One of the greatest challenges entrepreneurs must overcome when starting up or managing their businesses is #recruitment. How do you ensure that you have the right #people working with you? In Jim Collins’ book, ‘Good to Great’, he answers this question by saying, “to build a successful organization and team you must get the right people on the bus, get the wrong people off the bus and put the right people in the right seats.” Collins goes on to say, “people are not your most important asset.  The RIGHT people are your most important asset.” Red Scott said it another way,“hire smart or manage tough.” The reality is a weak candidate rarely becomes a great employee, no matter how hard you work with or invest in the person.

 

Finding the right #talent can be an overwhelming task and one that should not be taken lightly. I advise #business owners to outsource recruiting to #HR #consulting firms (such as Afritalent Connect) to source for the right employees. Often times when the owner is removed from the recruitment process, it makes the #hiring process less ambiguous and more objective. When business owners recruit there is too much emphasis placed on the interaction between the candidate and the interviewer and too little on the candidate’s ability and motivation to do the job.

The role of a HR professional is to separate the impact of “getting the job” (personality, first impression, appearance, confidence, etc.) versus the person’s ability to “do the job” (drive, team skills, achieve objectives). HR #professionals also align with business owners to define the #organizational culture (if it doesn’t already exist).

Organizational culture is essentially the personality of an organization. It consists of the attitudes, values and beliefs within the organization that is shared by all employees. It governs who speaks to whom, what behavior is considered appropriate or inappropriate, how decisions are made, and who gets what perks. In other words, culture is the “way we do things around here.” Knowing the organizational culture is the first step in the right direction to hiring the right staff because culture and recruiting are associated with employee attraction, selection and retention.

From an attraction standpoint, culture is primarily about the brand image a company projects. This attracts people who will thrive in the organization and repels people who would be more effective working elsewhere. Another reason to recruit around culture is that while job demands and requirements constantly shift, a defining characteristic of culture is that it remains constant in the face of change. A person hired based partly on the fit with an organization’s culture is more likely to continue as a valuable company resource, even if the position originally hired for ceases to exist.

 

When recruiting for the right talent, seven tips to keep in mind are:

1. Don’t use traditional job descriptions. Top people don’t look for jobs based on their skills and experience. They look for jobs based on challenges and opportunities.
2. Make the job description about the real job. Define what people need to accomplish with their skills and experiences.
3. Design your advertising and sourcing system based on how the best talent looks for jobs.
4. When interviewing, dig deep into the person’s major accomplishments to observe trends of growth and patterns of behaviors. Then compare it to the performance profile.
5. Hire people who are both competent and motivated to do the work. To assess true motivation, look for multiple examples of where a person excelled and the underlying environment and circumstances.
6. Use the interview to collect information and not to make a decision. Put your emotions on hold. Share the information with a panel before deciding on the best candidate.
7. Strong recruiting skills are essential to hire top talent. Don’t rely on the transactional approach to recruiting based on money, charm or pushing the candidate to accept.

Step 4 talks about digging deep when interviewing a candidate and compare it to a performance profile. What is a performance profile and how do you create one? A performance profile defines the results a potential employee is expected to achieve in its role. To create a performance profile:

1. Define major objectives – determine what a person taking the job needs to do over the next  6 to 12 months to be successful. The major objectives should not exceed 3.

2. Develop sub objectives – identify 2 or 3 necessary steps to achieving major objective.

3. Ask the following questions –

• Will anything change or upgrade next few months?
• What are the biggest challenges on the job?

4. Convert each critical skill of the job description into measurable performance objectives.

5. Convert technical skills into results. Define how the technical skill will apply to the job.

6. Understand team skills. Draw a work chart describing the p

eople the person will work with.

7. Understand management and organization objectives. Not only are you building a team, but

group activities need to be managed to ensure that all milestones are met on time and within budget.

8. Understand long-term planning and strategy issues. Involve critical and forward thinking.

9. Benchmark the best.

• What do the best people do in the job differently?

 

It is important to note that when creating a performance profile, you are describing the job and not the person. Most job descriptions emphasize skills, duties, responsibilities, and experience. It’s better to understand the expected outcome of the job rather than inputs. To attract top talent and motivate them focus on the work that needs to be done and give them room to do things “differently”.
Below is an example of a performance profile:

Experience and Skills

• BS degree, MBA is a plus
• 6 yrs. experience in consumer products
• Good team skill is must

Desired Results, Deliverables

• Upgrade the product marketing and new product launch process
• Develop new online & direct distribution channels
• Coordinate all product launch activities with procurement and marketing teams.

Tags:  business Consulting Hiring HR Organizational Culture People Professionals Recruitment small business Smart Hire Talent