I love summer. I really, really love it. I love sunshine, I love beer gardens, I love wearing sunglasses, I love barbecues, I love flowers, I love floaty dresses and shorts and flip-flops. I love no coats, I love bumble bees, I love picnics, I love happy smiling faces, I love ice cream, I even love thunderstorms. So as you can see I am pretty keen, well, that is apart from one very major thing…

Summertime makes recruitment a bit of a pain. There, I’ve said it!

I’m not talking about the heat (we have an office that a polar bear would be happy in), or the fact that we see everyone tripping out at 5.30pm to go to the pub whilst we are interviewing candidates until late, the fact is we are up against a bigger force – ANNUAL LEAVE.

Annual leave during the key summer months is one of the main contributors in cancelled interviews, missed head count targets and more importantly losing out to competitors for the best talent.

Now, I am not saying I want everyone to cancel their holidays but if you are recruiting for an urgent business critical role, have you thought of your absence contingency? What process can you put in place to keep the recruitment ball rolling?

Simple things like doing a 1st stage telephone or Skype interview or getting a team member to meet them while you are off can provide the candidate with ‘buy in’ to your company so they have some comparison to other roles they may be interviewing with. If meeting a number of people from your part of your interview process, over the summer getting peoples diaries aligned can be difficult would any of these meetings be able to be done via Skype or telephone?

By tweaking your process and keeping the recruitment ball rolling whilst you are away it may just ensure you don’t miss out on the best talent around especially with the current shortage of quality candidates available.

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