Life is simple, until you add people

Life is pretty simple, until you add people. That’s where things get messy and complicated. 

But without people, it’d be a lot less fun and you’d get a lot less done. 

Plenty of entrepreneurs find success as a solo act. They juggle everything within their companies and know exactly where each project or task sits, in theory. Unfortunately there’s not much scalability in that model. If growing your business is the goal, you’re going to have to grow your team. 

Growing a team management leadership Executive Recruiting Hiring Growing Company Start upThat can be the most frustrating part of being a leader. Understanding what skill sets you need should be easy enough, but then you have to make considerable investments of time and money to attract, train, and retain the people with those skills and qualifications. 

How do you add people without adding headache?

You don’t, but there will be headaches that get removed as well. You just have to acknowledge that with more people comes more potential for conflict, drama, and mistakes. BUT a team can accomplish more than an individual. Remember the African Proverb: “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”  

Here are 5 things we can focus on to minimize the headaches and maximize the rewards for everyone when hiring people. 

1. Be intentional. Crafting a hiring strategy that will work for your company takes thoughtful planning and purposeful action. Passively posting a job description online and expecting to get the attention of the best candidates in the talent pool isn’t going to net the results you want in most industries. What are you looking to accomplish by making a new hire? How much would it save you to reduce the time it takes to identify and attract great talent? What will making a bad hire cost you? Are you willing to make an investment up front that will save you that hassle, time, and money? 

2. Examine processes. Overthinking and over complicating are sometimes what humans do best. How can you be constantly mindful of ways you can streamline your procedures and processes to make everything as smooth as possible with the goal of providing your leaders and candidates with the best information and experience possible to help them make great hiring and career decisions?

It can be easy to get stuck in a legacy mindset where you keep doing something because that’s how it’s always been done. Ask yourself when the last time those approaches were updated and if they’re really serving your business goals in today’s world. It’s worth making the time to look for new approaches and tools that will make life for your team easier. Better yet, assign that task to one of your talented team members, giving them an opportunity to shine.

Recruiting Building Team Growing Company Hiring Executive Search Critical RolesIn our company we have a saying: “break a few eggs.” Identifying pain points, redundancy, and inefficiencies enable our teams and leadership to address it and remove roadblocks. We love when people try new things, find better approaches, processes, or tools. Have you encouraged your team to break some eggs?

3. Communicate well. This might seem like the simplest point, but it may also be the one most people stumble on. Isn’t it just talking to people? Don’t you talk to people pretty much every day? Sounds easy enough, right?

Except communicating intentionally with people is hardly ever as straightforward as you want it to be. Consider what channels are easiest for each individual and what would best serve the company needs. For recruiting efforts, this includes centralizing/streamlining job descriptions, job posts, interview scheduling, feedback, and decision making on hiring.

No matter how you decide to coordinate communication, ensure everyone understands each other’s roles and the expectations through the interviewing and hiring process. Ask intentional questions. Be clear on the goals and value of each position to the company, potential hires, and existing team members. 

4. Have accountability. All the best processes and communication in the world won’t do you any good if you don’t also have a structure in place for accountability. Identifying reasonable deadlines and metrics to measure success are vital if you expect to see positive growth of your team. Things like time to fill, number of submittals, source(s) of candidates, specifics around employee experience, employee retention, etc. all paint a picture to help your leaders make great hiring decisions and have visibility to help hold each other accountable. Little things like having a target hire/start date helps to create the urgency within your team to make sure they get it filled with the right talent in a timely manner. How are you tracking recruiting success now?

Celebrate Win Leadership Employee Retention Motivation Recruitment Company Business Growth5. Celebrate wins. Recognizing victories, even the small ones, will let people know you see and appreciate their accomplishments. No one will put in their best efforts if they don’t feel like anyone cares. It doesn’t even have to be complicated. From a simple congratulations on an excellent hire or acknowledging a great job on sourcing or scheduling candidates in a timely manner. There are always little things that have a major impact on the recruiter, which translates to an excellent candidate experience.

It’s easy for business leaders to get passionate about profitability and growth. To facilitate that growth, they’ll have to get just as enthusiastic about developing and collaborating with a great team. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together.

Ready to get a little messy and build a team that will grow your company exponentially? We happen to already know some of the best and brightest candidates. Let’s talk about what your needs are so we can match you up with your future star employee.

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Humans Doing is an expert team of highly skilled recruiters specializing in filling critical tech and leadership positions for growing companies. Our greatest measure of success is the success of our clients and the candidates we place with them. We help people make great hiring and career decisions. Our team is ready to partner with you to find the right people for the right roles.

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