Reach Out and Touch Your Next Employee

“Good people are hard to find.”  I hear that phrase all the time.  Did you know that finding good people is now considered the #1 challenge of business owners today, as reported in business surveys by Manpower, E-Myth Worldwide, and others?  Solving this dilemma will take a lot of adjustment in ways too numerous to discuss in this blog.  But one adjustment we can make as individual business owners is in the way we promote our job openings.

It used to be that when a job opened, an ad was put into the classifieds, generating several letters and resumes from interested candidates, two or more of which were well-qualified for the position.  Today, this method has much lower success.  First of all, fewer people are reading newspapers, much less classified ads.  Second, we don’t see too many well-written letters or resumes, if they are received at all.  And the qualifications for our jobs don’t match up as well as we may have seen in the past.

We are hearing more stories of business owners who are so frustrated with the hiring process, that they are giving up and putting any growth plans on the back burner, preferring no growth to the hard work of finding the human resources they could use to meet growing customer demands.  Actually, “hard work” might not be the right phrase.  What is really required is a new process for finding good people.  Our old tried and true methods aren’t working, but giving up doesn’t seem to be the right option.  How about we change our methods?

There is a very good book on this subject titled “Who – The A Method for Hiring”, by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.  It discusses some common-sense, but new, thoughts about hiring that I believe are required for success in talent acquisition.  One of the simplest strategies, is really not new, but also not frequently used, and that is networking.  Within our networks (and even more so now with social media) is a powerful connection to third and fourth degree contacts that puts a pool of millions of people within our reach.  Certainly within that pool exists someone with the talent and within the vicinity we seek.

I had a great example of this power recently.  A client had a need for an Assistant Manager in a specialty business.  Within my network, there were three people in the staffing field who I felt were positioned to know of someone that might be a qualified candidate.  I felt that their professional network had a good chance of containing the candidate we sought.  The surprise (and this happens all the time with networking) was that one of them knows a close personal contact who was a great fit.  The interview was set up, and the candidate was hired on the spot, all within two days!

Another client recently posted his job need on Facebook, and within hours had several candidates, three of whom were well-qualified, and one turned out to be a perfect fit.  Whereas in the past he might have felt the need to be more private about his job opening, the success of this tactic on such a public forum was immediate.

My point is that although we are used to a process of finding people that is somewhat impersonal and “confidential”, a more open and shared approach might be exactly what we need these days.  Your next great employee might be someone known by your employees, customers, suppliers, or even family and friends.  You will be surprised at what you find if you just ask.