Yobah Life: Recruitment Lessons

We’re hiring…

In fact, we’ve been hiring for a couple of months, we’re looking for the perfect person for our next role and let’s just say our process is taking its time, but we’re more than happy to put in the yards to find the right fit for our growing business.

We know we’re not the first business ever to recruit, but we also know it’s a different ball game when you’re a growing business with a small team and a heavy load and so in this edition of Yobah Life, we thought we’d share a little of what we’ve learned so far.

You need to allow way more time than you think

If you’re looking to make a hire for your business and you’re planning to run this process yourself, you need to allow plenty of time to do it, from writing and finalising the job description to deciding on which channels you’ll use to get your role out there all of these things take time and usually more than one of member of the team to input. You’ll also need multiple members of the team for interviews, to get together to provide feedback and to make decisions about candidates.

Be certain about your process 

We’ll be honest there’ll be parts that we weren’t sure about, but that’s no good for the candidate, so our advice is to have your entire process set out from how long you’ll run your ad for, to when you’ll run interviews, deliver feedback and make a decision. When you’re fitting recruitment in along the day job this can be really tough but this is all such an important part of candidate experience it’s worth spending the time on doing it really well.

What do you really offer? think beyond the ordinary 

Running our recruitment process has allowed us to look at how our existing culture is communicated to someone who may be considering applying for our role. We’re a family-first business – we all have kids, and whilst that’s not a pre-requisite for joining our team it does mean we understand the need for truly flexible working, for designing a work-life pattern which suits you and which is focused on output and not hours in front of a screen.  We know these are important factors for people currently seeking a new role and part of our learning has been that we’re not shouting loudly about these things that already exist in our business.

Expect to have your time wasted – and to be frustrated about this 

This seems to be an unfortunate effect of pandemic life that a remote or virtual meeting simply doesn’t hold the same weight as an ‘in-person” one. We work almost exclusively remotely so it’s tough to get together for multiple stages of interviews, we’re also open to hiring anyone from anywhere in the UK and so we made the decision to also run our process remotely, delivering our interview stages via Teams.  The downside of this was undoubtedly the candidates who just didn’t turn up, hugely frustrating, a massive waste of time and let’s face it a little bit rude. If you like us are running your process even partly remotely then be prepared for them but don’t be disheartened by the ‘no shows’ – they weren’t right for you anyway.

Want to find out more about our Business Development role? Click here for more details and how to apply