Shawnee Love   •  November 2, 2018

A few weeks ago, we blogged on strategies for finding top talent.  We know this is a hot topic, because we get asked for help in this area every day. We also keep reading that Talent Recruitment and Management is a top priority for North American CEO’s. (It’s also what keeps those executives up at night. Read on if it does the same for you.)

With this blog, I want to dive into how to ensure your company is always recruiting, so you will have qualified candidates in your pipeline before the position is open.

That’s really the secret of the traditional recruitment agency…

Their sourcing and screening tacticians are working hard every day looking for people who might be a fit for future jobs.

It is time consuming and somewhat thankless work. You have to kiss a lot of frogs so to speak.

At the same time, continually meeting candidates is necessary if you want to have “warm leads” of candidates who might be interested in and capable of doing your future open position.

Frankly, most smaller organizations don’t have an in-house recruiter who can focus on bringing candidates in, so it is up to managers to continually be looking for talent.

Most managers disagree with that statement and want to pass the buck to HR to source and screen (and HR absolutely needs to quarterback that and provide all the tools and support they can), but here is what I have noticed:

• Many candidates want to know they are valued by their future bosses.  Bosses can show they value their future employees (and current ones too for that matter) by allocating time to talk with them and answer their questions.
• Candidates also want to know who they will be working for and whether they can like and respect that individual. That’s hard information to glean second or third hand.  It takes meeting and spending time with the manager.
• In our knowledge economy, people are critical assets.  Managers want a hand in evaluating which software will be implemented or equipment will be bought, and need to place the same attention on the people they will potentially be hiring too.

If the person leading the team (middle manager, executive or owner) isn’t invested in hiring the right person, it’s a lot harder to get the right person because HR won’t have the information needed to identify who is going to be the right choice.  More importantly, if the hiring manager isn’t invested, candidates will sense it and not be as excited about the company.

If you want to discuss how to upgrade your recruitment efforts, we are here to help!