Even though the Great Recession is far back in our rearview mirror, the recovery has been painfully slow, particularly for small businesses. Small business owners have not gone on a hiring spree, in part, because they have learned how to get along without some of the positions they eliminated during the recession. Also, because the recovery has been so slow, owners have been mistrustful of the sluggish economy and uncertain that it would support a larger payroll. As a result, many small business owners are only now considering bringing on new people. But having made the decision to hire, they now complain, “I can’t find people with the skill sets I need.” If that’s your complaint too, please continue reading below for some thoughts about hiring wisely.
“Time spent on hiring is time well spent.” ~ Robert Half
Consider how much time and effort professional sports teams invest in recruiting. Obviously, a lot. They have armies of scouts at college and even high school games looking for that future Hall-of-Famer. They watch endless hours of film for the same purpose. And they need to watch the rosters of all the teams in their sport to see who might be on the trading block and who might be entering free agency. I don’t know what percentage of a sports franchise’s revenue is spent on recruiting, but I’m sure it’s not insignificant. So apparently, a sports franchise attaches great importance to getting the right players on the team, but shouldn’t other businesses be equally determined to get the best “players” possible on their team?
Large corporations do spend a bundle on recruiting. As a portion of revenue, they may not spend what their sports brethren do, but still they may devote significant HR resources to pouring through resumes, interviewing, attending job fairs, and visiting college campuses.
Not so with most small businesses. Most small business owners don’t worry about recruiting until there’s an opening that needs to be filled. Then they scramble to find who they hope will be a satisfactory performer, bring him or her on board, and keep their fingers crossed that it all works out OK. Then they put their recruiting hat back in the closet and forget about it until the next time they need to hire someone. Unfortunately, such a haphazard recruiting process causes a small business owner several significant problems:
- an unnecessarily high turnover rate. As we know, correcting a bad hire is both expensive and time-consuming, and it has a negative impact on productivity.
- managers will tolerate under-performing members of their team much longer than they should because there’s no “pipeline” of vetted candidates available to replace them.
The problem is, recruiting and hiring are two different, distinct activities. Recruiting is the process whereby we carefully define what we’re looking for (skills, knowledge, experience, personality traits, etc.), identify individuals who fit our definition, and begin a preliminary dialogue with them. Hiring is simply the act of bringing someone on board when the time and circumstances are right.
Small business owners will complain that they can’t afford “recruiters” the way a sports franchise or a large corporation can. And they’re right . . . they can’t do it the way the big boys do it, but they can do it, only differently. Here are some thoughts.
Years ago, I had a friend who was a small business owner and was also his company’s top recruiter. He didn’t carve out time to devote to recruiting, he just did it as part of his normal daily routine. He might notice a server in a restaurant who seemed to have good customer service instincts, an energetic stockboy at the grocery store, another parent he might meet at his daughter’s soccer game, a friendly teller at the bank, or the just-graduated-from-college kids of his friends and neighbors. In all these situations, he would strike up a friendly conversation, offer his business card, and say something like, “I’m always looking for people like you. If you’re ever interested in exploring a career change, I hope you’ll call me.” Of course, not everyone called him, and of those who did, not all of them came to work for him, but enough did to make it all worthwhile.
Why not be like my friend? It doesn’t cost anything except a bunch of business cards, and it doesn’t take any time since you’re only doing the things you’d be doing anyway. It just requires that you be sensitive to the people who cross your path and who exhibit behaviors that would fit well in your organization.
Then double down. Ask your managers to do likewise, and after they get in the habit, have them ask their direct reports to be 24/7 recruiters. If you think it would be appropriate, offer a bounty to anyone who recruits someone that actually gets hired. See? Now you’ve got any army of recruiters out there just like the big boys.
This is just one idea for making recruiting affordable for a small business. With a little creative thought, you can probably think of others. The point is, just as you want your sales force to always have new prospects in their sales funnel, you also want to have new employee prospects in your recruiting funnel.
I guess I would paraphrase Robert Half and say, “Time spent on recruiting is time well spent.”
