Learn how to manage the recruitment process for long-term success and discover the 7 Golden Rules for a Successful Hire.

1. How to get good
staff and keep them
Managing the recruitment process
for long-term success
By James Price, BBM, FAIM

2. Table
of
Contents
Introduction
...........................................................................................................
3
Chapter
1:
What
to
do
before
you
interview
..........................................................
5
Understand
the
role
you
are
recruiting
for
and
document
the
outcomes
you
want
.............
5
Create
a
checklist
of
skills,
capabilities
and
experience
needed
.....................................................
7
Identify
the
non-­‐negotiable
critical
strengths
required
.....................................................................
8
Interview
time
–
are
we
there
yet?
..............................................................................................................
8
Chapter
2:
Seven
golden
rules
for
a
successful
hire
................................................
9
Conduct
a
robust
sourcing
process
..............................................................................................................
9
Share
the
job
of
interviewing
and
selecting
candidates
..................................................................
10
Be
transparent
with
information
about
your
business
...................................................................
11
Recruitment
is
not
a
one-­‐way
transaction
............................................................................................
12
Don’t
employ
impulsively
..............................................................................................................................
13
Due
diligence
a
two-­‐way
street
..................................................................................................................
14
Have
a
well-­‐defined
on-­‐boarding
process
.............................................................................................
15
Chapter
3:
There
are
good
people
out
there
.........................................................
17
Disclaimer: The information contained in this eBook is general in nature
and should not be taken as personal, professional advice.
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3. Introduction
In the vast majority of businesses, people are
the ‘mortar’ that cements the value. They can
underwrite the value the business creates, or
they can erode it.
When considering staff appointments and
recruitment, don’t settle for second best.
Always aim for ‘first best’.
‘You just can’t get good help these days’
People issues are often a raw nerve with business owners.
We often hear celebrated (not really!!) examples of business owners who
have recruited and trained new team members, or promoted existing
employees into new roles, only to find they leave within a short period of time,
or don’t measure up to the business owners’ expectations.
There follow anguished cries from business owners and senior managers:
I might as well just do it myself!
Staff turnover and poor employee retention and engagement doesn’t just have
an emotional and productivity impact on a business; it also has a value and
financial impact.
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4. Good staff – a long-term investment
Think of it like winning a new customer. Often the highest cost and lowest
margin received by a business when selling a product or service to a new
client is within the first 12 months.
That’s because there is usually the cost of business development and
bedding down the relationship, ensuring a smooth transition and a happy
customer.
That’s why as business owners we all try and focus on long-term, mutually
beneficial relationships with our clients and customers.
Repeat custom – it’s the Holy Grail!
It is just as important, if not more
so, to apply the same thinking to
the people in your business.
Business owners should develop
long-term, deep professional
relationships with their team, and
not just their internal team.
As we’ve discussed in previous
eBooks, some specialist roles may
be outsourced and, again, it’s
critical to have good rapport and a
long-term relationship with those
suppliers.
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5. Chapter 1: What to do before you
interview
Before you begin the interview process there are 3 key steps business
owners should undertake to greatly increase your chances of a successful
hire. They are:
1) Understand the role you are recruiting for and document the
outcomes you want;
2) Create a checklist of skills, capabilities and experience needed to
achieve those outcomes, and
3) Identify the non-negotiable critical attributes or strengths needed in
potential candidates.
Understand the role you are
recruiting for and document
the outcomes you want
The first critical step with any appointment
is to understand what impact you want
that person’s activity to have on the
business.
This is not so much about what tasks they
will do; it’s more about what you want
them to achieve – what they will tangibly
add to the business.
You need to crystallise that in your
own mind and document it.
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6. Usually this has several components which may include an activity or financial
component, a service or delivery component, as well as a behavioural or
cultural component.
Let’s look at an example.
You’ve grown a business to a certain stage and want to enter a new
market, but can’t achieve that goal with your existing resources.
You’ve decided to employ a business development manager to help
you grow and establish that market.
The things you need to consider in designing the role are:
• What products and services do you plan to sell in that
market and how do you want them sold?
That may be largely dependent on your existing offering and the
systems and processes you have in place, but if you’re employing
someone to represent you and develop business, they will also
have an impact on how those products and services are sold.
• What is your desired financial outcome?
You may want to drive $10 million of new business over 12 months.
When do you envisage the candidate achieving that level of sales
performance?
• Is the person only focused on business development or do
they deliver part of the value proposition that your business
offers?
For instance, if you’re selling air conditioning units, does the person
simply secure new sales, or do you want them to be both a seller
and servicer or installer? If there is a service or installation
component, then service and a candidate’s ability to deliver and
move between both elements will be important when you assess
them for the role.
• If the role is purely business development, what type of
rapport and approach do you want to see provided to
potential customers?
How do you want to be perceived as a business through this new
role? Do you want to be seen as an efficient, professional sales
outfit, or a more relaxed, consultative organisation, or perhaps an
aggressive, highly motivated selling machine?
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7. • What is the current culture of
your business and are you
happy with it?
Do you want your new team
member to fit in with your current
workplace culture and team
structure, or would you prefer to
employ someone used to a vastly
different culture and behaviour,
who can help refine and change
your culture?
Create a checklist of skills, capabilities and experience
needed
Having sorted out what outcomes you want, the next step is to think about
the skills and capabilities a person would need to achieve those
outcomes.
If we look at our example of a business development manager, here are some
areas to consider:
•
What does the person need to have done in the past?
•
Do they need to have worked in this market before?
•
How much live experience do you require them to have?
•
Do they need experience in sales and business development, or are
you happy if they’ve been in service and want a change?
•
Do they need to have any specific technical skills, educational
qualifications or licences?
We’re not looking for a long list of capabilities and experience, or even the
‘nice to have’ skills, just the particular core requirements you think are
important for the role.
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8. Identify the non-negotiable critical strengths required
The final step in this pre-interview process is to decide which attributes are
non-negotiable critical strengths which a successful candidate must have,
versus the desirable but not essential qualities that can be covered by
other team members and/or developed with the candidate in time.
In our business development manager example, one non-negotiable strength
would be highly developed communication skills, while a desirable but not
essential attribute might be technical understanding of your particular brand or
product.
You might accept this initial weakness as a trade-off for good communication
skills, particularly if other staff members could support the candidate to
develop their technical understanding and they appeared motivated and able
to learn quickly in the role.
Interview time – are we there yet?
I know this sounds like a lot of planning and you haven’t even conducted a
single interview, but my strong advice is these issues need to be dealt with
by a business owner or senior manager before the recruitment
interview process ensues.
It’s much harder to retrofit this important information into a recruitment
process after the fact.
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9. Chapter 2: Seven golden rules for a
successful hire
You’ve done your planning, you know exactly what role you are recruiting for
and what skills a successful candidate will need.
Now it’s time to start the interview process.
There are 7 ‘golden rules’ you can follow to greatly increase the likelihood of
a successful recruitment:
1) Conduct a robust sourcing process
2) Share the job of interviewing and selecting
3) Be transparent with information about your business
4) Recruitment is not a one-way transaction
5) Don’t employ impulsively
6) Due diligence a two-way street
7) Have a well-defined on-boarding process
Conduct a robust sourcing process
If I can give one piece of advice, whether it’s for an internal appointment or
recruiting externally for a new role, it’s to conduct a robust sourcing process.
We’ve used the term ‘due diligence’ in other eBooks when talking about
assessing a potential business purchase. It is just as critical to conduct a due
diligence process on the people you’re inviting into your business.
As a business owner or manager recruiting for a role you should be asking for
referees prior to appointment and you should feel comfortable in making
contact with those referees and probing the performance and experience of
the candidate being considered.
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10. Sometimes there is an opportunity for a test or trial, but often that is as a
result of the list of candidates not measuring up to the criteria that was
originally set.
Better to wait than get it wrong
This can be a frustrating process because it may reveal you have no perfect
candidates, or you’re just not sure enough to recruit someone and you need
further testing and assessment.
If that means your target date for having someone on board slips by a couple
of months then, all other things being equal, it’s much better to wait than make
a wrong decision.
If the wrong decision is made, chances are your business value will be
eroded, either by the person leaving and impacting relationships with
customers, suppliers or team members, or there will be an impact on business
productivity, performance and culture while you as a manager take steps to
improve the performance of the individual you’ve recruited. (People
Performance will be dealt with in depth in a future eBook.)
Share the job of interviewing and selecting candidates
The recruitment process should
be managed by yourself as
business owner or senior manager,
with help from one other.
If the planning process has been
done well you’ve already developed
a checklist to assess individual
candidates, but we find it’s very
useful to have another person
involved, as a check from a
different angle as to the suitability of
potential candidates.
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11. Allow this other person to question candidates along the way and give
feedback on how they feel the candidate stacks up to the checklist of
requirements. Perhaps you could do the first interview and then they could do
the second, or vice versa.
Aim for objectivity
We all have our own prejudices and ways of interacting with potential
candidates, but what we’re trying to achieve is an objective, robust
assessment against the criteria and checklist you have developed.
It helps if you like the candidate you ultimately recruit, however liking them
as a person is not as important as respecting their capability and
knowing they have a strong probability of achieving the outcomes you’ve set
for the role.
Ask for help
If you don’t have the expertise in-house to manage all or part of the
recruitment process, then seek external assistance and advice, particularly
when recruiting for critical roles.
Remember, focus on aiming for first best.
Be transparent with information about your business
It’s important to be as transparent as possible and share as much
information with candidates as you can on both the business and your
expectations for the role you’re recruiting for.
This information includes some of your pre-planning work regarding the
outcomes you wish to achieve, the skills, capabilities and experience needed
to achieve them, and the critical components that are not negotiable in the
successful candidate.
Be prepared to discuss these openly with candidates.
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12. Don’t leave candidates in the dark
Often we’ve seen general managers, business development managers,
service supervisors, administration positions and other roles recruited without
a clear appreciation up front as to what the exact financial, operational and
business outcomes are for the role, or the expectations around behaviour and
culture.
How can individual candidates know these things if they’re not told?
An important indicator of a good candidate is also the questions they ask in an
interview.
If you haven’t shared some of this information, a good candidate will ask for it.
They may not have all the experience you’re after, but they’ll be asking the
right questions!
Recruitment is not a one-way transaction
A recruitment process is not just a simple, one-way transaction. It’s
about ensuring the
expectations on both
sides are clear up front.
Make sure you devote
sufficient time in the
interview process to
giving the candidate an
opportunity to talk
about their
expectations and
motivations for being
interested in this
particular role.
You need to understand
their career objectives and expectations moving forward, because as
individuals we all have personal and career motivations.
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13. Let’s look at an example.
You’re recruiting for a business analyst role.
You would like the analyst to be in the role for at least three years to
support other members of your team.
One candidate has all the qualifications, skills and capabilities suitable
and presents very well, but on questioning they indicate they’re really
interested in moving into a management role within 12 months.
They see the business analyst role as a stepping stone.
This may or may not be advantageous in meeting your requirements, but
knowing it prior to any potential appointment allows you to determine
how it might impact the long-term success of the hire.
Don’t employ impulsively
Many less-experienced business owners and managers find themselves
acting quite impulsively when recruiting and hiring staff.
Sometimes they’re referred by their network to a person looking for a job and
this person has a range of qualities and experience that could be useful for
the business.
The business owner doesn’t necessarily have a role that they’ve planned out
and documented, but they find themselves thinking about creating a role. Or
the opportunity presents itself for a direct hire without an open sourcing
process.
This is not necessarily a negative opportunity, but it can be fraught with
danger.
Recruiting someone without a clear understanding of the role, the
expectations, how it fits with the rest of the team structure and
operations, is tantamount to putting a bull in a china shop.
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14. (Employ) in haste, repent at leisure
Another common issue since the mining boom is employers in the non-mining
sector being faced with a shortage of well qualified and experienced trades
and engineering staff.
The inclination of some business owners less experienced in recruitment is to
grab skills because they have gaps that need to be filled and they can’t find
anyone quite suitable.
This is a difficult situation because I realise that sometimes, as business
owners, we need to make decisions and act quickly to meet commercial
demands or a customer requirement.
However I have seen many cases where these hires unravel, usually
within three to six months of the appointment, and they can do enormous
damage to the business in the meantime.
Due diligence a two-way street
We spoke earlier about doing due diligence on potential employees, but we
find it’s also good practice to allow the preferred candidate, before being
appointed, to do appropriate due diligence on the business and the people
they’re likely to be working with.
This needs to be over-sighted in a careful, sensitive way, but ultimately due
diligence needs to be a two-way street.
The preferred candidate needs as much information as possible about:
•
•
•
•
•
the environment they’re going into;
the culture of your team;
the way they will experience you as a manager or owner;
your explicit expectations regarding the outcomes you want from this
role, and
where the role fits within your expectations for the business overall.
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15. What form will this due diligence take?
Interview process – One of the reasons we say it’s good to have a
second person involved in interviewing is that it can give the candidate two
different angles from which to view the business, as well as help them get a
better idea of how they might experience you as the business owner or
manager.
Referees – Sometimes it’s appropriate to provide the preferred
candidate with other referees to talk to about the business. This can be a
sensitive matter and would only be appropriate where the role you’re
recruiting to is quite a senior one.
Preparedness to answer – If a prospective employee is asking
questions such as ‘how do customers perceive you in the market’, ‘what’s
your relationship with your suppliers’, ‘does this business have financial
strength’, or ‘where is this business headed in the future’, you need to answer
them robustly. These all very positive questions for a candidate, particular one
relating to a senior role, and it’s in your interest that they are answered.
Have a well-defined on-boarding process
The recruitment process doesn’t stop once the employee signs the
employee agreement and has their first day.
A professional recruitment
process, whether it be in a
business with three or four
staff, or 300 staff, should
always have a defined onboarding process.
It may last a couple of
weeks, or several months,
depending on the criticality
of the role, but in my
experience it is a key
element of recruitment
success.
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16. Aim for a smooth transition
We all know that a new working environment – no matter how good your skills,
capability and experience – will be different.
There will be a different culture, different expectations, even different housekeeping rules!
•
•
•
•
•
What are the access, close down, safety and security requirements for
day to day work?
Are there standard policies and business procedures I’m expected to
follow?
How are business expenses dealt with?
Is my office ‘tool-kit’ up and running? e.g. systems access, operational
understanding, etc.
How will I be introduced to key business partners, customers and
suppliers?
These are all critical issues if you want to give your new employee every
chance of success, regardless of whether the role has little or large
responsibility.
A defined and clearly planned on-boarding process may or may not be
documented (although a simple checklist is useful), but it does need to be
deliberately conducted.
On-boarding process an investment in productivity
If there are any mismatches regarding expectations, how individuals are
grappling with a new team culture, or perhaps a change of location, then the
on-boarding process is designed to discover those issues and deal with them.
Removing those distractions and mismatches will allow the individual to
more quickly get up to speed in delivering on the outcomes that you have
designed for the role.
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17. Chapter 3: There are good people out
there
We often hear business owners and managers say ‘it’s so hard to find good
people – we’ll just do it ourselves’.
But as we’ve discussed in previous eBooks, critical to building business
value is having the people resource that allows the business to deliver
sustainable returns and earnings.
If you find yourself throwing your hands in the air and saying ‘I’ll do it
myself’ because you can’t find someone suitable for a role, or you’ve hired
three people in 18 months and they’ve failed to stay or deliver the outcomes
you were after, you need to reconsider your recruitment process and
what you’re trying to achieve.
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18. It’s not you, it’s me
It’s probably not what you want to hear, but chances are the problem is not
with the employee. It may be with the way you’ve approached the process
as an employer.
There are good people in the market, they can be identified, they can be
recruited and they can ‘live happily ever after’ in your business.
In other words, they can meet your expectations as a business owner or
manager provided you are transparent in what your expectations are, you
conduct a robust due diligence assessment on their potential ‘fit’ for the
the role and you help them meet their own expectations.
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