The unemployment rate in Australia is very low at the moment, so how do we recruit talented staff for our businesses to employ?
That’s not all because employers are hiring, but because people are leaving the workforce. When it comes to hiring, we’re still in the “hiring period”, where we’re trying to make sure that we have enough talent on hand.
So what do we do? Just like when you find yourself in a position of leadership and need to hire staff, there are three things that you should be thinking about when recruiting talented people:
1) What will happen if you lose someone?
Will they simply not reappear or will they leave before they get any chance to? In other words, will they be replaced by someone who has more experience or is better at the job? Will there be a natural replacement who is more experienced and better at the job than your current staff member?
Will your current staff member take a pay cut (e.g. move up to a full-time position), or will he/she quit for another opportunity elsewhere? How long does it usually take for someone to move from one temporary role to another permanent role in your organisation?
2) How many hours per week do you expect them to work?
If you expect them to work 40 hours per week and have their own life outside of work, then it can become difficult for them if their home life and family obligations aren’t taken care of during that time period as well.
3) Are there any skills or qualifications that you require of your staff members?
These skills, such as an excellent background in statistics or computer science – which they may not have otherwise? There can also be an advantage in being able to bring certain individuals into your organisation who would be completely new and unknown – such as having them come from another country with different languages than us (which is why I need a translator).
Recruiting tips to help you find talented staff
How to recruit talented staff is a long and arduous process. Given that there are so many jobs out there and so few qualified candidates, it can be difficult to find those with the talent you need.
Here are some of the key mistakes that employers make when hiring for their projects:
Mistake #1: Not being flexible enough; hiring people that don’t fit into your company culture or style.
You want your team to be as diverse as possible and yet you may not want everyone on your team to be a programmer—or even a designer. For example, if you’re building an operating system, then you may not want everyone to be an engineer—they may have other skills.
This way, we can guarantee that people who come on board will have software expertise but also be able to work outside the box in order to fit into our team culture.
Mistake #2: Hiring people that don’t fit in with the industry’s standards and norms. There’s nothing wrong with doing this job, but it’s going against modern trends and industry standards today.
Even if a company could hire almost anyone (after all, these days most companies employ interns), they should still follow modern standards and norms in their hiring process. Microsoft hires people based on technical aptitude (often) instead of experience; etc. And then Google picks up “techies” from MIT too—just look at all their employees’ LinkedIn profiles!
Mistake #3: Not having enough resources to grow your business quickly enough (to avoid burnout). Companies often over-invest in growth by taking risks with new ideas or products because they believe they can sell more of them than they can actually sell now.
Use employee referral programs
Of course, you can’t hire the right person by looking at his resume (or even a list of keywords) and finding the person who has worked with that company before. That’s not going to work. You want people who are enthusiastic and want to do what they do, because that is what will get them hired.
You may also be able to use a combination of factors when you recruit talented staff:
- The company you work for, your own skills and experience
- The type of job you are looking for (such as in healthcare or finance)
- Your target market — people who have been trained for their jobs by another company or have prior jobs elsewhere in which they are happy (although this factor isn’t as relevant as the first two, it certainly has its place in the hiring process).
You can also take advantage of a number of different things that other companies do to advertise: if you’re looking for something specific, your company might advertise on places like Craigslist.com or Monster.com (which will probably give you more results than just Google), and there are plenty of sites where people can post job listings themselves.
Those tend to be more informal and less formal; it’s often easier to post a job announcement on something like Dice.com than it is on some fancy-looking website. But all these methods don’t help much if you aren’t looking specifically for someone who has been trained in your field (or even if they haven’t). It would be great if there were some way we could just look at some basic demographic information about someone before hiring them — but it’s not exactly feasible given our limited ability to research potential employees (yet).
So we have to get creative about how we recruit talented staff into our business without taking advantage of all these automated methods, rather than rely solely on being able to look at resumes.
Utilise staffing agencies
Finding the best way to recruit talented staff is one of the most painful aspects of running a business. Job ads are generally written by HR staff and they’re often not very well designed. If you want to get away from that, here are some hiring tips.
First, you should review the way your staff has been hired. Are they trained properly? Have they had any experience? This will make a huge difference in terms of the quality of your team. The second thing you should do is look for opportunities for employees to grow their skills.
For example, if you have a big project that needs employees to handle it and you think one of them would be good at doing it, why not offer them an additional stipend in exchange for their work? It’s a win-win situation for both parties:
1) You offer the employee an additional income and 2) They receive the chance to do something new and challenging with you.
Conduct phone or video interviews
You may have heard that employers are not looking for candidates with a full time job. In fact, you can be competing with other companies who are looking to hire employees at any time. The difference between these two types of job seekers is what they can offer in terms of their skills and experience.
If your company is leaning towards hiring full-time employees, it’s probably going to want HR staff with more extensive work experience than the average candidate does. But if you’d rather keep your hiring costs down and offer a more casual environment, then you may want to consider using phone interviews or video interviews instead.
In addition to being more cost-effective, these methods are also a lot more flexible for companies as well as candidates who want to work in different areas such as sales or marketing, or even startups and small businesses.
Here are some simple steps you should take so that your interview process goes smoothly:
Start by asking the candidate about their career goals and goals for the specific role they’re applying for. You can expect this background information to give you additional insight into the kind of person they’re looking for and their current strengths and weaknesses.
If you decide on an interview, follow up with a few questions about why they chose this path in particular, such as what attracted them to the field in particular? What did they learn? What did they enjoy doing?
Also ask about any previous work experience or education that might be relevant; even if it wasn’t related directly to the position being applied for, it could provide valuable insights into how they think of themselves and their ability to adapt quickly given new challenges.
Finally, always remember when are trying to recruit talented staff, that it’s never too late to change your mind! Ask candidates why they don’t want other positions now when you feel like interviewing them again at another point in your search process later on. And remember: “A job is not a person!”
Get creative with your job postings
Job postings are a great way to get attention from potential candidates, but there are a few things you should keep in mind.
First and foremost, no job posting should ever promise more than is possible for the job to deliver. And I mean “possible” in the sense of real capabilities rather than an artificial promise of productivity or performance. It’s not enough to be able to write great code; you need to be able to write great code while doing something else — if you’re just writing code every day, don’t expect that someone else can do the same thing as you do and hit the same efficiency (on a machine).
Another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of people want to work with startups — even if they are not startups themselves. If you run a startup, chances are that your job is going to be open. If so, then why take applications from companies that aren’t startups?
It’s because you tell them how awesome they are and what they can do here; it’s also because people who have worked with startups know how truly awesome it is — which makes them more likely to follow through on their offers.
A final point: make sure your hiring process is going well before turning applicants down. The only time I think it’s worth it for an organisation not to turn down candidates is when it has had some serious internal problems (such as drug addiction).
Conclusion
By following these recruiting tips, you will be able to recruit talented staff and find the talented staff you need to grow your business.