Growing past the start-up stage? Time to change your hiring structure
Congratulations! You’re growing! But do you have a growth plan?
The change can happen quickly or over a number of years, but if you’re not prepared for your company’s’ growth you could damage the culture and growth you’ve worked so hard to create.
Here are some easy tips to help your company create a meaningful, strategic and long-term talent acquisition plan.
Define your corporate culture
A corporate culture starts naturally but needs to be defined before you get too big and inherit whatever culture has developed. As founders and leaders you need to define what your company stands for (and won’t stand for), what your organization supports, what you feel about and how you’ll support your employees etc.…
Create an interview strategy – there is nothing that ruins a candidate experience more than a disorganized interview process. It wastes time and you end up losing a lot of candidates along the way.
Set up interview teams by groups
This should be a variety of people across all levels and functions that will potentially deal with this person. They can interview individually but those are the people who should be included every time you hire someone in that role.
Define what you are looking for
Skills, EQ, Drive, Motivators etc…
Know your must haves from your nice to haves
Train your interview groups on how to interview
What are they asking? Why are they asking that?
What should they be looking for?
What should they not be asking (if you don’t have HR in-house, speak to an HR consultant)?
How to interview…this is a tough one, bring in a seasoned executive search professional to help train, it’ll be the best money you’ve ever spent, there’s a talent to interviewing.
Create a re-cap meeting plan post interviews
Have everyone jot down their own notes and thoughts and then create a meeting within 24 hours for everyone to discuss together.
Create a rejection plan
Every candidate no matter how good or bad took time out of their day to interview with you; you owe them a follow-up. Ideally a call but you can get away with an email to close the loop. Decide who from the team will be responsible for the rejection and make it short and sweet but do it within a week of meeting them. The wrong candidate today can easily be the right candidate tomorrow.
Track all candidates
Get yourself a tracking system. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to have a spot to put all your notes about the person and the interview, tag what they interviewed for, attach their resume, keep their contact info and put a note in as to why they didn’t get the role.
If you don’t track these people you could end up wasting hours and hours interviewing the same people ten times, or worse, miss out on an amazing candidate for a future role.
Decide how you want to publicize roles and stick with that consistently
Blast for employees, written job descriptions, alternative job postings – i.e. videos, social media posts. Whatever works for you and gets the role out there.
Find a trusted outsourced recruitment partner
A some point with every organization you will need outside help, even with an amazing talent team in place there will come a time where you will need a recruiters help. It might be confidential, hard to fill or just too much to handle for your internal team. Build that relationship early. A good recruiting partner won’t need you to give them every job but they will treat every role you give them as if you do. This comes from setting up a relationship early on and keeping the lines of communication open. You don’t need ten recruitment firms throwing candidates at you, you won’t get quality. You need one or two that believe in your vision and your organization to spread that for you. *shameless plug – call me!
Find a handful of internal brand stewards
If there are people in your company that live and breathe your organization, get them out there talking. Encourage them to take informational interviews, meet with recommended talent even when you’re not hiring, maintain open lines of communication with them as you grow. These are the people who can help keep your talent pool full, and are respected enough within the organization that when they bring someone in to meet with others they are well received. Don’t wait until you need someone to start the hiring process.
Create an experience for the candidates
Perhaps that’s a separate portal for candidates to learn about life at your company, an organized tour of the offices as part of the interview process or even a casual coffee with some of their peers. Creating an engaging and positive experience for the candidates makes you as an employer more desirable and even if this person doesn’t get the role, they will always speak positively on the experience.
Remember, your talent is your most valuable asset; every mis-hire affects your corporate culture, your team dynamic and ultimately your bottom line. Plan ahead to create a seamless, organized and engaging talent acquisition plan.