If you are a business leader and you believe that good people make great organisations (which just happens to be our motto here at Optimum Consulting), it might be worth reflecting on this question for a moment.

As a business leader, you probably already know how important customer experience is to your organisation.  To be successful, your company needs to develop the capability to attract and retain profitable customers.  Failure to do this ultimately ends in tears, which is why your company is likely already investing a healthy percentage of revenue on sales and marketing activities.

In order to win over new customers, first impressions and consistent experiences are paramount.  You are probably already aware of the power of first impressions and the difficulty one has in overcoming a poor first impression.   The net present value of a new customer who you retain for the long term is often significant, which of course is similar to the net present value of hiring great team members.  Significant.

So let’s get back to the thought experiment that the title of this post invites.  If customers are important to your business and you understand the power of first impressions, would you put your customers through your recruitment processes?  Because you are putting your future talent through these processes, and if you aren’t thinking of talent acquisition in the same way as customer acquisition, you are going to lose the opportunity to attract the best people because their first impression will turn them towards your competitors.

From the time someone tries to submit a resume, to the feedback loop, to the interviews, to the process of offer and acceptance, this is all part of the first impression.  Poor recruitment processes create poor first impressions, and quite simply you significantly decrease your chances of hiring the right people.

Customers really dislike people wasting their time, so do future employees.  Customers really dislike when ‘service’ isn’t appropriate, so do future employees.

We find that many recruitment processes are designed with the convenience of the organisation in mind as opposed to the experience of the person applying for a role.  Convenient for one, highly inconvenient for the other.

Which brings me to the point of this post – unless you are treating ‘candidates’ in the same way as you are ‘customers’, you are probably going to annoy a large percentage of people who may have just been the people you needed to hire to achieve your future goals.  The best people will always have a choice of jobs and companies, and so you need to be aware if you are helping them choose you or someone else.

For this reason, the way your recruit new team members needs to be a key capability, just like your marketing activities.

If you are looking for ways to redesign your recruitment processes to attract the best people, get in touch to learn more.