January
27 - February 2, 2003
The greatest challenge that small employers face in competing for talent
stems from their size. In manufacturing, higher volume results in greater
economies of scale and the same rule applies to recruiting. As an organization
increases the number of candidates it recruits & hires, it achieves
consistency in quality, cost and time.
For companies that hire new employees
sporadically, the opposite holds true. Every time they go out to the
market to recruit – they’re starting from scratch. Even
if a company averages one new hire per month, the recruiting process
is laborious and costly.
To add insult to injury, smaller companies
face the disadvantage of anonymity within the labor market. They rarely
have brand recognition among the general public and they don’t
appear on the “Best Places to Work” lists or other popular
job references.
You already know how to sell
Of course, there is always a bright side.
Small companies know how to sell! In fact, the tenacity and competitiveness
that is required for survival in this tough market provides a distinct
advantage to the micro employer. The key to unlocking this advantage
is to use traditional sales strategies to recruit. By creating a sales-focused
recruiting plan, even the smallest of businesses can successfully compete
with the region’s 50 largest employers to capture the brightest
employees.
Here are six easy steps that companies
can use to develop a sales-focused recruiting
plan.
1. Establish a recruiting goal for the current year. This is a fairly straightforward
task that identifies an organization’s current labor needs while projecting
its future requirements. A simple formula to use
is current opening
|
+
annual turnover + future needs. Suppose that a company needs to fill
2 new positions, and it currently has 32
employees with an average turnover rate of
25%. If they meet their sales goals, the resulting business volume
will require 3 new employees
by the end of the year. By using the formula,
this company can reasonably predict that it will hire 13 new employees
during the coming year.
This knowledge enables a company to take
pro-active steps in its advertising and interviewing.
2.
Identify your target market. In order to recruit best-matched candidates,
a company should understand the types of individuals who fit into its culture.
Regardless of individual job functions, people within a small group tend to share
common traits. A cohesive team can be built by matching certain characteristics
like educational background, personality and employment history.
3. Develop your message. Hopefully, your company already delivers a compelling
and unique message to its customer base. Why not use the same technique in selling
to the candidate? In a region with over 14,000 employers, companies need to differentiate
themselves in order to attract the best talent. Creating a unique message and
transmitting it consistently through your recruiting channels will draw a higher-caliber
(and more interested) candidate than traditional classified advertising.
Close the sale!
The first three steps help companies identify & attract the right people
to their business. The next three steps improve the likelihood that those people
will accept an offer of employment.
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4.
Perform a needs-analysis with your candidate. This is a typical area
of weakness in traditional recruiting practices. Hiring managers
are so focused on learning
about a candidate’s
previous experience that they often neglect to discover what motivates the candidate
today. By asking
intelligent questions, a sales-oriented interviewer can uncover a person’s
true career & financial goals. Hint:
this involves much more than learning a candidate’s salary range.
5. Customize the job’s benefits to the candidate – don’t talk
about the health plan & vacation days. An effective offer combines a thorough
needs-analysis with a strong benefit sale. Based on the candidate’s uncovered
needs, an employer can present the specific aspects of a job that will be most
appealing to this individual.
6. No sale is ever made without being closed. There are thousands of interviewers
who have been surprised by a “perfect” candidate turning down a “great” offer
at the eleventh hour. In order to hire the best people for your business, every
employee involved with the candidate should always be closing. Within the scope
of recruiting, this means they should be looking for any doubts or uncertainty
within the candidate and addressing it head-on. Remember that candidates (like
customers) do not always voice their concerns.
If an organization injects even half of these elements into its current hiring
practices, it will achieve measurable improvements in the quality of its workforce.
This plan recognizes that employees are on the same level as suppliers and customers.
They are trading value (their skills & time) for value (wages & benefits).
Good candidates need to be sold.
By
Kevin F. Flemming,
Director of Sales & Marketing
INTEGRITY Personnel, Inc. |
