Hiring shouldn't feel like a fire drill every time, nor should it feel like a series of disconnected transactions. At TalenTrust, we help you rethink your hiring strategy as more of an ongoing sales process. Though many companies come to us with a specific open position they are looking to fill (and we can certainly help them do that), we really encourage companies to take a step back and look at their broader hiring needs and growth goals in order to come up with a hiring strategy that promotes their long-term growth. Hiring for long-term growth requires a close analysis of culture and values in order to build a pipeline of talent that can be tailored to your needs as they arise.
A Different Approach to Hiring for Long-Term Growth
So when you are hiring for long-term growth, instead of hiring with a specific job title in mind, you should be thinking about what type of person and what skills would align best with your company culture. For instance, instead of waiting until you desperately need to hire a VP of marketing, and then advertising that position and interviewing only people who have experience as a VP of marketing, we help you discern what it is that your company needs most and then build a hiring strategy around that.
If you plan ahead, you might have several candidates in your pipeline who all have various skills and qualities that you feel match up with your goals. Then, when you do decide that you need a VP of marketing, we can help you further refine which characteristics fit best with the position and make the right hiring decision based on that assessment.
How to Anticipate Hiring Needs for Greater Growth
If you have big growth goals but don't even know where to begin in terms of hiring the talent that will facilitate them, we can help! We can help you discern your needs and create a plan for which positions and what types of candidates will best promote your long-term growth (in fact, as we note above, this is often the preferred approach-if you are desperate to fill a specific open position, it is much harder to be strategic).
A few examples of how this might work: your business is growing, and you know you will be signing some big new clients in 2016. This is a great time to bring TalenTrust on board. Working together, we might decide that what you need most is another account manager to handle your projected sales. Then we start thinking right away about that role and which attributes would fit that role. By the time the ink is dry on your new contracts, you'll have a planand likely several candidates--in place.
Or perhaps you are so swamped with work that you keep leaving new leads hanging. Hiring for long-term growth in this case would entail building up your sales team to address all incoming leads. Being specific about what you hope to achieve by increasing your sales force will help ensure that you are hiring the best candidates for the job.
Aligning Company Growth with Employee Career Growth
We've seen it happen many times: a company gets excited and starts expanding, but then they are befuddled when employee turnover and dissatisfaction start impeding their growth. This is where hiring people who fit with your company culture AND providing them opportunities for meaningful growth really make a difference.
Hiring for long-term growth can't just relate to growing your company's bottom line--real growth requires employees who will grow with you and be motivated to continue to innovate and think creatively about how to make your company better.
We worked with a company who came to us because they were constantly losing their entry-level techs. We did an analysis of the position and the reasons for turnover and realized that the techs didn't want to stay in a tough job that seemed like a dead end professionally. TalenTrust helped the company put a career development path in place and sought candidates with the attitude and aptitude to grow into roles of increasing responsibility. After this major shift in their recruitment and retention strategy, this client’s newly-hired techs were staying on-motivated by the promise of career growth, salary increases, and professional development.
No More Hiring Fire Drills
You already realize that scrambling for the perfect candidate once you are already desperate to fill a specific position isn't the best way of hiring for long-term growth. There’s is a better solution. If you're ready to plan your 2016 hiring strategy, TalenTrust can help you think through your growth goals and find fantastic candidates who will be with you for the longterm.