Recruiting State of Mind - From Striving to Thriving

The reality is that today’s worker is more disengaged than any other time in history. It could be because of the generational shift, or it could be because overall people are disenchanted with society, whether it be politics, religion, healthcare, the environment - people don’t trust their leaders to be honest, or to take care of them. I don’t blame them.

Finding the “Right People” Can Be a Lofty Task

We can either play victim to disenchanted workers or be out in front of it, acknowledge that people need and want more and do a better job at consciously attracting and bringing the right people in the door and then working hard to make sure that they are cared for and set up to win.

This involves shifting your thinking about your role and how you contribute to the organization. It’s a whole new paradigm and program for unleashing human potential at work, and includes transforming the mindset in your company about hiring from head count to contribution margin. From filling jobs to achieving business results. From people are lucky to work here to we are lucky to access our people’s talent while they are here.

You may be frustrated because you want to make a bigger impact with your company, but you feel trapped by the day-to-day wheel spinning and clean-up patrol that is expected from HR. Or, you may be tired of having your hiring guidance and recommendations overlooked by hiring managers who don’t really know how to evaluate people or talent.

The Typical Recruiting Process Can Fail

You go off and begin your hunt, sift through hundreds of LinkedIn profiles or resumes, and come up with a few people you think match the hiring manager’s request. You contact these possibilities, spending time phone screening them and understanding what they have done and why they might be a match. You think you are doing a good job assessing and evaluating and when you have your top candidates, you present your findings to the hiring manager.

Now they tell you they have changed their mind and want something different! Or, they reject the candidates because the people you have shortlisted just aren’t quite right. You ask for specifics and get cryptic feedback at best. You go back to your workspace exasperated and frustrated and begin the process again.

Or, you get a mediocre job description from the hiring manager, you go through the whole hiring process and finally the hiring manager wants to make an offer, but when the candidate hears the offer, they decline. You ask why and it turns up that the hiring manager shared information with the candidate that was unbeknownst to you and turned out to be a deal breaker for the candidate.

In another scenario, you may go through the entire hiring process, get a candidate who accepts an offer, and 4 months later resigns because the job was not what they thought it was.

Whether it is one of these circumstances or something equally as unproductive, you find yourself spinning your wheels, aggravated and disenchanted with your hiring manager, or worse, your company. 

You got into this field because you wanted to empower people at work. You wanted to help your company grow, and help people grow. Unfortunately, it seems like you are spending more time fixing problems than making a difference and enabling growth.

This is all very typical, but not profitable.

The Solution to the Recruiting Problem

Part of the problem is that you’re operating from the premise that you are there to serve, blend in and go along with the way things are done there; no matter how crazy and unproductive it seems. While you are there to serve, blending in and going with the flow of unproductive and inefficient people and hiring processes is a false and painful premise to work from.

The solution begins with looking at personal barriers and then it moves to professional and role barriers. 

What I found is that most of the barriers we experience begin with us. It’s interesting, many of the people I work with, including VPs of HR, have never been invited to strategic business meetings and conversations about strategy. Many of these people didn’t originally feel comfortable enough to request a meeting with an Executive to discuss what was not working with regards to how people were hired and onboarded into the organization.  

So again, it begins with you! You need to shift your mindset regarding your role, its purpose and how you are perceived in your organization. It’s about redefining your role, redefining your role value and how to measure your personal contribution margin with the leaders of your organization.

It’s all about growing from an order taker to a difference maker. It’s about growing and owning your power. Once you make these adjustments, you’ll start to see differences in turnover, employee engagement, and workforce productivity.