You might think your Irish company has largely cracked the recruitment riddle – indeed, here at Webrecruit Ireland, we have put together some of the most extensive online employer resources in Ireland to help ensure you do just that.

However, even the best-prepared company can still make mistakes, of which the below five are among the most frequent.

1. Failing to customise job adverts

Many of today’s automation technologies that allow you to post job adverts on sites around the world in a matter of seconds with little more than a click are undoubtedly welcome.

Sometimes, however, you really do need to take the extra time to customise your adverts so that they speak to those looking at your advert on different job boards and social platforms.

2. Making the application process too long

We are now firmly in the age of the tech-savvy Millennial, and if there’s one thing that many of these younger workers often lack, it’s the patience to sift through page after page after page of an application form.

That is especially so in a recruitment industry that has seen the increased use of ‘gamification’ to take even more of the ardour out of an already-shortened and optimised application process for many vacancies. Is your own firm keeping abreast of these trends.

3. Communicating poorly

With so much candidate information from paper and online CVs, cover letters and applications to assess, it’s tempting to see the recruitment process as a necessarily robotic one of matching stated candidate traits to whatever’s in the job description and person specification.

Doing so, however, runs the risk of you simply not getting to know your candidates properly, or missing out on great candidates who aren’t a straightforward fit to your person spec, or not having the foresight to feed promising but nonetheless unsuccessful candidates into your talent pool for next time.

4. Being inflexible at interview stage

Does your interview process still simply entail the same old behavioural competency questions that are effective in assessing a candidate’s fit to the essential requested skills and experiences, but not much else?

We’re not saying that the above isn’t an essential priority – it is. However, we would also urge you to carefully consider certain other key factors – like cultural fit – that aren’t always covered easily by a conventionally rigid interview and assessment routine.

5. Not following up

Providing the best possible candidate experience has never been more crucial than it is in today’s age of social media and online forums, where your reputation as a good firm to apply for jobs at can be quickly blitzed by just one or two disgruntled applicants.

So, keep all of your candidates up to date with how their application is processing, and whatever you do, don’t just depend on standard templates for telling unsuccessful candidates the unfortunate news.