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5 STEPS TO HELP YOU RECRUIT THE BESTPEOPLE TO HELP YOU GROW YOUR BUSINESS

cheat sheet by SAM CHANDLER

Recruitment is vital to growth. However, get it wrong and money is not the only thing you

sacrifice. You stand to lose time, reputation and possibly the self-esteem of a fellow human.

Today’s lesson comes to us by way of Nitro’s Sam Chandler – someone who understands

the importance of scaleable recruitment practices. He competes for talent in the highly

competitive tech space, against household name brands and global behemoths.

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CONTENTS IN THIS CHEAT SHEET:1. Finding the right people

2. Hiring is a discipline

3. Measure and monitor

4. You WILL occasionally get it wrong

5. The recruitment process doesn’t end with a handshake

Watch the video

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01. FINDING THE RIGHT PEOPLE

The first thing you need to know is that effective recruitment means turning your existing staff

into advocates.

Get your team involved. No one understands your company culture as well as your current

successful employees. They are the ones most likely to find others with the right mindset to

join your team.

Word of mouth is the best way to find new recruits. Your best people know the best candidates

for your business, simply put. An ad on a job board won’t cut it alone, anymore.

Consider incentivizing your employees to become recruitment advocates. A referral program

that pays your current employees for sourcing talented new hires is a great way to keep a

steady influx of talent flowing into your organization.

Remember: it’s better for company culture (as well as employee retention) to offer a referral

bonus, than it is to pay a headhunter!

ACTION ITEM:

Empower your evangelists to fill your roles for you. Grab a sheet of paper and write out a list of the ideal recruitment evangelists currently employed within your organization. Also, remember that customers make great recruitment evangelists, too.

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02. HIRING IS A DISCIPLINE

The hiring process is a discipline -- one in which there are no shortcuts.

If you compromise your hiring process, what are you compromising in the long run?

Recruitment works just like a sales funnel. You may have 100 people apply, 80 might proceed

past the application submission, 50 through the next stage, 25 the next and, ultimately, you

hire just three new employees. Just like incoming leads measured against conversions, the

volume of applicants may be measured against the number of new hires brought onboard.

Make sure you have at least three stages in the overall recruitment process:

• Phone screening

• Face-to-face interview

• Follow up interview

Additionally, put each recruit to a practical, consistent test at some point in the process. If you

are hiring an engineer, give the candidate an engineering exam. If you are hiring an accountant,

hit them with a few curly numerical tests to get past.

Be mindful that labor standards require you to implement the same process for all employees

interviewed with in a hiring round – so consistency must be top-of-mind for recruitment.

To streamline this process, implement an applicant tracking system (ATS). An ATS works a lot

like a customer relationship management (CRM) application. Instead of tracking engagement,

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02. HIRINGIS A DISCIPLINE

Hot Tip:Let us reiterate that you just cannot afford to take shortcuts. If you make one bad hiring decision, fair enough. But if you keep making the same recruitment mistakes, they start to pile up – to the detriment of your organization.

bounces and conversions, though, an ATS tracks rounds of interviews, feedback, and practical

tests completed by the candidates applying to work at your business.

ACTION ITEM:Use an ATS, such as JobVite, to manage the recruitment process

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Click to watch the video

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03. MEASURE AND MONITOR

You cannot improve anything if you don’t bother to measure your results. You need to

track and measure every aspect of your recruitment process.

One way to do this is to ask each prospective hire for feedback, whether they land the

job or not. This is just like reaching out for a customer testimonial. You can even solicit

candidate responses via email, just like you would a customer.

Requesting feedback also demonstrates that you are diligent in your recruitment efforts.

This will send a highly favorable signal to winning applicants, as well as demonstrate to

those who don’t get the job that you do care about them.

At the end of the recruiting process, it’s a good idea to survey all candidates to ask them

what they think of their experience applying for a position at your company. This can

expose opportunities for improvement on your side of the recruitment process.

ACTION ITEM:Ask the following question of every candidate, even if you reject them –

“How did we do? Could we have managed the recruitment process better?”

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04. YOU WILL OCCASIONALLYGET IT WRONG

There is a reason employment contracts have a new employee probation period.

The reason: mistakes will happen, despite your better efforts.

Recruitment is an exercise in hardships – trial and error. You will take missteps, but you can

recover from them with a little strategic preparedness.

You will, occasionally, make a bad hire. It happens in every organization in the world. How you

approach it makes all the difference.

The sooner you act on under-performing employees, the better. Talk it over with the new hire.

Let them know clearly what is expected of them, in plain language.

Don’t broadside them with a sudden termination – it’s not only a negative thing to have to deal

with, but terminations typically cost companies money.

ACTION ITEM:Be swift to act! You will know if it’s not working out. Pay attention to the signs.

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05. THE RECRUITMENT PROCESS DOES NOT STOP WITH A HANDSHAKE

First impressions count.

Find ways to make the new recruits’ first day, first week, and first month truly matter.

You have to put time and energy into the onboarding process for each employee. You want each

new recruit to understand the company as well as their own goals and milestones.

This can have a strong effect on the success of the recruit. You have to hold up your end of the

deal to give every new employee a solid start.

Have a one-on-one with each employee each week to assess where they are at, performance-

wise, and let them know where they stand.

• Consider using what we like to call “The Sandwich Approach”:

• Start by talking in terms of what the employee is doing right

• In the middle, discuss the areas in the employee needs to improve (be specific)

• Conclude on a different positive note

See what we did there? This is a subtle motivational tactic that will keep your employees from

feeling bruised by the weekly one-on-one sessions.

ACTION ITEM:Remember the sandwich. Feedback is important for setting expectations in good times and when things aren’t working out.

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IN SUMMARY:1. Empower advocates

2. Hiring is a discipline

3. Measure and monitor

4. You will occasionally get it wrong

5. The hire doesn’t end with the handshake

6.

Got all that? Be sure to check out the links mentioned from the video recording.

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Sam ChandlerBitten by the entrepreneurial bug at a young age, Sam started his first company at 16, while still in high school, and his second at 21, while attending university. After founding Nitro with several friends in 2005, it is now one of the fastest-growing companies in the world. Sam leads a team of Nitronauts across the US, Australia, Europe and Asia, and every month, more than eight million people in nearly 200 countries use Nitro products.Sam is on a permanent leave of absence from Melbourne’s RMIT University, where he studied business, after moving to America to establish Nitro’s global headquarters in San Francisco. On the weekends you’ll find him skiing, cycling, running, and riding vintage motorcycles.

Click to watch the video