I've lost control of our recruiting process!

stretched2thin

I desperately need help in pulling in the reins and establishing a formal recruiting process, as ours is out of control. We are a 120ish employee company with offices in various states. I never know when interviews take place. I am not involved in the interview process. Offers are often made without my knowledge and without applications. The communication channel completely skips me. My boss, the COO, approves such endeavors directly with our line managers.

Any advice on a formal structure or process that I could present to our COO?

What are our risks by continuing in the "willy nilly" fashion we're now operating?

Gillian3

If you want to get involved in this from a control point of view, you will be stretched even thinner. Perhaps a better way is to convince the COO that you have something to offer that will result in better hires and then train the managers in interviewing skills etc. Do the managers come in for periodic meetings? Can you do some training when they do? As part of the training you can work in the application issue and other concerns that you have. The goal is to get the managers to understand the legalities and how to make good hiring decisions, then let them do their thing in a better way.

Don D

I agree with Gillian. But, the first question you need to be asking yourself is 'what view does the COO have of HR in general, in terms of value to the organization?' Therein may lie the real level of frustration you will experience where you currently work. This is the kind of question that we should be asking as applicants or that we should at least try to get a read on when considering an HR position.

Sadly, in many, many situations like yours, something has to go really, really wrong (bucks) before the company gets on the right page with giving HR a seat at the table.

Ed C

Just a thought: since your company has 50+ employees, maybe you could use Affirmative Action regs as a reason for your close involvement. If I were in your position, I would be concerned about so many taking applications and resumes around your company. Whose doing the tracking?

SMace

Just because you have 50+ ee's doesn't mean you have to have an AAP. You also must sell X number of $'s to the gov't.

hrdir03nafcu

Stretched and everyone:

I faced a similar situation when I first came here. It was a long + bloody fight (and still, a few skirmishes come up from time to time) for HR to take control of the recruitment/selection process.

HR won the fight here, but only because I had the strong + determined support of the CEO in making this change happen.

If you have strong support from your COO, you may have a shot. But if you don't have STRONG support there, you're probably taking on a battle that you cannot win, and that will leave you both bloodied and even more out-of-the-loop than before.

Best of luck!

pork1

STRETCHED2THIN: Your name tells worlds about your world of work! WELCOME TO THE FORUM FROM ALL OF US!

In your shoes, I would sit down with my boss and tell him of my concerns for control of the recruitment process and that your opinion might be valuable to the entire process.

However, if I am all ready "strectched to thin", he might not want you deeply involved. You will need to convince him/her that your involvement will enhance some portion of the process and save "BUCKS" spent on the litigation of error based hiring actions.

I suspect you will find that the boss feels like you, "that you are way over stretched to take on something that he has delegated out to the manager level". If this be the case, I would back away and let the people who are designated to handle this very importamt company funtion. Then stop worrying about the preceived bad recruiting and placement activity for your company.

Most of our managers rely on me for the company recruiting/placement activities; however, every now and then there will be an insertion of a new employee and we simply pick up the pieces and make it right to the best of our ability. I wish more managers would step forward and find those people out there in their world that are capable of working for them.

My boss wants me to be involved and I am, but if a manager wants to find their own person to be hired, I am more than willing to get the placement activities accomplished in accordance with our process.

We will all look forward to your interview with your boss to discover "what he wants you to be doing in this arena".

PORK

njjel

Perhaps one way to deal w/this would be to present your concerns to upper management and at the same time present him w/a plan to correct the situation. It could be as simple as having the managers send a form (I would prepare a draft of a form for him to look at) in to you when they have hired someone. At least this way you would know who has been hired. Here we have a Personnel Requisition form that must be approved by the Executive Director before anyone can be hired. But of course w/o the support of upper management it won't work!