Keeping your candidate pipeline full gives you the best chance of connecting with the best new hire next time you have an opening. That’s true for virtually any position within your company, but crucial for IT or other skills that are in extremely high demand.
If you aren’t constantly recruiting, you will fall behind on filling new openings. Starting cold with every new search drags out the process. Meanwhile, the position goes unfilled which could lead to productivity and morale problems and, even worse, thwart your company’s growth plan.
Fully-staffed is mission-critical
Growing companies continuously need more people, and attrition is a fact of life no matter how great an employer you are. People are moving more often from job to job, something that is out of your control. But you can be prepared to lessen the impact and keep your company moving forward.
It is far more effective to approach recruiting strategically – proactively – rather than reacting in a tactical way to each new need. That means your recruiting and hiring process must be continuously in play. Developing a consistent cadence will help you succeed.
How?
Accelerate your hiring process
Top candidates know what they want and they expect you to be decisive as well. If your review-interview-offer process takes too long (or it is overly convoluted), your top candidate will sign on elsewhere. A speedier hiring timeframe benefits everyone.
Create a high-performance culture
Expecting and rewarding excellence motivates and helps retain your best employees. That reduces costly, demoralizing turnover so you aren’t having to unnecessarily replace good people. A great working environment also inspires employees to help recruit more top talent to become co-workers within your organization.
Don’t wait to fire
We all make mistakes. The candidate isn’t working out for you after all, or your company isn’t working out for them as hoped. Move on! The longer you wait to sever the relationship, the worse the situation becomes. Prolonging the agony will not improve the situation, and a single person’s negative performance or attitude can quickly degrade the whole environment, spawning widespread disaffection and loss of people you really don’t want to lose.
Network proactively
If you learn of someone who sounds ideal for your organization, reach out to them even if you don’t have an opening for them right now. Planting the seed of interest now and periodically staying in touch could pay off handsomely later on.
Create a “hot list” of top candidates
Just because someone isn’t interested right now doesn’t mean they won’t be in the future. So stay in touch with candidates you really liked but who weren’t offered the position. These candidates may be a great fit for other positions that come available in the future, so don’t miss that opportunity to re-connect.
Likewise, if you’re interested in a candidate currently working on a finite assignment (common with IT projects, for example), confirm their future availability date and stay in touch as that nears. That way you can be the first to offer them their next position.
Network with the pros
Even with a sharp, knowledgeable, and well-connected talent acquisition team, trying to do it all yourself can be a losing proposition in today’s fast-paced hiring environment. Partnering with a sourcing firm such as Power-4 helps build your pipeline and keep it filled with talented, skilled people you would probably never meet on your own.
Tech placements are especially tricky. Aligning yourself with the right tech sourcing firm can assure you first contact with excellent candidates as they enter the market. Or even before. This gives you greater flexibility rather than having to scramble to bring on new people with hard-to-find skills.
Know your ongoing position profiles
Some jobs turn over more than others, and growing companies need to beef up certain specific areas to accomplish those growth goals. Keep those position requirements top of mind as you network, so you’re always ready to make a connection if an opportunity arises.
Share those position profiles with your sourcing firm partner, too, so they can also be on the lookout. They may be able to give you a “first look” at a candidate who may not be available now but would be an ideal match for a future position. Or someone who hadn’t considered moving but for whom your opening could be a game-changer.
The pressure to get positions filled can all too easily lead to hiring the wrong person and then having to start all over again. A consistent hiring cadence allows you to build your team efficiently, hiring the best people right from the start.