Recruitment is an operational, tactical and strategic process that should be given much emphasis because who the company takes in tells a lot about the company’s success, brand and sustainability. Yet, there are a few common pitfalls that the recruiters usually fail to avoid while making recruitment decisions. Those mistakes can cost the company several kinds of losses ranging from monetary to reputational. Here below are seven common HR recruitment mistakes that a lot of employers make according to the recruitment stories from the past years.

Mistake 1: Not having a proper job analysis

Job analysis is a process of identifying the tasks and responsibilities entailed in a particular job and it is a crucial aspect of every recruitment process because it allows the employers to determine the profile of their recruits. Most of the time, employers tend to overlook the primary requirements of a role while recruiting an employee either because their judgement is being clouded by the desire to get the ‘ideal’ employee or because of the urgency of the recruitment. Whichever the case is, in every recruitment process, employers should conduct a proper job analysis, build an employee persona and aim toward the goal of recruiting someone who is able to perform his or her tasks efficiently rather than looking for someone who ‘shines the best’.

Mistake 2: Providing faulty specifications

Job advertising is a very painstaking process of recruitment and it is the employers’ responsibility to ensure that the job ad entails the information that’s not faulty, ambiguous or misleading. For example, while calling for an intern, it should be specified whether the intern position is full time or part time and paid or unpaid. What the employers are expecting from their candidates, e.g. minimum education that should be attained or the fundamental skills demanded, should also be briefly stated in the recruitment marketing collaterals so that the candidates do not arrive into the interview office with misguided information or mismatched expectations.

If recruiting for a particular branch of a company that has several branches in the region, the work address should also be mentioned so the candidates are aware of their commute especially in a country like Myanmar where work commute could be one of the most significant matters to take into account while accepting a job offer since Myanmar’s transportational struggle is major to a lot of people from the middle working class.

Mistake 3: Reliance on resumes only

It should be noted that CVs, resumes and cover letters are all preliminary forms of recruiting assessment meant to get to know briefly about the candidates and not too many candidates should be ruled out merely based on these documents. It’s also worth remembering that what lies on the CVs and resumes may actually be fraudulent or misleading and these information should not lead the recruiters to make a clouded judgement.

Instead, the process of evaluating the candidates should be taken further to structured interviews, test projects and assessment centers and make sure that the employers recruit just the right people filtered through the right process. In Myanmar, many millennials tend to focus on fortifying their CV rather than their skills or experiences due to the misconception that the more the lines on CV, the higher the potential of outshining others, and recruiters can get easily misled by those lines on CVs that may not embody much authenticity.

Mistake 4: Ignoring the team roles

One of the common mistakes that recruiters usually make is that when they take in a new employee, they overlook his or her potential team roles. Most of the recruitment processes are based on CV screening and a formal interview and unfortunately, these are hardly the techniques to reveal how a candidate plays in a team. Group interviews and assessment centers are team-based assessment alternatives to traditional interviews and these techniques can usually identify the candidates’ behaviours and inclinations in a team.

Even if there is no capacity to arrange group-based assessments, employers could reinforce the fact that the employees might be expected to work well with the team in job ads or interviews so that the candidates can prepare to recalibrate their conduct and attitude toward team-working. Burmese millennials nowadays are more competent in a team working environment than before adding up to the fact that Burmese people are originally amiable and can usually work hand in hand with others so their team compatibility is not much of a concern.

Mistake 5: Not recruiting for the long term

Recruitment is a regular operational phase taking place throughout the lifespan of a company but that does not mean that it should be any less strategic. One of the criteria of a right recruit should be how long he or she can contribute to and remain in the company. The employee’s departure can come with a great cost and risk including high turnover and low retention rates, poor succession pipeline and even bad company reputation when the employees leave the company on bad terms. Employers should be able to recruit the employees so as to retain them as long as possible.

Factors to consider when deciding if the candidate can go for the long run with the company include the candidate’s past employment records - whether the candidate used to work at some other company for a long time or moved around too often and the company’s value proposition - whether or not the company can provide the compensation and the professional growth journey the candidate deserves in exchange for his or her contributions to the company. Young Burmese graduates are usually attracted by career progression and networking opportunities, personalized learning environments and reputed employers so the companies can incentivize them through these aspects other than a monetary motive to make them stay longer.

Mistake 6: Looking for a perfect fit

Employers usually commit the mistake of trying to look for a ‘perfect’ one. As a matter of fact, perfect candidates may not serve a better purpose for the company than the imperfect ones who may just have the right skill sets and qualifications to raise the company’s progress to greater heights. An accountant with 10 years of professional experience but without other significant skills can usually be the right recruit for a company’s accounting position than another accountant with relatively less industrial experience but flourishing with versatile skills and passionate references that may not come in handy for the company’s accounting responsibilities.

Mistake 7: Using over-centralized recruitment

The purpose of recruitment is to acquire the right people to perform tasks in a particular area or department and to be honest, a single HR practitioner or a manager alone hardly can discern whether or not a candidate is a right fit for a particular hiring department. Say you’re recruiting for a marketing department, then a high hierarchy manager or a recruiter alone should not decide who to recruit; it is always a good idea to sit down with the mid-level manager in the marketing department and ask his expectations toward the new recruits for the marketing department or have him during the interview of the candidates to keep him in the loop. That way, the recruiters won’t have to make the important decisions alone and even can use other experts’ insights that might be helpful in future recruitment processes.

Mistake 8: Resisting technology

HR technology is a prevalent area of tech employed in several segments of a recruitment process and some examples include CV mining and background checking tools, recruitment chatbots, online screening platforms, candidate databases and tracking systems. Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) is also a popular recruiting strategy whereby the process of recruitment is entrusted to third party agencies who may have broader network and better resources. With the right RPO partner, recruitment can be a much easier and more efficient process.

Refusing to integrate technology into recruitment processes can result in higher costs and delays since technology can simplify the tasks of the recruiters to great extents. JobNet's Applicant Tracking System allows the recruiters to build and keep the databases for future uses and track the job applicants, thus saving time and increasing the overall efficiency of work done. Such technology-based tools in recruitment processes have become a turning point for Myanmar’s HR industry because the country had been relying much on traditional man-based recruitment procedures for years. Nevertheless, integrating technology into the HR region may give the companies a greater competitive advantage since technology enables the recruiters to interact with job seekers faster and more efficiently.