10 Step Recruiting Strategy to save your business time, energy and money in 2024
If you're a business owner, hiring manager, or leader in your organization; and you're responsible for recruiting, just know it's very normal to feel overwhelmed by the task.
It seems like such an innocent bullet point on your job description, until the need comes up. Suddenly you need to keep your job afloat, cover a vacancy, and now add on the task of recruiting. It's overwhelming to everyone, I promise!
I am speaking from 10 years of experience developing and supporting recruitment strategies for companies all over the board. From small agricultural businesses, to local coffee shops, mid-sized marketing and accounting agencies, up to large tech firms. There are a LOT of ways to slice and dice this function, and a cookie cutter solution, simply won't cut it for your business in 2024.
So, if you were my client, here's what I'd advise:
What's driving our vacancies? Is it growth, unexplained turnover, or performance management struggles?If it's turnover or performance management struggles, we'll need to figure out where the hole in the boat is - we can circle back to this later.
What are the top 6 skills I need to hire for? I recommend dialing it down to the top 3 technical skills (ie: systems, tasks, expertise) and top 3 soft skills (ie: intangible qualities).
What is my budget for this role? Does that budget reasonably afford us the skills above? If not, we'll need to either adjust our expectation for skills, or up the budget. Pro Tip: If you are going to adjust your expectations for skills, be prepared to invest more time and resources into properly training and providing support to this individual, or you will find yourself with what you think is an issue of "performance management", but may be lack of training infrastructure.
Where does my target audience spend their time? For mid-executive level roles, I'd recommend advertising on linkedin, instagram, and indeed to cover your bases. For entry-level roles, it may be more appropriate to advertise on indeed, instagram and tiktok. But this is also where industry comes into play. Professionals in agriculture and professionals in tech tend to have different tendencies with how much time they spend online vs. in person vs. trusting referrals vs. utilizing industry specific forums or job boards. You know your industry and how word spreads best. If you don't, ask your employees how they heard about this role.
What matters to my target audience? Is it culture, impact, money, schedule, day-to-day, or advancement opportunity? I like to take the approach that all of these things matter in varying capacities to job applicants, so I like to cover all of these answers in all in my advertisements. Make sure before you try to advertise these components, you sit down and reflect... What is the impact we make here? What schedule will they realistically be working? What pay range can we afford? What does a day to day in this role consist of? It seems obvious to you as the leader, but remember, candidates are starting with zero base knowledge about your organization and how this job opportunity fits into the organization. Ask your employees for their perspective if you need some inspiration.
Build that advertisement! And make it a compelling one. If you take the copy/paste route and slap some sentences in a word document for your posting, the applicant pool will reflect that. I'd recommend pulling together a written job advertisement, visual graphics, and video to spread on the platforms you've decided to post on. Think about how you'll hook someone in, give them the information they need to see, and determine, "wow, this job was built for me".
Move quickly. Once you've got responses, the clock starts. These days, everything moves faster than it used to. It's a battle out there for attention. People are getting inundated with advertisements while watching TV, scrolling on social media, etc. It's easy to lose someone's attention. So while it's fresh, you've got to capitalize. Schedule a follow up call within 1-2 business days.
Interview with intention. Once you have your interviews booked, make sure you're using the time wisely. In an interview you should be covering:-What matters to them? (culture, impact, money, schedule, day-to-day, or advancement opportunity) figure out what's important to them, and talk about it. -What matters to you? (job history, 3 technical skills, and 3 soft skills) build an interview template that will reveal this information. I like building behavioral interview questions for my clients. For example: If project management was a technical skill they wanted, I would ask "Tell me about a time you ran into a roadblock at work. What happened? How did you work through it?"
Make a decision based on the intentional interview design above. Don't be tempted to make your decision based on their solid (or weak) handshake; or the fact that you are both alumni from the same college (go beavs). If you're experiencing turnover or performance management troubles, it simply could be because you're letting these outside factors sway your decisions.
Set 30/60/90 check ins. Regardless of how experienced someone is, they still need to be trained, and provided feedback as they are melding into your organization. Even if you don't need to check in with them, they may need to check in with you. This catches some of that unexplained turnover. Schedule these check-ins before they start, so you both know that you have an opportunity to check in, share how things are going, provide kudos, and create tangible action plans for creating success in this role. We all want to know how we're doing, not just when it's bad! I have seen top performing new hires leave organizations because they didn't have the resources they needed in their first 90 days. Please don't fall into that trap! On another note, if you're realizing new hires aren't catching on in the first 90 days, it often means that there's a feedback loop missing, or a training opportunity available. Everyone learns differently, so try "show, teach, do". They might just have a different learning style.
So, those are my not-so secrets to supporting clients in 2024! At Business Casual we support companies with direct hire recruiting, and recruiting consulting (such as this).
If this approach is something your organization is striving for, but just doesn't have the bandwidth... you've just met your partner.
Happy recruiting!