Several of my clients are recruiting at the moment, and I’ve been helping frame their thinking as part of the process.
Sometimes, all you really need to do is to hire someone who can carry out the same duties as the person who has left, but actually that is fairly rare.
Think of recruitment as an opportunity for you and your business to learn.
Perhaps you can recruit someone from a larger company, who will bring with them years of learning and experience. There will be things that they are used to that don’t work for you and your business, but there may well be ways of working and procedures that they know and you can adopt or modify to improve your business.
A similar raft of knowledge can come from someone who has worked outside your industry. What they don’t know about your business is often made up for by the external view.
These are the people who are like an annoying toddler, they keep asking “Why?”
Why do you do that? Why this way? Why not the other way?
They will challenge your processes and procedures as part of their understanding, and they may just shed some light on things that have evolved but are no longer really fit for purpose.
The second part of successful recruitment is to think of the person you need for the future, not just for today. That’s especially true for businesses that are growing, but applies to all. The world is changing, business is changing and people need to adapt.
The final part of successful recruitment is the induction program. If you’ve chosen the right people and they have the knowledge and skills to challenge the established ways, will they have the opportunity to do so – will your culture permit it?
The first 100 minutes, the first hundred hours and the first 100 days are useful milestones to think about your induction program.