I find it quite amusing when people say they can’t find good employees. It is not that I don’t understand the struggles they have, what however brings a smile to my face is the way they go about it.
In most cases they simply create a wanted ad and post to some online job board in the ‘hope’ that the right person will apply. The result is normally that they are flooded with hundreds of irrelevant and unsuitable candidates. Those that may make it past the initial resume screen typically fail at the next hurdle which is a pre-interview knowledge test.
Even people that manage to succeed in overcoming these hurdles generally don’t interview well and end up being rejected. If you add all that up it is a lot of time, effort and money for very little result. Why? Simple. Things work differently now.
Chances are that the good employees you are searching for are already employed by someone else. If they are any good they are in high demand and probably not really thinking of changing jobs. If they are they are most likely going to lured away to another post without even the need for an interview. It makes far more sense to fill a position you need with someone whom you already know can do the job doesn’t it?
So how do you find these good people? Same way you find additional business, networking and referrals. You need to be cultivating and growing your business AND contact network constantly. This will expose you to people who would some day potentially make good employees or know people who would make good employees. Chances are that they are already happily employed, you however need to continue to maintain contact until there comes a time when they are considering making a move.
Tools like social networking, especially in this case something like Linkedin, should be your weapon of choice in growing and maintaining your professional network. You can in fact use Linkedin as a recruitment tool where you can search for people based on skill and experience, connect and then stay in touch. You can also use Linkedin to post jobs and keep people abreast of what is happening in your business.
Bottom line? You need to be constantly recruiting as it is unlikely that good people are going to respond to job ads. They will be typically already be snapped up by someone who makes them a job offer the minute they consider a change and they do this because they take the time to stay in touch with these prospects. You need to let the world know what an attractive business you have and why people should want to be employed within it. Most importantly, the smart ones are leveraging technologies like Linkedin to make this recruitment process much easier. If you are doing things the old way with ads on job sites I hate to tell you that the good people have already been taken.
CIAOPS 