The company that I work for (a charity - staff numbers currently approx 350) is opening a new centre in May 2009.  This will involve the recruitment of at least 80 new staff undertaking up to about 25 different roles so the HR team (four staff) are going to be rather busy. What we are looking at doing is recruiting staff over a period of time (a rolling recruitment programme running from the end of 2008) because we just don't have the manpower within the HR team to do it all in one go.

Does anyone have experience of recruiting staff up to six months before they actually start. If so, is there any advice you can offer our team and any idea of a drop out rate? Do we need to over-recruit in the hope of having enough staff by the time the centre opens? Is anything done to keep staff interested in the organisation and prevent them getting a job elsewhere? (We were thinking of sending them a copy of the charitites monthly magazine to keep them interested as a starting point but any other ideas gratefully received).

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Any comments would be welcome.

Hi Jolene,

That’s an interesting conundrum you’ve got there, as you mentioned you’ve got quite a significant recruitment challenge on your hands, in what is a relatively short space of time. You might find it difficult to recruit 6 months in advance and experience quite high drop-out rates, especially for lower level roles.

It’s worth considering what alternatives there are available to support your in-house team. External support is always an option, although due to the range of roles and volume that you are recruiting, more traditional methods of external supplier relationships could prove to be quite cumbersome and add to your level of involvement in terms of administration, managing candidate pipelines, interviewing and referencing candidates.

HRM CHOICE (part of Hays’ outsourcing division) provides a managed recruitment service to clients that have similar project needs to those that you have detailed, covering candidate attraction, candidate screening, assessment events and managing the referencing process. As it’s provided on a product basis rather than full outsourcing, you can use either one or all of the services, giving you more freedom of choice.

This method of service delivery means that campaigns can be implemented quickly with a minimum of hassle.

If you want to know more check out the link below or drop me an email.

www.haysresourcemanagement.com

I hope that this has been of use to you for your recruitment planning.

Regards,

Sam.

Hi Jolene,

It is doable and I have expereince of this.  It works better for some roles than others and if you might want to prioritise accordingly. 

I have always had to over recruit for roles where start date is in the future, normally by about 10%, the key is being up front when you start and letting people know that you are working to fixed intake/induction dates.  I've always managed to turn this in to a positive and it can create a bit of healthy competition knowing that you are recruitng the best etc.  You will also be able to share the benefits with your colleagues in training as this set up helps your training team plan their resource.

Personalise the "keep warm" activity and make sure you stick to promised dates.  Line managers also need to play their part, I'd suggest that you invite new joiners in for an evening/day during the run up period.  I've also employed checklists to good advantage for both hiring managers and new joiners showing what is expected and when. 

Hope this helps and good luck!

RB