. She said, “Recruitment is high risk for a company. It is a gamble but there are many things that you can do to minimise the risk, including good job specifications, interview training courses and psychometric assessments to name but a few. The cost of doing recruitment badly will include wasted senior management time, additional consultancy costs and possibly a few other problems too - think conflict and employment tribunals!”
Some responses were less clear; in some instances, the people we spoke to weren’t aware of the recruitment processes, nor who would be responsible. For the most part, though Cambridge employers seem to recognise the importance of the individuals who make up a company. So how much of your business success do you think is down the people who work there – and how hard would it be to replace them?