Hiring is one of the top five factors in a company’s success. Get ahead following these 5 steps.
1) Build an exciting company & culture
The best companies will most often attract the best people. So the first step to hire better talent is to build an exciting company that great people want to work for. One of the most powerful and sustainable motivators is the sense of meaning derived from the work you do. The excitement you get from building and doing something great that people will love.
Culture is another important factor, which will attract great talent. Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, once said: “Culture is a lot more like gardening than architecture”. Build an environment full of challenges in which employees can develop themselves. Recruiting for culture, not just for skills, is an important point.
2 ) Set a benchmark for quality.
Setting a benchmark for quality is essential. Define before your search, what you are looking for. Steve Jobs already famously said, “Make sure you’re hiring only A-players. Hire a few B-players and they hire B’s and C’s, and pretty soon the whole operation is going to pot.” Never compromise on your benchmark as employees will lose respect as soon as you do. You should know exactly what you want. Don’t hire average people and don’t just fill jobs as fast as you can.
3) Use all channels
Recruitment is a social business, so you have to be social to find better talent. Finding talent comes down to one thing – who you know. It’s about getting out there and meeting people, staying connected and spreading the word about what a terrific company you are. This is an important factor, which will never change over the years of growth. It’s all about meeting top talent, finding a couple of chairs and saying “Let’s talk.” Pinterest did BBQ parties in their early days and invited their friends and friends of friends. Great people will always work on something, so it is about timing and surprising them with a chance. Join meet-up groups to build a network and get closer to talent. It’s best to get out there, and look beyond LinkedIn, as 3 out of 4 users on LinkedIn are currently over 35 years old. Getting out and networking is one of the most effective methods of finding talent. Keep searching all the time on all channels. Try Twitter & Facebook to run campaigns and target your audience. Use the Chrome add-on Connectifier to figure out the email of a person and email them directly.
4) Everyone should do hiring
In recruiting, everything is about timing. Finding the right candidates at the right time. Therefore every employee in a company should always be looking out for great talent. Especially the CEO as the visionary leader will be one of the best persons to attract great talent.
It is also important that more people are involved in hiring decisions. Make sure you have others in the team, as well as employees outside the team, interviewing your candidate to assess him objectively. Subconsciously we make decisions about candidates and they are always wrong – therefore you need others to help you assess talent. Committees instead of the hiring managers make the final hiring decisions at Google.
5) Sell the vision
Vision is key in any company and is often what drives its success and is your recipe for greatness. Hire only people who share that vision and believe in it. Tell them why the position is so important and what they can get out of it. Be honest and open.
Author: Leon Mueller built two recruitment companies in Berlin, was growth manager at F6S and is now Co-Founder of Squelo, the next professional network, which lets users better share and showcase work and connect with talent and companies in a modern and simple way.
