With businesses looking to build their way back to a stronger position in a post-pandemic world, it’s a surprise to see that talent, in certain circles, is rare. With businesses wasting money on talent that is best utilized elsewhere, companies inevitably have to work towards finding the right people. But finding the right people seems to be one of the most difficult things to achieve in the modern world post-pandemic. While there is a dearth of talent out there and a seemingly under-saturated job market, the fact is that an organization looking to bolster its potential needs to find the right person, and needs to find the right person now! But what are the best ways to actually do this? Is this something that can be achieved via sourcing talent through traditional methods? What do organizations desperately need to avoid when hiring executive talent?
Understanding the True Cost of Mistakes
The real cost of hiring the wrong person can hurt in many ways. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings can comprise the average cost of a bad hire. This type of money is a lot for anyone to throw away. The topic of employee retention is something so many organizations try to tackle, but with fair to mixed results. Because when we understand the true cost of our mistakes and understand that the equivalent of approximately 4 months of an employee’s salary could be our final bill on an employee who has done nothing, we must address the topic of hiring the right person, from a financial as well as a professional perspective. So what do we need to recognize at this juncture?
This is where, potentially, an executive search firm could help. Finding the right people is crucial, but also having a robust evaluation process that takes into account competency based on leadership assessments, reference checks, and behavioral-based interviews can be a major boost to help a company find the right person the first time.
Where Can We Access Top-Tier Talent?
Businesses have a lot to focus on at any given juncture, and when we’re on the lookout for the right talent, it can be a double-edged sword. From one perspective we’ve got to address the best resources, but we also have to understand the quality of those resources. Accessing top-tier talent can prove troublesome when you are going through resources that most businesses have access to, such as the open job market, not to mention the fact that it provides extra work for your in-house team.
Therefore, we have to have access to the right talent that gives us the ability to determine if these people are worth pursuing further. We need to overlook agencies and certain recruiters who say they have top-tier talent. The best approach is to find companies that can give you insights into the best performers, which saves you the hassle of liaising with potentially hundreds of unqualified applicants.
Having External Guidance
Your business has a lot to deal with. The HR department may find themselves in over their heads when it comes to hiring someone within a very specific skill-set, especially if it is a brand new role in the company. When you are in the process of filling a newly created position, this adds to the challenge. Filling the right position does not just include skills but it demands assessing the cultural fit, as well as providing you with the support you need to put strategies in place, like compensation, structure, and the appropriate candidate motivation criteria so you can choose the right person the first time. Therefore, we have to look outwards before we look inwards.
Hiring somebody with a very specific skill-set is never easy because it means we are looking for a needle in a haystack. The application process can be incredibly daunting for the employer as well as the employee, so when we are looking for the right individual, we have to form a close bond with an external company that can give us insight. The aforementioned executive search company can be an invaluable asset here because it will give companies external guidance and show them what the market is actually like in terms of potential candidates, but also help businesses understand what they are actually looking for! So many times, organizations seldom have an idea of what they’re looking for and may use the template of a role that already exists, but it’s far more important to craft a role from scratch, which is where external guidance can give any business a solid advantage.
Learning to Protect Relationships with Competitors
Every company is looking to hire the best talent. No doubt your contemporaries are doing the same and are potentially headhunting the same individuals. Looking for top-tier talent means that you potentially have to engage in a battle of sorts to get what you want, but the fact is that when you are undertaking this approach, you could be undercutting your contemporaries, which could cause you problems in the future.
Rather than engaging in a battle, finding external companies that offer discreet support can help protect professional relationships. Finding top-tier talent means that we still need to protect our business in as many ways as possible.
Saving Money and Time
Every company is looking to minimize its outgoings. The cost of sourcing, researching, and recruiting talent is increasing and can be a potential waste of time if you don’t hire the right individual. Recruiting the right executive or mid-level manager the first time around is never an easy thing to achieve if you don’t have the right resources.
As businesses are always looking to cut corners, when it comes to talent we could argue that we should spend a bit more time on it. In order to actually find the right people that do the role to the best of their ability and are a good cultural fit with the company, we should not necessarily operate with cutting corners in mind as this means we will always settle for less.
