#4: Out Recruit your Competitors
Companies get very frustrated when they cannot find people because there is a labor shortage of a particular skill. The frustration is not necessary. The solution to that problem is to become labor market competitive and then recruit more effectively than your competitors do. It's a simple solution that is very do-able.
You might focus on the cost of becoming competitive. We can help you do the calculations, but the cost of the work not getting done is often greater than the cost of paying competitively.
Pay is not the only issue. The quality of work life, the technology, the management, the environment, all have been shown again and again by research to be stronger drivers of both attraction and retention than money. But asking someone to work for a lot less than they are getting at their current employer probably will not be a winning strategy. Once you pay "table stakes", more money delivers a diminishing return and you can often win the labor market competition with the non-monetary elements.
A lot of recruiting is not done well so just having a clear, warm and compelling recruiter goes a long way. Research in fact exists that says you increase your chances of having your offers accepted if your candidate likes your recruiter.
Your recruiter also needs to understand what will attract your candidates. Selling them something they don't care about does not work very well. The vast body of attraction/retention research, including that done at Wentworth, gives you a clue as to what candidates want from their jobs, but asking candidates what's important to them is the best strategy, assuming that the company offers what the candidate wants. If not, one backs away. There is no deal to be made.
Here's a story to illustrate my point. Years ago, we worked for a utility, recruiting information systems professionals. IBM had just released a new database product. This organization had upgraded their computer systems and had installed this database but was struggling to find employees who knew how to work on it.
We analyzed the situation and realized that they offered a very special combination of characteristics. They were a utility, very stable and nearly 100% certain to be around for a long time. At the same time, they were at the leading edge of computer technology. We put the word out and attracted and hired just enough people who knew this new database to put one, as a teacher, in each major work group. Then we changed our branding of the job, offering the stability of a utility and training in the new database. We filled 51 jobs in the first year for about 10% of salary, approximately a third of what the utility had paid a contingency firm for the one hire they had achieved in the six months before they brought us in.
Other big organizations wanted the same people we were hiring, but we out recruited our client's labor market competitors.
There is more to good recruiting, of course, and the specific prescription for out-recruiting your competition will vary job by job. Give me a call if you'd like to chat about how to do it in your situation. I'm at 310 732 2301.
Thanks so much.
You might focus on the cost of becoming competitive. We can help you do the calculations, but the cost of the work not getting done is often greater than the cost of paying competitively.
Pay is not the only issue. The quality of work life, the technology, the management, the environment, all have been shown again and again by research to be stronger drivers of both attraction and retention than money. But asking someone to work for a lot less than they are getting at their current employer probably will not be a winning strategy. Once you pay "table stakes", more money delivers a diminishing return and you can often win the labor market competition with the non-monetary elements.
A lot of recruiting is not done well so just having a clear, warm and compelling recruiter goes a long way. Research in fact exists that says you increase your chances of having your offers accepted if your candidate likes your recruiter.
Your recruiter also needs to understand what will attract your candidates. Selling them something they don't care about does not work very well. The vast body of attraction/retention research, including that done at Wentworth, gives you a clue as to what candidates want from their jobs, but asking candidates what's important to them is the best strategy, assuming that the company offers what the candidate wants. If not, one backs away. There is no deal to be made.
Here's a story to illustrate my point. Years ago, we worked for a utility, recruiting information systems professionals. IBM had just released a new database product. This organization had upgraded their computer systems and had installed this database but was struggling to find employees who knew how to work on it.
We analyzed the situation and realized that they offered a very special combination of characteristics. They were a utility, very stable and nearly 100% certain to be around for a long time. At the same time, they were at the leading edge of computer technology. We put the word out and attracted and hired just enough people who knew this new database to put one, as a teacher, in each major work group. Then we changed our branding of the job, offering the stability of a utility and training in the new database. We filled 51 jobs in the first year for about 10% of salary, approximately a third of what the utility had paid a contingency firm for the one hire they had achieved in the six months before they brought us in.
Other big organizations wanted the same people we were hiring, but we out recruited our client's labor market competitors.
There is more to good recruiting, of course, and the specific prescription for out-recruiting your competition will vary job by job. Give me a call if you'd like to chat about how to do it in your situation. I'm at 310 732 2301.
Thanks so much.
John
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