Candidate Control- The Key to Recruiting Success and Recruiting Strategies for Graveyard Shift

Like any other professional service that deals with the public, recruiters continuously struggle with the issue of control. The same way doctors wrestle with “patient control” and lawyers boast about “client control,” so recruiters agonize over “candidate control.”

If you look at recruiting realistically, you’ll recognize that you can no more “control” the actions of another person than you can control a speeding vehicle .

The best you can hope for is that you’ve selected the right vehicle for the trip and that your preparation, training and reflexes will guide you safely towards your destination. Your degree of control, in other words, is relative to a variety of external factors, the most important of which is the candidate’s true motivation for change

Revealing the Source of Discontent

• Personal. The candidate’s relationships with those at work are unfulfilling. Perhaps the peers and/or supervisors are incompatible with the candidate, or they have different goals. Or maybe there are vast differences in political, religious, socioeconomic or educational backgrounds. Or the overall corporate culture seems out of synch to the candidate, or the “feel” or “look” of the company’s surroundings leaves something to be desired.

• Professional. The candidate’s ability to achieve career goals or technical fulfillment is stalled, or unattainable. As recruiters, it’s on the professional aspects of a candidate’s employment equation that we most often (and erroneously) focus our attention.

• Situational. The candidate’s dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the personal or professional aspects of the job; rather, the dissatisfaction is tied to circumstances. For example, the candidate’s commuting distance might be intolerable, or the air quality or school system in the candidate’s city might have deteriorated; or the candidate’s spouse might have recently accepted a job in a different city.

The point is, there may be a hundred different value-related reasons behind a candidate’s apparent discontent. As recruiters, it’s our job to develop an awareness of the factors that motivate a candidate to explore his or her options—and to offer viable career solutions.

Unless you’ve pinpointed the precise motivation behind a candidate’s interest in interviewing for another position, you’ll have no leverage in the job-changing process. And worst of all—if the candidate has no real motivation for making a change—you’ll find yourself as a mere facilitator in a tire-kicking exercise, in which your efforts will serve only to satisfy a candidate whose only interest is to extract a counteroffer. …….


Recruiting Strategies for the “Graveyard Shift”

Recruiting for the graveyard shift – normally ranging anywhere between 3 pm to 6 am – is a major cause of headache for companies in general and recruiters in particular. Most commonly, this is cited as the cause of high turnover the world over..

What to AVOID
However, before going into what-to-dos we found it imperative to discuss what strategies should NOT be employed to attract talent for night shifts.

Many companies, after long deliberations, think of providing a sign-on bonus for hiring employees. This is a mistake as the sign-on bonus not only risks portraying your company in a desperation mode but provides only short-term motivation for the new hires. Once the sign-on bonus money is spent the new hires do not have sufficient motivation to work for you.

Another strategy is to have people rotating from day to evening shifts. This is generally not a good idea from a health or safety standpoint in that it disrupts sleep cycles constantly, leading to fatigue and the inevitable injuries, material loss, errors, etc. If you start requiring this, you will undoubtedly lose a lot of your desirable day people.

Therefore, don’t provide short-term incentives if you are looking for a long-term commitment.

Attracting and Hiring Talent
Attraction and retention of employees for the graveyard shift are two different tasks and strategy evolution should be approached in two different ways. Let’s take talent attraction first.

Here are 3 strategies to ensure optimum talent attraction:

1. Assuming the second shift begins at 3pm, you have some thinking to do. People looking for second jobs generally can't get to work until after 5pm. You can consider breaking the shift into two, say 3-7, for which you can try and attract students or moms, and 7-11 shift for permanent part time. Of course, this means screening and hiring more candidates but is a sure shot way to ensure business productivity.

2. You can also include a meal or McDonald's gift certificate so that they don't have to stop and eat on the way. This is not a short term incentive as the sign-on bonus but a long-term motivating factor for employees to consider working for your company.

3. Some companies offer a shift premium plus a four day workweek at 10 hours per day. The three-day weekend is a great incentive if you can work it into your schedule. This is a good strategy as many employees often site this as a major incentive to stay on second shift even when offered first shift.

Last, but in no ways the least, be sure, to include your incentives and benefits in your ads and other recruitment endeavors to ensure high apply rate.

Employee Retention Strategies
Taking this from an employee perspective, the people who have already worked in the “graveyard shifts” know what it means to be there. Here are a set of common grouses of the employees (they reflect the concerns of employees of all parts of the world):

1.They believe that graveyard shifts are managerial "stepchild" in most places. They feel management does not show as much interest in these employees as they do in the day shift.

2.People know that they’d have to give up a lot of social life in this shift.

Best ways to tackle these concerns are to address them directly. Ensure that these employees get the same training opportunities and motivation as their counterparts in the day. Have the same physical visits from management to show interest in the employees and their growth.

In addition, make it the "fun" shift to work. Have lots of social events, potlucks, and other events to promote bonding among the employees. Have a TV/VCR to tape their favorite shows while they work. Morale is a special issue with this shift, so work hard to make it good.

Address other issues as well
These are not the only ways to retain the employees. Address issues that don’t fall into the ambit of the shift-grouse but still matter to the employee. Child care is big issue on this shift. Arrange for extended-hours child care with a local provider, or on-site and see if that improves the quality of the employees.

Consider offering special tuition reimbursement for this shift only. This will entice students to your jobs, entice employees to start school and simultaneously upgrade the quality of this workforce. A word of caution: don't make the requirement that the courses be directly work-related or you’ll only alienate the employees from the management.