Recruiting New Staff Shouldn’t Be An Own Goal
English football fans no doubt felt a degree of relief this week
(tinged perhaps with a little surprise!) that Roy Hodgson has been
given the top job in English football and the sense of uncertainty
following Fabio Capello's departure will now lift. The
situation reminds us that recruiting staff is not always entirely
straightforward. For example, the "people's choice" Harry
Redknapp wasn't offered the job and this may well have had
something to do with the fact that he was still under contract to
his current club and would have cost the FA a seven figure sum to
have released. The slightly less flamboyant and tax efficient
but hopefully no less capable Mr Hodgson had no such
restriction.
Similarly, recruitment of any senior executive needs care and
attention, not only to get the right man or woman for the job in
the first place by drawing up a proper person specification and
thought-through job description, but also to ensure that as a
business, you are not opening a can of worms in the form of
restrictive covenants. Reviewing a candidate's current
contractual obligations needs to be done at an early stage to
ensure that if successful, the new recruit hits the ground running
rather than having to languish on the bench for several months to
allow post termination restrictions to expire. Taking up
references can also be very important and how you frame an offer of
employment is also critical if risk is going to be kept to a
minimum.
If, on closer inspection a particular candidate looks too
problematic, you need to be in a position to withdraw gracefully,
while retaining goodwill and before the point when someone may have
handed in their notice, thereby severely limiting their own
options. Bringing in someone new at any level in your team
should be a positive move, to fill a gap and help drive the
business forward. The last thing you need is for the process
to become a problem in itself and a distraction from your main
goal.
For help on recruitment issues, employment contracts and
restrictive covenants please contact a member of our employment team
on 0131 525 8538.
