Guide to Attracting and Onboarding Great Talent

Hiring Process Alignment

Align your hiring process with the experience that candidates will have on the job. Tell your story in detail but don’t leave out the hard parts. You might be surprised. The ‘Star’ candidate may well jump at the chance to turn your situation around. He may think to himself that nobody has ever told him the truth like this before so there must be something good here!. If you tell the candidate that everything is fine before he joins you then all you are doing is ensuring that you will have to look for someone else after a month or two. Even if he can handle the challenge he will feel betrayed, and will not be prepared to take it on.

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Pay Market Price

Pay for the right people. Yes, I know, it’s easier said than done. We all have budgets, and limits, and current staff, and so on. We can’t just offer someone a salary that is outside the range for the other staff in the plant. Actually you can if you redefine the role, and at the end of the day you have to pay market price, whatever market you are in. If you find it hard to get agreement on higher salaries then flip the argument around and ask how much it would cost to attract and then not onboard excellent staff. If you do actually calculate this cost you might surprise both yourself and your boss.

I recommend: http://www.payscale.com/ 

Expand the Role

If the salary increase option is simply not available to you, and it often isn't for reasons of internal equity, you might consider expanding the scope of the role you are offering. This is an excellent way of bringing on board strong people because it scales up the position sufficiently to match their strengths. If your current role is not attractive the good people will not even look at it twice. Expand it or combine it with another role and you may get their attention. Often you can end up with one person in what previously was two separate roles.

I recommend: http://english.talent-software.com/?p=275

Get A Leader

Hire an HR Manager or Director with an organizational development or coaching background. Someone who will spend the time to understand the needs of your team and build an infrastructure and process to give them what they need. Then they will be able to identify and attract the 'Star' candidates because they will be recognised as Stars themselves. People with this kind of background are rare, but they do exist. A recent graduate with a psychology degree would be a good start for a small to mid-sized company.

I recommend: http://www.hr.com

Abolish Paper Trails

Systematize and professionalize your processes so that your staff do not have to spend time on bureaucratic time wasting. This is one of the most commonly cited complaints of staff all over the world. A lot of it seems to have to do with the idea of not having to do work that has already been done. Repetitive form filling is the surest way to kill the motivation in your HR team.

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Train Line Managers

Interviewing and assessment are very common tasks for HR staff and recruiters. The good ones know how to assess the competency and fit of potential new employees. They can generally spot Stars at 100 yards. Unfortunately, the studies show that most untrained interviewers think they are a good judge of other people. When measures are made of their ability to assess another person's competence, the results are frightening. Basically, most people are not good at assessing others, and do not take any training in this area because they believe there is no problem. Line managers need training in behavioural interviewing and basic candidate psychology. Otherwise the big fish just slip away.

I recommend: www.recruiting.com

Move to the Next Level

Recruiters need to become business and relationship managers, or face the same fate as the dinosaurs. The new breed of recruiter needs to use operations, technical, sales and marketing skills as part of the recruiting process. This sells very well to top talent, who can recognise other top talent easily. It is no longer enough for the recruiter to advertise/post a job ad and wait for the ideal candidate to walk through the door. They-just-don’t. If they do by accident they will go straight back out again. Today’s recruiters must be able to understand the needs of different departments in the company and gain the confidence of the people in these departments. They must also be excellent marketing and branding professionals, and create an image and brand for their organisation.

I recommend: http://www.adlerconcepts.com/

Final Thoughts

The good news is that the Recruiters that you need to build an excellent hiring team are to be found. So are the Star candidates for your operations. A strong hiring team will be more able to bring on board good people and the resulting operations team will, of itself, act as an attraction. It's just a matter of how motivated you are to find some good people to start the process. It's a lot like pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You have to start somewhere and sometime. Why not now?

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