January 31st is the most popular day of the year for employees to hand in their notice to their employer. This comes as a result of the early January spike in job applications from the ‘New Year, New Career’ folk who have decided to seek career pastures new. If you’re looking to add to your team, January can be a great time to recruit and change your workplace dynamic, due the increased candidates actively seeking new opportunities. But as new employees enter your workplace, it’s increasingly likely that existing ones will leave.

As the most popular day to resign creeps closer, known as resignation Friday, are you prepared for its potential impact?

With high potential for change in your workplace this January, here’s some top tips to help you handle those unexpected resignation letters…

Be prepared for resignation Friday

Sounds obvious but being prepared and having a plan in place will help you to lessen the impact that resignations have on your business and to find a resolution quickly and effectively. Things to consider here include; covering workload in the interim of the employee’s absence, having a recruitment plan, strategy and process in place to find a replacement – this could include the engagement of a recruitment partner to effectively manage this for you.

Act fast post resignation Friday

Being prepared will enable you to act fast in finding a suitable replacement, therefore lessening the impact on your business. To be able to act fast post resignation Friday, it is essential that you have a highly effective strategy and process in place and the tools and support to deliver this.

Steps to take:

Candidate attraction

Job advertising:
Create a highly effective job advert that will stand out from the crowd at this busy time. It needs to be key word optimised to ensure that it is visible to your target candidate market. Post the advert across multiple job board platforms to ensure the best exposure and the best response. For further guidance on this, read our blog “How to write a killer job advert.”

Candidate search:
Proactively search for potentially suitable candidates via online CV databases and Social platforms such as LinkedIn (professional subscriptions and search expertise will be required to do this effectively). Market and engage with theses candidates to bring them into the process.

Effective recruitment process

Having an effective process is essential for recruitment success and is often significantly underestimated by hiring managers (read our blog on this here).

TIME and COMMUNICATION are the key elements here – the process needs to be quick and efficient with regular candidate communication to engage candidates and reduce the risk of candidate dropout.

Having a CLEAR PROCESS in place, combined with tools such as an APPLICANT TRACKING SYSTEM and VIDEO INTERVIEWING can enable you to deliver a positive candidate experience and a quick and successful recruitment campaign.

We appreciate that it can be difficult for businesses to be fully prepared for candidate resignations and to have the time, internal resources, expertise and tools to act on recruiting suitable replacements. If this is you, then fear not – we’ve got you covered for resignation Friday and beyond!

We are able to act quickly and effectively and have access to all of the required tools to deliver recruitment success for you. We have a range of flexible options available to meet your requirements and budget.

If you are looking to recruit or would like to find out more, then please get in touch on info@smartsearch-recruitment.com / 0333 939 0074.

SPECIAL OFFER:

For the whole of January we are offering free video interviewing for every vacancy registered! Beat resignation Friday with a pre-planned recruitment strategy.