The BDO Recruitment Golf-Swing Model captures the key requirements for successful Recruitment

The BDO Golf Swing Model was the product of an assignment carried out for one particular client who was representative of BDO client base, growing indigenous entrepreneurial business. The client was running a very successful company but was experiencing difficulties attracting and recruiting high caliber people to sustain this growing business. This manifested itself in poor results from time spent recruiting, i.e. either nobody was selected or a poor selection was made. The organization was suffering because of this and the net result was significant stress levels on the part of the senior executives and in one case, a very disruptive and expensive legal case that came about as a result of a bad appointment. When the situation was analysed with the client, we identified the following issues:

• There was no clear strategy for the organisation and ambiguity from the outset.

• The organisation structure was not clearly defined, i.e. Reporting lines and responsibilities were not clearly laid out.

• The Company had a lot of difficulty preparing job descriptions, and in many cases there were no job descriptions.

• They had a haphazard approach to identifying suitable people, i.e. sometimes they advertised, other times they went to Recruitment Consultants, in other cases they just networked.

• They didn’t have a very positive attitude to the selection process, i.e. didn’t really like interviewing in the first place and this manifested itself in not turning up on time for interviews, not preparing for interviews and not adopting a structured approach. This created a bad impression on the part of the candidates and also presented the company in a bad light.

• They did not carry out reference checks or medicals and often went with the selected person as a result of just one interview and “on gut instinct”. The legal profession has prospered on mistakes made by people going on “gut instinct”.

• There was frequently a lack of agreement from the key decision makers as to what was required and sometimes people were selected who did not have the approval of all the required decision makers.

• The Company did not understand the importance of an Employment Contract and in one case, lost out on attracting a very good person because the Contract was overly aggressive on the legal side and didn’t sell the Company or the package well enough.

• The Company did not have an induction programme and in most cases when a new person joined the Company, the first few days were more or less a shambles.

• There was also a lack of definition in terms of the performance criteria going forward. What this meant was that the new employee wasn’t clear on what was expected of them and it also meant if a new employee wasn’t working out, there wasn’t a clear measurement process to evaluate performance.

• The Company didn’t have a proper review at the end of the probation period and even where people weren’t performing, this often wasn’t brought to light until it was too late.

While this may look like an incredible catalogue of errors, it is quite common among employers in general. BDO devised a model that addressed the issues across the board and that could be implemented with relative ease.

The BDO Recruitment Model has a number of features which as worth noting:

• It identifies that the recruitment process is a much broader process than just getting CVs and interviewing people. It starts at where the role is being defined and follows through in a logical fashion to the first review, usually at the end of the employee’s probation period.

• It is simple to understand and implement.

• If applied properly will deliver better results, in a more time efficient manner, reduce stress and provide the platform for growth and competitive advantage.