Achieving success in business is all about people. When we say we love a company or a brand, what we're really saying is we love the work being done by the exceptional people in these organizations. People are the reason businesses of all sizes are able to attract and retain devoted customers and loyal employees.
That's why hiring the right people continues to be so important. Talented employees who do outstanding work are the secret ingredients that make a company great.
Because of the high stakes, hiring has long been rooted in fear—fear of getting it wrong. Making a mistake can be costly. A bad hire can undermine a department, delay a project, lower morale, damage the hiring manager's reputation and cost the organization thousands of dollars. To avoid these mistakes, many businesses have expanded and intensified the hiring process. Now, filling one job can take weeks or months, all in an effort to get it right the first time.
But there's a new way to hire that's fast, efficient and effective that I outline in my book High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant (McGraw-Hill, 2017). Instead of waiting for the right person to show up, leadership cultivates talent and watches for the right job to show up. Rather than waiting until a seat is empty to search for talent, the search begins before that job opens up. This approach requires leaders to plan ahead, lining up talented people before they're needed. Everyone involved in employee selection—executives, hiring managers, HR and recruiters—is part of an efficient process that fills jobs the day they become open.
To help you change counterproductive mindsets and eliminate obstacles that hinder fast hiring, take the following steps:
1. Create a blueprint of who's right for the job.
2. Generate a continuous flow of quality candidates.
3. Enhance management's ability to choose the best people.
4. Adopt interviewing methods that improve precision and speed.
5. Create a pool of ready-to-hire candidates.
6. Maintain a system that enables instantaneous hiring.
The old way of hiring—keeping a job open until the right person shows up—doesn't work in today's modern business climate. Not if you're a leader with an unfilled job. Certainly not if you're in HR and can't find enough qualified people. Definitely not if you work in talent acquisition and your best candidate was just hired by a faster-moving competitor. Time-to-fill is at an all-time high, and there has been no improvement in employee turnover. The old way simply isn't sustainable.
Participating in the new way of hiring will give your organization an edge over competitors who remain stuck in the hiring slow lane. They'll have empty seats; you'll have a full complement of talented people who do quality work. All because you've gained the ability to hire in an instant.
Originally posted on the SHRM Book Blog.