The Importance of Your Hiring Team

A company can only be as strong as its hiring team. The hiring team has a direct impact on every company, large or small, in any industry. They are responsible for the first impression of a company to a potential candidate. From the job posting to the interviewing stages, the hiring team is the company’s primary ambassador and liaison.

The hiring team works closely with hiring managers in every department; essentially serving an extension of the hiring managers to the rest of the company and to prospective team members. They must collaborate on the creation of every job description, and have a genuine understanding of what the ideal candidate profile looks like for each and every position. With this knowledge, write and post the job, qualify, interview, and play a large part in determining which candidates to bring into the organization.

Additionally, onboarding new employees into is not as simple as “filling a vacancy.” Every new hire comes with the potential to either move the department forward in a positive direction, or prove to be a “bad hire”. A “bad hire” can negatively impact a company’s morale, revenue, or even cost a company more with severance pay. It could be straight-up detrimental for a company to hire and maintain an employee who do not help move the company’s bottom line in the right direction.

For all intents and purposes, a company is like a machine and the hiring team is like one of the gears. Each department is a separate gear that must not only spin on its own, but also must adhere to simultaneous collaboration with at least one other gear. This is necessary and essential to the effective running of the machine. If the hiring team is its own gear, then its effect on all the other gears will in turn affect the cogs. Those cogs represent the employees. Employees are intrinsically the “human capital” to every business. Human capital can be described as the value an employee brings to the company through their knowledge, skills, and experience. With this in mind, it should be the mission of every hiring team to pursue and bring on the best suited candidates for every vacancy. (NOTE: We don’t intend for this analogy can be misconstrued negatively by insinuating employees are nothing more than a necessity. We all know and believe that in fact, employees are at their best when they are valued by their employers and feel they are making a difference in a meaningful way. But this is a topic for another blog…) 

Often times, internal hiring teams aren’t able to find the ideal types of candidates on their own; and in these cases, the position goes unfilled for a long period of time, or they settle for someone to simply meet the need but eventually find out they really weren’t the best match. In either instance, “the machine” is not functioning optimally. Sure, it will get by for some time; but that isn’t a viable solution for long-term success. 

One solution would be to enlist the help of headhunters. Headhunters are usually industry or role-focused experts with their ears to the ground constantly. They know the pulse of the current market. Often times, headhunters come with an impressive amount of industry contacts, which in the case of vacancies or other hiring needs, is very valuable. To clarify, Headhunters either specialize in certain industries (I.E. Medical or Real Estate), or specialize in certain types of roles (I.E. Operations or Management roles) - either or both can be advantageous. Whether utilizing headhunters as a temporary measure to fill one position, or partnering with the same headhunters for all hiring needs; an organization has a great opportunity to broaden outreach, and therefore increase the chance of bringing on the right candidate who’s human capital will be of most benefit to the company. The right candidate will not only be valued by their employer, but could also feel impactful in a meaningful way.

The hiring team is the company’s biggest asset or its largest liability. Through this process of likening a company to a well-oiled machine, we may now have a better idea on how imperative a hiring team is to the overall prosperity of a company. Employees are obviously more than mere “cogs on the gears.” They are the human capital, the collective coalition of technical skills, soft skills, experience the heart and soul of every company. Whether it’s internal, a 3rd party, or some combination of both, the hiring team is vital to the growth and survival of a company. It is a company’s ambassador, torch, access to great new minds, and future. So, how important is your hiring team to your organization?