I found myself watching one of those ‘property search’ style shows the other day and was reminded just how similar the search for employees can be to that search for the elusive, ideal property.
I think, particularly for small businesses, the similarities are even more clear and here’s why:
- You, the purchaser/employer start out with a lengthy and perhaps not all that realistic ‘wish list’.
- You quickly learn that you will need to compromise, but in what area, by how much and at what cost?
- It’s personal – typically you’re recruiting a new staff member for your own business, your brand, your ‘baby’. Just like typically when you purchase a house, it’s your money and you’re spending it for you.
- The risks are high if the decision is wrong.
- You are ultimately the one who deals with the consequences of a wrong choice, or wrong compromise.
- At the end of the day, you’ve worked your backside off to get to this point, and you want to have your cake and eat it to, you don’t want to compromise – you want it all!
So how do you know whether you are looking for a rare needle in a haystack, or in fact you are looking for an impossible dream and need to compromise and move on?
Walk into the process with a clear understanding of what you are looking for and why.
It sounds odd, but understanding why you need or want certain skills will help you to further drill down and understand which skills, experiences and competencies are essential and which others would be great to have, but you could ultimately live without
Write yourself a values document for the new hire.
This is something I never learned in my years as a recruiter, but a rather clever business advisor shared this with me and having used it myself in my own small business, I think it’s fantastic! What you do is make up a list of the values, beliefs, experiences, skills, qualifications, etc that your ideal new hire would have. What this does is allows you to clarify in your mind those ‘warm and fuzzy’ traits which will be most important to the individuals success within your business and your role, and gives you a great framework to assess all your applicants against. Let’s face it, you will often find yourself saying that you liked a number of applicants, but each of them holds different strengths and weaknesses in terms of their experience. This is where this sort of document can make all the difference. If their values and beliefs don’t align, no matter how good their experience is, it would be destined for disaster.
Know where your target market is – and where to find them there.
What I mean is, know where your ideal applicant looks for work, which websites they trawl, which publications they read and what networking meetings and groups they’re likely to be at. But timing can also be everything; advertising for a role targeted at a ‘mum wanting school hours who used to have a high end corporate career’ in the middle of school holidays is probably not ideal – they’re busy!
Allow a realistic amount of time.
Of course, we all always want everything immediately, but sometimes it can take days, and possibly even months to find the right person. Perhaps a temp or contractor can help you get through the urgent stuff in the meantime.
Be open to change and think outside the box!
You have your wish list, but does it all have to be done by one person? Or can the tasks be broken up and completed by two or more part time, casual or contract staff? Sometimes it can be better to have people working in their areas of expertise, rather than trying to do all the tasks you want, some of them not always that well.
