You can't 'un-invent' email. So........

We are often frustrated about how difficult it can be to get people to pick up the phone and talk to us and we are known to moan about how some people just seem to want to write an email rather than talk.

We are also pretty sure we are not alone.

But you can’t 'un-invent' email.

It is an invaluable business tool and whilst some of us can remember a time when we did do business without it none of us could imagine doing business without it now.

So how come no one is ever asked at interview about their email skills? How come we have never been told to ask a candidate to show evidence of their emailing as part of the interview process?

We are often arranging for candidates to deliver a 10 minute presentation for a role where they unlikely to ever have to do a presentation as part of their job. It is also very common for us to arrange a Telephone Interview (and not just because of ease but because the interviewer wants to see how they can communicate over the phone given that they will be doing a lot of it in the job).

BUT those same candidates are never tested for a skill that they will need to use all the time (ie. Emailing).

So we wanted to pose some questions....

 

Should you be thinking about arranging Email Interviews as part of your interview process?

Or is this a ridiculous idea?

Should we all actually be using email less and talking to people more?

                                                           

Wright Solutions is a specialist HR Consultancy. We attract, place and develop the highest calibre candidates in Executive, HR and Learning & Development roles. Our service is more than recruitment with our training solutions that give Leadership and Management teams the competitive advantage for today and tomorrow.

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Why do Recruitment Consultants do that?

Sometimes candidates and clients must wonder what goes on in the mind of a Recruitment Consultant and why they do some seemingly ‘odd’ things during the course of a Recruitment Campaign.

We thought we could tackle some of those questions on this blog site as most of the time there is a logical explanation.

Why won’t you tell me who the end client is?

We recently took a call from a candidate who we had never spoken to before. They had seen one of our adverts and had a few questions before they applied. First question was “Can you tell me who the end client is?”. The consultant declined to answer that question and the follow up question was “Why do Recruitment Consultants not tell you?”

The Recruitment Sector is very competitive with 1000s of Recruitment Consultants out there working vacancies and building relationships with candidates and clients alike. When a recruiter advertises a job they are, of course, looking for candidates for the role but they are also alerting some of their competitors to the fact that they are working on a vacancy and that the end client in question has made a decision that they are prepared to pay an agency fee. That alert can be like a red rag to a bull!

It is therefore not uncommon for Recruiters to try and make an educated guess as to who the client is and then pick up and phone them to get their hands on the spec and permission to work the vacancy.

One of the ways that they can do that is to pretend to be a candidate and ring the consultant and ask. “Hi my name is Bob and I have just seen the role that you have advertised. Before I do so can I ask who the end client is?”. Funnily enough CVs often never materialise after you have told them!

This is far from ideal as a Recruiter but it is also far from ideal as the Recruiting Manager. Suddenly they are getting 10-20 calls from enthusiastic consultants all telling them how amazing they are and how they have just the perfect candidate. It is for this reason that we will always ask clients for permission to advertise a role and often have to reassure them that the role will be advertised anonymously and vaguely so they won’t end up being unnecessarily pestered.

Also bear in mind that the end client might not have communicated to their team and business that they are recruiting. You only need to have a look at your Linked In profile to realise that most people know someone who knows someone and the wrong bit of information released by a Recruitment Consultant to a prospective candidate might be relayed to that someone before it should be.

Having said this though, it should be very unusual for your CV to be put forward to a role without you knowing who the end client is. It would seem to be unfair that they know who you are but you not know who they are. You just might need to get to know the recruiter and engage with them before you will get that crucial bit of information.

                                                          

We will be tackling further questions like this on this blog. Your questions can be put to us via Twitter, Facebook, Linked In or the comments below.

                                                          

Wright Solutions is a specialist HR Consultancy. We attract, place and develop the highest calibre candidates in Executive, HR and Learning & Development roles. Our service is more than recruitment with our training solutions that give Leadership and Management teams the competitive advantage for today and tomorrow.

Follow us on

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LinkedIn

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