Recruitment, Part 4: Other important stuff

There are a few notes I want to squeeze in here between your recruitment mission and the hiring and training part.

One is that you don’t have to hire. If you get through everything we just talked about and you still don’t feel 110% positive that you’ve found the right person, don’t hire. Yes, you’ve spent a lot of time and energy on the process but do not make the mistake of committing to a doomed project. Once we’ve invested time or money into something we find it psychologically very hard to withdraw, even when continuing will cost us more time and money. So just take a step back, breathe deeply, and try again a week or two later. Chances are that you’ll get new candidates apply who weren’t looking last month, or who missed your Facebook ad, or who felt OK with work but this week have had it up to their back teeth with their boss. And for those candidates you were close to hiring, just tell them you’re casting the net again and if they really feel they are the right person then they are very welcome to apply again and prove it.*

Another is that trail days, weeks, or even months are a very good idea. Again, you might think because of the time and money you have already invested that you need to just make a commitment and ride it out but that maths simply doesn’t work out. A great employee will grow your business, help your colleagues grow, and eventually attract new candidates and train them. A shit one will take the same amount of training and wages and then undermine your businesses culture and potential. It’s disrespectful to your other employees and to your own dreams to hire someone unworthy. So invest in trail days or weeks and in a year’s time when you aren’t cursing that new employee for losing a sale/customer/company phone you will look on that few hundred dollars as a wise, wise choice.

Last but not least: the recruitment process and especially the interview should give the future employee a very thorough idea of who you are and what your business culture is. If they join your team and are disillusioned or misunderstood what the job was about, that is your fault. No question about it. 

*A small company did this to me once and it absolutely worked on me; the fact that they had such strong vision not to settle for someone 90% right just made me ache to work there the more. 

Recruitment, Part 3: Interviewing

Eurgh, interviews. I honestly think I prefer being interviewed than interviewing sometimes. It is so tough to work out if the answers you are being given resemble the truth and whether the questions you are asking are really getting to the heart of the matter. Of course, often you know straight away that someone isn’t a fit, but it’s when you’re at round two and have a handful of potential candidates that I just wish I had a crystal ball.

There are a few solutions.

Firstly, now you have your ‘essentials’ list narrowed down, form some questions that ask for examples of those behaviours. Instead of asking, ‘are you able to give honest feedback, even to your manager?’, ask ‘can you give me an example of a time when you’ve given honest feedback to your manager even though you knew they didn’t want to hear it?’. Make it clear that the interviewee has as much time to answer these questions as they’d like, and you can even come back to them. After all, you want a real answer to the question, not to know whether or not they have an indexed memory.

Secondly, try to organize the interviews so that afterwards, several interviewees are able to mingle with you and your employees over a cup of tea and biscuits. The candidates will get a chance to get more of a feel for the business but your employees will also get a chance to pick up on any red flags. It’s incredible how much people will say, even to the person who just interviewed them, with a cup of tea and a biscuit in their hand when they think the interview is over.

Lastly, when you think you have made a decision, use their referees. When you get their previous manager or colleague on the phone, tell them you are a small business looking to invest a lot of time and money into [successful candidate] and you would really appreciate it if they could answer some questions. Then ask them a few of the same questions you asked the candidate. Even down to examples of the behaviour whenever possible. If they don’t have time, ask when would be a better time to call back, because you need to hear about their experience with the candidate.

PS. If you've got any magical interview questions that you have used or had used on you in the past, please don't be a dick and keep them to yourself: comment below. 

Recruitment, Part 2: Who are you really hunting?

You probably have a pretty clear idea in mind of the type of person you’d like to employ and the skills you’d like them to bring to the table. Nevertheless, please do a little planning before launching into The Hunt.

Ask your other employees or colleagues who they think the business needs – especially those who will be working alongside the successful applicant. You’re looking for them to brainstorm both the perfect traits and skills. Even in the unlikely event that they don’t come up with any new ideas, getting people involved in the process and respecting their opinions is just one more way to get people to take responsibility for the culture of where they work.

Next, try to list some personality traits that neither you nor your team is strong in. You probably envision your perfect candidate to be someone who fits into the team because they are very similar to you and your staff. However, the perfect candidate is probably someone who compliments the team rather than fitting in because they have the same core values but have strengths where you currently have weaknesses. For example, maybe your existing team is great at attention to detail so someone with excellent ‘big picture’ skills would be an interesting addition. Diversity takes a little more management but in the long term brings about a robust and dynamic business.

Draft up your initial ideas, your colleagues ideas, and those complimentary traits into a list of ‘desirable’ and ‘essential’ criteria. Standard practice. Now have a play with that list and pretend someone has all the desirables but none of the essentials, and another candidate is the opposite. Technically the candidate with all the essentials but none of the desirables should be the more employable, but are they? Or is there something in your essentials list that, really truly, isn’t essential? Is something on your desirable list, like the right attitude, actually an essential? Getting this list right by using your vision for your culture and knowing your weaknesses will really help attract the right candidates. What if you had ‘degree in events’ on your essentials list and were discouraging experienced candidates? Or even un-experienced ones who had the energy and creativity your already very experienced team needed? You’d be missing out on new ideas and paying a lower salary because you assumed a degree was what your business needed. Or what if ‘full-time’ work was assumed when really, for the right person, you could manage 9am-3pm school hours?

My point is: if you have your cultural values worked out and adhere to them, then you can and should think outside the box with other aspects of recruitment. 

Recruitment, Part 1: The Hunt

Finding new staff is really, really difficult. It's difficult for multinational corporations with entire HR departments, it's difficult for long-standing businesses, it's difficult for start-ups, it's difficult for Bill Gates. Everyone knows that people are a key factor in success but it's easier said than done when that means attracting the right person, realising they are the right person amongst all the candidates, and then managing their expectations to get them off to the right start. 

How do you start the hunt? The culture of your organisation that I've spent the past five weeks banging on about is a good starting point: is your business somewhere with an attractive personality, GSOH, who likes walks on the beach? Because if you've grown an authentic and unique culture then over time I'll wager you'll have applicants come to you.

But you already know how important I think culture is and even if you have it, when you do decide that you can't manage everything in your business yourself and need to take the scary plunge of employing someone, start by brainstorming the places your perfect employee might hang out. Instead of paying Seek or CareerOne for a pretty generic ad, first ask yourself:

• Where do they shop? Where do they eat out?
• What do they like to do on their days off? 
• How do they like to portray themselves?
• What are their habits? 

You may think this is all irrelevant and will narrow your field so completely that you'll miss most of your potential candidates but what you are really doing is increasing your efficiency and sticking to your cultural values. Say you need to hire a new estate agent for your team, for example: are you a 'family values' business or are you aiming for a swanky, boutique feel? For the first, you might put up posters in the local park or family-friendly cafe, for the latter you might ask to leave brochures in a fashionable clothing store. 

Once you've spent at least 20 minutes scribbling ideas on an A4 piece of paper, see if any of these resources might be a way to reach out to that perfect candidate:

• Ask your employees if they know anyone, or their friends know anyone, or their kids know anyone. If each employee roughly knows a few hundred people in the area and you have more than one employee, then friends' of their friends would be a circle of thousands of potential referees. Simple but surprisingly underutilized,
• Gumtree - for trades or uni student roles in particular, usually so cheap that it's always worthwhile,
• Local media - not TV, I'm talking school or church newsletters, cafe or gym bulletin boards, even a local market stall,
• Client email update or your business' Facebook page - even if you don't get any referrals, phrased correctly, it's an advert of your business itself because the traits you are looking for should be why your customers use you, 
• School career advisor - if you need a weekend casual or junior, I strongly recommend contacting the local schools to see if you can spend 5 minutes in one of their assemblies outlining why your business rocks and what type of stella employee you are after. You'll be surprised how enthusiastic most schools are, especially near the end of a school year. 
• Consider holding a free seminar or open evening and inviting local professionals to network, mingle, have a beer, and obviously at some point in the evening make sure it's clear (but not tacky) that you have a position to fill. Please make sure the evening reflects your business: there's no point creating an illusion and attracting the wrong sort of people, 
• Facebook! I highly recommend that you have a play with Facebook ad manager (use the boosted post function) and search for your perfect candidate using their extremely fine-tunable parameters. It's scary how much information they have on people, you may as well use it to your advantage. And you can set the budget as low as you like. 

Above all, be creative. It might take more leg work but an ad online can set you back $300 and won't show your business' personality half as well. 

Of course, all this goes hand in hand with knowing what type of employee you want, so three guesses what I'm writing about next week?

PS. If you are still tempted by a regular old online ad, remember: businesses generally get the staff they deserve. If you think you deserve brilliant, committed and sincere staff then start by being brilliant, committed and sincere in your hiring process.