How did a company with less than 500 employees and virtually no TA resources accomplish so much, so fast? Here are two key strategies:
1. Adopt a “talent scout” recruiting model.
Recognize that hiring an employee is more than filling a role: it’s a sale. A BIG sale. Recruiters are not just selling a job but a new life, a new way to support their family and spend their time, and a new professional brand. To get recruiters appropriately motivated, align them to business lines so that they lived and breathed the goals and preferences of their hiring managers. As a result, recruiters organically began pipelining even without being told to.
Then develop a bonus system that incentivized recruiters like salespeople. Recruiters received bonuses based on the metrics most essential to a good hire: hiring source, employee referrals, seniority level of the requisition, and the objectives of their business line.
2. Build a REAL (i.e. scrappy) talent brand.
To build a talent brand, you need to take a different approach. Rather than trying to be everything to everyone.
Finally, they leveraged an often overlooked aspect of talent brand: media outreach. Partnering closely with the PR team and leveraging their spunky messaging, they secured coverage in The Boston Globe, WIRED, CNBC, and CIO.
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I was recently speaking at a National Convention in Palm Springs, California on our latest project “My Worst Hire & What I Learned from It”, as well as offering hiring tips to executives from around North America. This “Worst Hire” project came about after numerous clients shared with us their worst hiring mistake and more importantly what they learned from that mistake. From these discussions we interviewed 20 contributors and have compiled their stories and insights in to a book. You can review “My Worst Hire & What I Learned from It”
Hiring Tips
Speaking in Palm Springs I shared six short stories from amongst the 20 included in the book. After the talk I was asked by a few of the delegates to summarize four of the hiring tips (learning nuggets) that were shared during my talk.
Follow this link for a few hiring tips I provided to these delegates:
Job Simulation 