#Hiring103: Picking the Perfect Staff Is the Secret Ingredient
“You had me at hello.”
Picture this: You’re sitting in front of your screen, the clock ticking and your fingers glued to your keyboard. You’re pressed for time, and you need to close a job opening in the next couple of days. You receive an email containing a great cover letter and the resume of someone who perfectly matches your candidate skill score. A couple of calls, a thread of emails, and a bunch of interviews later, your candidate is ready to be onboarded.
And then you wake up from your dream.
Being a recruiter is no easy feat, and breezy days are definitely a rarity. While hiring candidates quickly is critical, hiring candidates who stick around for a long time and become great resources for their teams is the ultimate dream. All of that is possible — as long as your team aligns with your vision.
Recruitment managers often get so tangled up in sourcing candidates that they end up spend less time on building their own teams to ensure all the processes — from attracting candidates to acquisition — run in a smooth, guided, and foolproof manner. Building such teams is the secret of the most successful companies.
Let’s look at a few common myths many recruiters believe when it comes to hiring for their own teams:
Myth No. 1: Teams Work Better When They Avoid Conflict
Recruiters sometimes think that being a good team player starts with agreeing to certain established processes — even if they have better alternatives. Many people assume they must put their own opinions aside to ensure there is no conflict on the team.
Truth: No process or strategy has ever been improved without a series of well-thought-out tweaks and enhancements. Conflict, when constructive, ensures team communication. The only way for a team to change courses and switch to the best option on the table is to first discuss, deliberate, and debate all sides of the situation. Hire someone who can add more value to what you’re doing, not someone who won’t speak up when the time is right.
Myth No. 2: You Can Only Be a Recruiter If You Have the Right Degree
The best recruiters are those who have deep knowledge of HR and strong academic backgrounds in the theory of talent acquisition and management.
Truth: The recruitment profession is all about instinct — the ability to judge candidates quickly to determine whether they are a match for your job. While academic qualifications can give someone a greater understanding of the theoretical aspects of talent acquisition, those qualifications don’t necessarily make you the best recruiter. Only experience can do that. Hire someone who is adept at quick decision-making and aims to ensure the time spent on recruiting every hire decreases gradually by the day.
Myth No. 3: Competition Among Team Members Helps Increase Productivity
Most recruitment managers have seen success and increased productivity when they incentivize their team members through competition. Whether employees are vying for money, perks, or a promotion, internal competition goes a long way in boosting team performance.
Truth: While healthy competition is okay, it can create friction in the team. Employees’ focus inevitably drifts from finding good candidates quickly to simply finding candidates faster than everyone else. Recruitment efforts become individual-focused instead of team-focused. For teams to work best, the strengths of each member must come into play and add up to one complete team effort. Hire someone who would fit into your team dynamic perfectly well.
Your clients trust you with their most important resource, and this makes recruitment all the more serious. Creating a recruitment team that supports your vision of finding the best candidates and building great teams is all that matters.
This is the last post in our special series focusing on hiring lessons essential for every recruiter. In our first post, we broke down the basics of effective recruitment. We then spoke about the art of team building in the second one. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading these posts. Keeping the tempo up, we have loads more updates and announcements coming, and we would love to keep you notified. Stay tuned with us.
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