1. Introduction

According to the Corporate Advisory Board of Washington DC, the cost of replacing staff can be anything between 50% and 175% of that persons annual salary and, as we are all aware, employees in the new millennium do not stay with a company for life as perhaps their grandparents did.

So what can we deduce from this? Well, you, as the HR professional, will be involved in the recruitment process for your company at some point, which leads me nicely to the whole point of this article. The recruitment process is a vital part of your company's business strategy. Recruit the wrong person and you may be doing far more harm than not recruiting someone at all. You must be aware not only of your own employers' strategies and policies regarding recruitment, but also of the local and in some cases national recruitment picture.

The biggest enemy to the recruitment process however is time - if you are holding the CV of a candidate who seems to be ideal for your current vacancy, then act quickly. Do not fool yourself - you will not be the only recruiter looking at this candidates CV and a contract of employment is a far stronger inducement than the vague promise of an interview. I have lost count over the years, of the number of employers who have contacted me three to four weeks after I have submitted a candidate, in order to arrange an interview and who seem genuinely surprised that the candidate is no longer on the market despite my having contacted them repeatedly with warnings that this will happen!