An insiders guide for identifying, tracking, and lassoing a stable of purple squirrels
In today's market with the lowest unemployment rate in history and an ever increasing skills gap the competition for great talent is fiercer than ever. Because of this ever evolving marketplace, the need to be on the top of your hiring game has never been more important.
Below is an outline of the path to a finding and hiring great candidates that I have identified in my time as an Executive Recruiter and trusted adviser to many great companies. If you have anything to add I would love to hear about it in the comments section.
Know your role
The first, absolutely imperative, step to finding a great candidate is to know exactly what the role entails. In the past you may have gotten away with writing a generic job description i.e. needs 2-3 years industry experience, must be proficient in Excel, yada yada yada.
The reason for this is twofold. First, if you don’t have a deep working understanding of what makes the role important to the success of your organization then you can not have an established rubric of success. Without an established path to success then you will not be able to uncover the skills a candidate would possess that would allow them to become a true superstar in their role.
The second reason a clearly defined and creatively described role is important is a bit more psychological. Today's workforce was born of a multitasking world dominating mentality. You must create a job description that goes beyond the old school boring bullet points that have been around since the cave man was posting job openings with a chisel and hammer. If you fail to do this than you will lose out on top talent before they even read about your company. Worse yet, if you fail in your post creation, they will view your organization as dated and not somewhere they would want to spend their valuable time working.
Fire up your sizzle
This is probably the most important but also most overlooked aspect of the hiring process. As job creators of years gone by have always simply written job requirements and then focused on what qualities THEY wanted to see in candidates. However times have changed, now when you create a job posting and publish it to all your favorite resource consuming job boards, the candidates are screening YOU out of the mix. In the days of yesteryear a company with a known brand name would be able to attract the best talent by simply saying they were hiring. Today, like everything else in business, things have changed. This can be a huge opportunity or it can be a huge liability for business trying to attract the best and brightest up and coming talent. As millennials have entered the market in force and are now the dominant commodity being sought the psychology of your hunt must change as well. It is no longer enough to say you are a growing company, because in this economy who isn't, you have to appeal to the emotional desire that the new workforce has. What new technology are you creating, what problem are you solving, and how are you making the world a better place? Millennials have a deep need to feel like they are a part of something or advancing a cause and if they feel that you are not interested in the same they will pass on any opportunity that you present them with. This is a generation that views the good of the community and social justice are as valuable as their personal advancement. So when you have created your job posting ask yourself am I conveying the greater picture of where this company is going and how we are trying to change our small slice of the world, or am I coming off as bland and corporate.
Engage your caveman
Ah the good old days, when humans would roam around the land and bash their food with large sticks in order to ensure they had a meal for that night. Somewhere along the line we invented the microwave, canned food, the TV and became lazy. The same holds true for finding the right people to grow our companies. In the past there was a craft to seeking out the hidden diamonds waiting to be unearthed from their current meager coal encased forms. But now, the art of hiring has gone by the wayside and technology has made what was once a mandatory skill for growth a thing of the past…. Or has it? Many companies have grown out of the recession of 2008 and because of that they have relied on the cheap, but highly cost ineffective ways of passive candidate engagement. Job boards and word of mouth have replaced hunting and gathering as the main source of talent. This was an okay tactic when we had record high unemployment and engineers were happy to get a job flipping burgers, but thankfully times have changed. Now there are millions more openings than there are people looking for work and the passive sourcing of active candidates is not yielding the results that are needed to drive the best possible outcomes for companies. To truly thrive and grow at a sustained rate requires an active approach to stealing the best passive employees from your competitors. Your talent acquisition strategy absolutely must include the resources and tools to create an open line between you and your top competitions key employees.
If you want to consistently be able to add the best talent in a very short time you must have an active plan for your candidate sourcing.
Don't stop believin’
Well, congratulations! You have an amazing talent acquisition team, they have a clear understanding of the role you need filled, they have cooked up a sizzle that would land them a spot on Master Chief and they have taken on an active engagement strategy. So why are you still not getting the results and candidates that you need? There are a few studies that show that the top 10% of talent in any given industry takes 7 attempts before the first person to person engagement will take place. Think about the time that is needed to achieve that number, if you are looking to find new Director of Brand Development and you then narrow down the list of target candidates to say 40-50 people. It could take you 350 calls and emails to get a final list of 3-5 candidates that would fit your role perfectly. I don’t think I really understood what persistence was until I had a child, but now I have a very good idea. When my son wants a new toy, he doesn't just ask me 1 time and then say well I told dad I wanted a Rescue Bot at dinner yesterday so I am sure I will hear back by end of nap time tomorrow, or maybe he will just magically make it show up for me. No, he asks me every time he sees me or we talk, or there might be the slightest chance there is a lull in conversation. He doesn’t just sit back and hope for what he wants to appear. He takes a very active role in making sure that his desire is front of mind with me, he wants that need or want to be so burnt into my mind that I dream of his toys when I go to sleep.
If you are truly wanting to find and bring on the right person for each role then it is imperative that you commit to the process of following up until you get a NO and they explain why they would not be interested in the role (this is vital to verifying that your prior steps have been adequately processed). In an age of instant gratification recruiters, as a majority, give up after sending a LinkedIn message and leaving a voicemail that they know will likely never be listened to. Or, god forbid, they post a job on a job board and pray that a purple squirrel happens to be looking on that specific board at that specific time and is willing to take that specific job (but I am sure no one reading this would ever dare to try that….. right?.). If you want to get that big fish you need to make sure you don’t give up when you might just be one last call away.
Protect your brand (I know not as interesting as every other point but it's the most important so pay attention)
Well you accomplished the seemingly impossible, you landed interviews with the perfect purple squirrel. You are amazing, your team is amazing, your process is amazing, you have drinks with your HR team because they are so amazing……. But somehow they fell off during the interview process, they either took another job or worse yet they just ghosted you completely. Unfortunately, this is all too common among internal hiring teams these days. In the process of trying to make the 350 calls and email for each key opening and coordinating the interviews across multiple vested parties as well as monitoring onboarding and background checks, they left the most important element of recruiting overlooked. The feedback phase of the interview process is vital to making sure that the candidate maintains a positive view of your company throughout the encounter. When you fail to give feedback to a candidate they assume you have a negative view of them and they take it personally. As many of you are all to aware, people are much more likely to tell someone about their bad experience than they are about their positive one, and candidates do talk to each other so one bad experience can cause a huge setback in your talent strategy.
Don't treat whales like minnows
This point should be obvious but somehow it is still not considered when companies are making hiring decisions. If you need to have a great person in a position to drive a new product or to ensure the growth targets that you have set up, why would you try and under pay them for their work. This is one of the biggest issues that trip companies up when it comes to consistently landing the top talent in their industry. If you are filling a position that has a normal range of $100-130k on a base and you have a purple squirrel eating out of your company dish, and yet you offer $100k thinking that you will save a few thousand for new office chairs, or something equally important I am sure. Guess what, you are wrong! That oddly colored little creature that only existed in your dreams will disappear as quickly as the chances of me winning the Voice (I am currently banned from 13 bars for how bad my karaoke is). If you truly want to land a difference maker for your company then it is imperative that you determine, prior to even starting your candidate search, that you will not press for the lowest acceptable market pay. You do not need to be the highest, but candidates know what the market is offering. Your great candidate is likely open to hearing about your job because of a small issue that has been magnified because they are not compensated enough to deal with the inconvenience anymore. I know this is the case from much personal experience because that is exactly what I hear every time I work through the pain points with a candidate.
Offering a lowball compensation package also gives huge warning signs to any potential employees. Is this company in financial trouble, What is going to happen if the market slows down if they wont even offer fair value now, does this company produce a low quality product or service that I wouldn’t be comfortable attaching my name to?
These are all real questions that I have been asked and had to work through when that seamingly perfect role and company decides to try and save a few thousand dollars on a $120k job. The reality is that with around 2000 working hours in a year you have to ask yourself the question, is this candidate really not worth the $3-4 an hour that the market has set, and is the cost of keeping this role open for another 90-120 days worth that same $3-4 an hour.
Feed the beast
The last step, and frankly, the point I kinda don’t want to share because it could take away my leverage into your business (kidding of course….). Establish a rubric for success and then set regular evaluations to ensure that you are giving each employee constructive feedback on their job. This ensures that your employees feel like they are valued enough that their managers would actually take the time to look at their work and give them tips for becoming more successful. Deep in each one of us as humans is the need to feel validated and to impress those around us. If you nurture your employees like a coach, building them up where they excel and guiding them where they need extra help, you will see an up-tick in loyalty by your employees. It is often said that customers don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care, and your employees need the same level of care themselves.
Along with regular evaluations it is important that there are financial rewards for excellent work. By giving verbal and monetary rewards for good work, you will take away any willingness an employee has to ever pick up the phone the next time a recruiter calls.