High Performing Organizations are Always On
I am a life long student. As such, I have seen and read a lot of strategic content on the subjects of Continuous:
- Learning
- Networking
- Sales
- Growth
- Improvement
- People development
- etc.
However, I have come to the realization that I see little on the subject of Continuous Recruiting.
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The Dream: Always On Recruiting
What would happen if businesses shut down their sales forces until they were in need of new sales? Sounds counterintuitive doesn’t it?!
Like sales, recruiting is critical to any business and (I believe) performs best when it is continuous. When it is Always On.
In sales, companies want new qualified prospects entering the top of the funnel all the time, so that the business can nurture them and drive a non-stop flow of new deals.
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The Reality: Transactional Recruiting
Most companies wait until they definitively need to hire new employees before they begin recruiting. Actually, that is not a true statement. Most companies wait until they have an executive level budget approval and approved position requisition, before they can say they can definitively hire a new employee and thus begin the recruiting process.
While this need-fulfillment or transactional approach makes sense in traditional business management, to include fiscally responsible budget aligned business execution, today is anything but traditional. We are in a new normal competitive environment that is renewing itself continuously – aka Ever Evolving.
Think about it this way: Would you want your sales organization to only look for new business when your company was in financial straits?
Then why would you wait to have the best of the best candidates lined up and ready for offers before you actually need to hire someone?
Wait for that key team member to resign or for that big deal to close before beginning to source and interview candidates and you find yourself behind, reactive and transactional. Now with the clock ticking and the pressure on, you may settle to complete the transaction of hiring and hire the best of the worst, instead of the best of the best. If you are a services business it can be even more impactful, vacancies often mean lost revenue.
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The Action: Always On Recruiting
- Rethink your human resource and recruiting strategies
- Make searching for great talent part of everyday operations – strategic operations
- Modify process, measures and rewards to support Always On Recruiting
Always On recruiting makes searching for great talent an every day, all the time thing. Of course, this means that you and your leadership team will have to be on top of emerging and ever shifting staffing needs. Leaders have to be the barometer. It is indeed hard to find what you don’t know you need. However, just like in sales, if you are always networking, prospecting and nurturing your funnel, you will always have qualified candidate flow.
Leaders have to be the barometer. Balance logic, intuition and gut and you can leverage Always On recruiting as a competitive advantage for your business.
How does your business approach recruiting — transactionally or strategically?