In the era of the so-called great resignation, or great reshuffle as many call it, choosing the right people for your team can be a rather tricky task.
Companies are having a hard time attracting people for many and various reasons: salary, working conditions, career advancement, work environment, status, and many more. Managers and CEOs who don’t quite get the importance of choosing and retaining the right people to run their companies for them, end up complaining and crying over resignation letters, poor-written or very well-written CVs, and over the uncertainty of choosing/risking, again and again, over and over again.
Companies are run by people and choosing the right people, although a hard procedure, is actually one of the few strategic areas that can make or break a division or a company. HR is assigned with the task of choosing the best person for a position, with instructions to offer the minimum salary they can pronounce without laughing, that will want to stay with the company for as long is needed, no questions asked, no rest, no personal life, anxiety, and a mountain of responsibilities.
Well, in my humble opinion, most HR departments and managers are doing their job much more difficult and complicated than it should be. By focusing on the “wrong’ criteria for recruiting, providing less than adequate training, and measuring outdated data for performance, they actually dig their own hole and enter in an ever-lasting cycle of hiring-pushing-notifying-firing, that only results in getting them where they started. Back in the beginning.
To get in front of your competitors you have to offer something better, different, more attractive, humane, not only in terms of salary but also in other perks, that are actually starting to have more importance in the eyes of the workforce.
How to hire Clever
The CV is just a paper. Anyone can draft a CV, fill it with words, and send it to you. Can you see pass the smoke? Credentials and references are there, but are they valid? Experience is written but is it actual experience, or imagination and exaggeration? For people without experience, can you find out (based only by a CV) how ambitious, clever, or “thirsty” the candidate is?
To get the right candidates you start by writing the right vacancy. Don’t hide behind excess industry jargon, puffed-up descriptions and vague promises. People are not stupid. They ask around, they search about your company, have opinions of their own. And even if you manage to fool them with your fancy vacancy, you will have to answer their questions over the interview. And even if you manage to convince them over the interview, quitting is just a phone call away. People these days are not afraid of quitting and leaving you hanging there, holding your head.
Write you vacancy targeting people who can see the potential, not the position. Describe the outcome wanted, not only the tasks needed done. Be willing to also pay for the contribution, not only hours attended. Try to manifest in their minds how is it to work with you, not only for you. Write the vacancy to attract ambition, not only the educated, attract the curious, not the arrogant. Try to attract people who will want to stay with you, not view you as a CV enhancement. Aim to hire people that will want to stay, not leave you with the first opportunity they get.
How to train Better
Hiring the perfect candidates is just the beginning. What next? Throw them to the wolves and watch if they can survive? Cover them with tasks and see if they can come through? If you want them to leave in a month, please do.
Training, orientation, flexibility, patience, and an open mind, are crucial. Assign new employees to experienced ones that have the patience, willingness, and time to train them properly. Having a degree, in any field, means nothing. They need to learn how you do things, why, and you must also be open to suggestions from them. Do you know everything?
Be willing to allow time for newcomers to adjust to your company mentality, speed, procedures, and measurements. They are not machines or computers. They are people. And the more they see and understand, the more they do. The learning curve here kicks in, so be prepared to invest time in them otherwise you will again lose the time already invested in the process so far.
Ask for feedback, regularly, with good manners, and allow mistakes. Ask the newbie how is he doing so far, and does he have any questions or suggestions. Be kind, polite, available, and understanding. Start by giving small tasks to finish, allowing time for fulfilment, space for delays, and forgiveness for mistakes. People learn more from their mistakes than from everything else forced on them.
When to Fire: go for Never
The goal, target, and purpose of each new hire should be one: you are aiming to not have to fire anyone, never. You shouldn’t hire just to fill a vacancy until you find the “right person”. There is no “right Person” You should aim to hire someone that you can train and will want to stay with you forever. Even if you are filling up a temporary vacancy, your goal should be to find someone that you will want to keep, not send home.
We create companies to advance forward, not retreat. In the same way, we should hire in order to retain, not dismiss.
Hiring is not easy, and even with HRs best attempts and efforts, someone, sometimes, will end up hiring a misfit, a no-good. But given all the time, effort, money, and brain power needed to make a good hire and the certainty of losing all that if HR does sloppy work, recruiting should be, for all companies, one of the top priorities.
After all, you need people to make products, offer services, handle complaints, make sales, make your company better, moving forward.
