While it’s too soon to anoint any one particular industry as the “savior” that will lead the country out of its current recessed state, the odds are pretty good that the technology sector is going to play a huge role in our eventual economic recovery -- and that this rebound will be fueled heavily by the ideas, energy, and innovation demonstrated by early-stage organizations.
While many entrepreneurial companies are rich in the area of inspiration, however, they are not often as well-versed in the field of recruiting and talent acquisition. In order to reach their full potential, smaller firms will need to think strategically and add a handful of key players to their org chart at just the right moment during their evolution. And yet, start-ups obviously don’t have the ability to absorb and survive hiring mistakes in the way that, say, Microsoft or Google can. The consequences of hiring the wrong person for a fledgling organization can be catastrophic. One wrong move and whack -- while the new hire flounders around trying to get up to speed, a new competitor suddenly jumps into the fray or the initial window of market opportunity slams to a close.
So the advice I’d offer early-stage and fast-growing companies is to treat the hiring challenge with the seriousness it deserves and familiarize yourself with the multitude of new and emerging ways that can improve your odds of getting the right person on board, when a suitable situation arises. Below are five tips along these lines that might help. We’ve come an awfully long way, after all, from the days of just “asking around” for referrals or running a want ad in the local newspaper.
1) Craigslist: It’s not just for buying crap anymore
While some may feel this is common knowledge, I’m still shocked at how many companies and candidates I meet who don’t realize that the popular Craiglist.com classified advertising site has a “Jobs Offered” section on it -- and that this job board has been the fastest-growing employment site in the country for at least the last year or two. Dirt cheap at $25 a pop, running a help-wanted ad on Craigslist will instantaneously expose your employment opportunity to millions of talented professionals around the country. Consider that at of the time of this writing, Craigslist (according to the highly-respected Alexa rankings) is the 11th most trafficked website in the entire United States -- putting it well ahead of other employment boards like Monster.com (160th) or CareerBuilder.com (123rd) in terms of its eyeball-attraction quotient. So if you’re hiring and looking to get the word out about your opportunity quickly, cheaply, and to a boatload of people, it’s hard to beat Craigslist as an option to consider. Keep in mind, though, that the potential downside of this much exposure is that you may receive a boatload of resumes, in return, so brace yourself and make sure you set enough time aside to sort, filter, and process the incoming candidate wave!
2) Have the guts to write realistic job advertisements
From my perspective as a career coach, one of the main reasons the hiring process feels so “broken” these days is that employers aren’t injecting much thought (or reality) into their employment announcements. Job ads, for the most part, tend to be formulaic, vague, and poorly written. Rather than clearly stating the desired results they want the ideal candidate to achieve, they fall back instead on listing a conflated mish-mash of skill and qualification requirements. Ironically, this scattershot approach tends to scare away more good candidates than bad ones, since it’s usually the good candidates who actually apply some analysis, humility, and common sense to the application process -- versus the desperate folks who apply blindly to each and every opening that comes along. So if your fervent wish is to find an HR professional who knows how to “build an entire HR function from the ground up” or a sales executive who “is confident they could get the company’s product placed on the shelves of Best Buy, Costco, and Sam’s Club within 180 days” then why don’t you just say so? Don’t merely imply it through a dizzying list of arcane qualifications.
3) Offer candidates new ways to “prove” their worthiness
Along the lines of the previous suggestion, I also believe companies need to abandon (or at least loosen up on) the idea that the resume presentation alone is the best proof of an individual’s ability to do a particular job. As has been proven time and time again, both empirically as well as in the day-to-day reality of many of our own backgrounds, as managers, the person with the “best resume” rarely equates to the “best hire.” Try shaking it up a little. Consider asking interested candidates to get more creative and show a little gumption in terms of winning the job. Ask them to submit answers to a few tough, but relevant essay questions. Challenge them to put together a sample 90-day plan to achieve the key objective at hand for the position. Integrate a “performance test” of some kind into the interviewing process, so that they have the chance to show you, not just tell you, that they have what it takes to exceed your expectations. In my opinion, this type of “audition” approach not only blows the resume out of the water in terms of revealing critical success factors such as resourcefulness and work ethic, but also levels the playing field by allowing some non-traditional candidates to rise to the top and prove themselves -- even if they don’t necessarily have the perfect pedigree on paper.
4) Lasso the potential of LinkedIn to find specialized talent
With more than 50 million professionals now on the LinkedIn networking website, there’s never been a faster or more powerful way to seek out the PRECISE skills sets you want to find in a candidate. While many people have a passing familiarity with LinkedIn, many employers still aren’t tapping into its awesome potential for sourcing the most hard-to-find candidate profiles. Whether you’re looking for a Ph.D. in a rare biotechnical specialty, a CFO with capital formation expertise, or a computer programmer who is a wizard at Ruby on Rails, I can’t think of a faster way to zero in on some terrific potential prospects -- including millions of “passive candidates” who might not be actively job hunting, but would be willing to consider an opportunity of the get-in-on-the-ground-floor variety.
5) When all else fails, don’t be ashamed to outsource!
Last but not least, despite the arsenal of handy techniques above, there are times when a company should simply throw in the towel and admit that hiring people is not one of their core competencies. Perhaps the resume-screening and interviewing process is sucking too much valuable time away from the company’s executive team. Or your organization simply doesn’t have the infrastructure in place to deal with the onslaught of hundreds of resumes that is likely to materialize in response to a published advertising effort these days. In these cases, it’s best to outsource and call in a pro. Thankfully, the staffing/recruiting world has evolved dramatically in recent years and there are now many more flexible arrangements available than there used to be in terms of how companies can partner effectively with recruiting firms. Additionally, thanks to the Internet and other technologies, I’ve observed that smaller boutique firms now have all the resources needed to compete successfully -- and more cost-effectively, in many cases -- with the “big boys” such as Korn/Ferry, Spencer Stuart, and the like.
So in closing, while my organization is in the career coaching space and doesn’t provide any formal services in recruiting or staffing, I feel we’ve gained an invaluable perspective on the hiring process by watching how the game unfolds on the other side of the desk -- and by working side-by-side with thousands of talented candidates as they decide which jobs to pursue and which ones to walk away from. From our point of view, the paradigm of the job market is changing rapidly, and it’s high time that the hiring process of many employers followed suit!
By Matt Youngquist
Career Horizons, LLC
Mr. Youngquist is a recognized expert in the field of career coaching, job hunting, and professional employment counseling. He founded the firm Career Horizons in 2004 to assist individuals in navigating successfully through today's challenging, largely uncharted employment waters. In his current role, he consults with clients at all levels on how to strategically manage their careers, explore their occupational options, and master the complex dynamics that are reshaping today’s world of work. Matt can be reached by email at matt@career-horizons.com or via his website at www.career-horizons.com.