I am a Manager not a HR Recruitment Specialist!

For those of us old enough to remember, and fortunate enough to have worked in a larger organisation that had a HR department you may well remember the good ole days where HR had the resources to support managers in the recruitment process.

These days, however, there is the growing trend or should I say expectation, for managers to pick up the task of recruiting with little or limited training (usually)!

The new legal requirements of GDPR means it is more important than ever for the recruiting manager to be a HR recruitment specialist and do it right first time, recording everything accurately and fairly.  Your notes will be used to document your decision for candidate choice and can be requested to be seen by the candidate.  Clarity of what you actually need in a candidate is of upmost importance to ensure you can choose between candidates fairly.

During a recent training session on Recruitment and Selection there was resounding feedback from participants about their struggles to write notes, listen to the interviewee, make sufficient eye contact, all at the same time.  Let’s face it, it takes a special kind of person to be able to achieve all that!

So to help you on your journey to successful and GDPR compliant recruitment I share with you a few of the practical guidelines for effective note taking that we give out in training:

•  Possibly the obvious answer, but one often overlooked, it to ensure you tell the interviewee at the beginning of the interview that you will be making notes, so they know what you are doing and there might be breaks in eye contact.
• Don’t try to write an essay during the interview, that detail will come after the interview (see below) – use bullet points to help you remember the information given.  And use the words the interviewee used.
• Interviewing in pairs where available is a great way to share the note taking and eye contact.  If you choose this method be sure to alternate between asking the questions and taking notes, and agree upfront who is asking what questions.

And always remember to leave time between interviews for record keeping.

Of course this guidance is a great start to prepare you for recruitment, but nothing prepares you better than practice!  On our Recruitment and Selection training we have specifically included practice sessions to ensure you leave confident in using the skills learnt.

Call us about your recruitment and selection training needs.