How to get recruitment right first time

As you grow and scale your business, getting recruitment right can be a challenge, especially in the early stages of business development. It’s getting increasingly difficult to attract quality candidates without offering budget-busting salaries and benefits packages. The days of simply posting a job advertisement and waiting for the phone to ring are gone, perhaps never to return.

Now is the time to change your approach and think about recruitment in a different way.

How do you attract customers to your business? You have developed a marketing strategy and sales funnel that brings you the right customers who are willing to pay for your products and services.

How do you attract the right candidates? Do the same! Develop a meaningful vision that attracts candidates to your mission because purpose, belonging, social responsibility and ethics, are becoming more important to quality candidates than just money and benefits – note I said?quality?candidates there.

Recruitment should be a strategy you plan for, not just a reaction to a demand on capacity in your business. Just like your marketing and sales, it’s a key factor that ensures you outperform your competitors.

Talk to me ?about creating your own strategic recruitment plan.

Here are 6 more things to include in your approach to planned recruitment.

Recruit people who know how to take the positives from life’s journey. We all know that stuff happens in life. The right candidates are those who know how to find and apply the lessons learned from difficult experiences. Rather than blaming other people or external factors, they own and take responsibility for lessons learned and maintain an optimistic attitude and focus on what could be better. These are the people you want in your business. When? You can discover people’s real drive at interview.?

If interviewing isn’t your strength,?contact me ?for some help.

Recruit people who are mission ‘obsessed’. I’m sure you appreciate the importance of mission alignment in your recruitment activities, but have you considered mission ‘obsession’?

Recruiting people who are aligned to your values, vision and mission is vital if you want the right people around you who will stay loyal. It’s critical to maintaining quality of culture in every organisation.?

Make sure you ask every person you interview what is their personal connection to your mission. You will very quickly discover who authentically lives and breathes your mission and is truly obsessed by it, and who is just saying what they think you want to hear.

Earlier I talked about purpose, belonging, social responsibility and ethics. This highlights an individual’s personal mission ‘obsession’. When your obsession is connected to theirs, you’ve found the right person. When? Again, interview is the best time to discover those who are mission ‘obsessed’.

Recruit people with skills and experience. You want to find people with the skills and experience needed to hit the ground running. Skills and experience are often emphasised first when recruiting and I have deliberately not put these first in this list of ideas as getting recruitment right first time in your business has to shift towards what’s attractive to your candidates – and that is purpose, vision and belonging etc.?

Recruit people who match your business stage. What stage of evolution has your business reached and where are you going? Learn more about the?8 Stages of Business Evolution ?here. Are you an early-stage business, or is your business established and growing fast??

What are the risks to individuals and the business of someone from a different stage business joining you? For example, does your candidate understand what joining your business entails both for their personal life, their own money situation, and also in the way things are done.

If you have someone joining you because your vision is more attractive, perhaps from a larger company, they may be baffled by the fact that there are so few systems and processes in place that they're just going to have to get stuck in and do all sorts of different tasks. This can spark clashes between employees where someone didn’t think it was their task to complete.?

Because you get excited by hiring someone who's just come from a business at a different stage than you, you may think they're going to be incredible. If they don't understand the mindset shift that needs to happen when they join, there can be a feeling of disconnect which can easily be mitigated in advance when your candidate fully understands the implications of joining a different stage business.

Beware the interview experts. Some people are very good at interviewing and not much good at anything else, and other people don't interview well but can do a great job. I have already talked about how you can discover the quality candidates you are looking for by asking about mission ‘obsession’, purpose, ethics, etc.

Here are 3 more things to look for:

1.?????References – quality references that talk about work quality, how they work with others, not just “I’ve worked with this person for x years and they are great”.

2.?????Task – a task you set them at interview to assess their capability and approach to work.

3.?????Probation period – where you and they have an effective weekly debrief.

You might be thinking this all feels too much – so?call me and get some help

Get better acceptance rates when making offers to candidates. Now you have some new ideas about how to get recruitment right first time in your business. We have already talked about making your business more attractive to candidates in the same way as you do when marketing your products and services.

Write your offer letter in such a way that it prioritises who they are and what they want, not just ticking boxes of what you want. I know that may sound counter-intuitive, but the reality is that it’s a candidates market, particularly because you are looking for quality. Include a compelling job specification that your candidates will be proud to tell their friends about.

Instead of seeing recruitment as a process to run through to screen out bad candidates, you now have lots of new ways to get recruitment right first time and every time in your business.?

Apply the rule attitude before aptitude and you won’t go far wrong.