Not finding the right employee for your business? Maybe it’s not them … maybe it’s you. 

At Barfield Revenue Consulting, we work with a variety of managers who have an ideal vision of who they want for their key hire. And that’s fair. After all, you’re hiring someone to help your business grow and to be more productive, right? This is a critical decision. The wrong hire can cost a ton of money, impact company culture, and waste your most precious resource – time. But more often than not, you spend several weeks looking and screening and interviewing, yet you fail to find the right fit. What’s going on? Here are three reasons why you might not be finding the right employee. 

1. You don’t have a recruiting strategy.

Large corporations that hire people constantly are likely to have a repeatable process in place. Adding someone new to the team is regular practice and thus routine. But if you are a small, growing business – like the lion’s share of our clients – you can’t look at large employer “X” and recruit the way they do. For smaller and even mid-sized companies, hiring is not a weekly activity. When it’s time to hire, managers tend to look around and say, “Well, what did we do last time?” They’re dusting off whatever process they used and giving it another go. Posting a job online, seeing who applies, hoping the answer is in that initial pool, etc. Interestingly enough, that recruiting strategy is unlikely to work a majority of the time.

If your team is hiring, think about the following:

• Do you have a well-constructed definition of the job? If the role is new, your organization may struggle to outline exactly what this person will do along with the expectations tied to success. Now, you don’t necessarily need a templated job description, but your team needs to agree on what this person will do and how performance will be measured. 
• How do you plan to find applicants? Consider how you’ll be reaching out to let people know that you’re seeking a new team member. Employee referrals are a perfect place to start. After that, consider whether you are using free or paid job boards. Are you posting the job on your website? Are you utilizing social media? Are you attending events and networking? Do you need to connect with an external recruiter who can be out there hunting on your behalf every day?
• If you post the job, do you have a follow-up strategy? For example, what do you do if 500 people apply within the first few days? Can you realistically review and respond to everyone? If not, can you deal with the possible negative candidate experience that may occur because you don’t have time to follow-up? On the other side of the coin, if you post the job and you get very few applicants, what’s your strategy then? 
• And before you post, please strategize about your needs. Are you ready and willing to wait for the ideal, unicorn candidate, or do you need someone now? If now is the key driver, but candidates aren’t matching up with the job description, are you willing to adjust expectations, or will you simply wait it out until the ideal candidate happens by? 

2. Your wants and needs don’t match the market.

Position needs are another reason why companies struggle to find the right hire. There is the salary you want to pay for this new person, and then there is the salary you need to pay in order to land this new person. For example, we recently worked with a software startup that wanted to hire “Enterprise” salespeople. But as we discussed “Enterprise” folks and the salary level that title equated to, our customer realized he would need to recalibrate. He instead advertised externally for an “Account Executive.” What’s the impact? Well, there is a difference between the person our client is seeking and what his money will get him on the open market. He wants and needs a particular type of profile, but his budget is only going to align with a certain level of hire. The person he’s likely to land now will not have the ideal amount of experience closing enterprise-level deals, but this CEO realized quickly that he needed to adjust what he wanted and focus more on what he could afford to acquire. 

If you’re not finding “the right” candidate for your job, take a look at your wants and needs versus what the market is providing. Are you willing to be flexible? How long can you afford to leave that job open (cost of the posting as well as the cost of that vacancy to the business)?  Clients who are thoughtful and open-minded about the whole process have the greatest hiring success. Don’t pass on someone who checks eight of the 10 boxes on the job description while you wait for the purple-striped unicorn that checks all 10. 

3. You don’t understand the marketplace.

Before you hire, take a look around. What’s the market like right now? Are there people out of work in your niche and job searching with urgency? Or is it a candidates’ market, one with statistically-low unemployment, meaning employers are the ones feeling desperate?

Right now, it’s the latter for most industries. That means you need to consider everything you’re putting out there – your job write-up, overall compensation package, benefits offerings, remote flexibility, etc. It’s a lot harder right now to find viable folks, meaning you may have to compromise on certain experience, background, and ability expectation factors in order to get someone in the door.

Talk to your peers and other business owners in your industry. What has worked for them when recruiting? What hasn’t? Is your instinct about target salary matching up with what others are offering for like roles in the market? Does your job description match the skill sets of interested job seekers? Do free posting boards work for others in your field or are they going straight to paid resources? Doing this type of research will absolutely save you time, money, and headaches in the hiring process. Conversely, if you attack the market without working knowledge and/or an executable, proven strategy, you will get frustrated – and you will fail.

If you’re struggling to find sales and marketing employees for any reason, please contact us for help.

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Salespeople and marketing people aren’t in the same department or discipline, but they absolutely must work together. However, in many companies, there is tension between the sales and marketing teams. In this episode, Will and George discuss why the two teams don’t always collaborate and why they should. Will also talks about:

• Do the good salespeople make for good marketers? Vice versa?
• When you’re consulting with small companies – particularly startups in tech – how do you advise them around this issue?

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Unfortunately, recruiting fantastic employees for your company isn’t as simple as posting a position online. Potential outstanding team members are checking job boards, sure, but they’re first utilizing many other and more creative avenues to find the coolest job opportunities. That means your search to uncover the ideal people to fill your open roles is going to require some atypical recruiting tactics. But which ones will actually help you draw in awesome folks?

The Time Investment of Recruiting

Depending on the reputation and brand value of your company, you may not have to spend a ton of time recruiting. Hot names and fun environments draw a crowd. If you aren’t a well-known, eye-catching employer, though, how will you get people to stop, to read your online ad, and to then reach out? The goal here is to widen your pool of applicants and inquiries and to make your company stand out as a cool destination to at least investigate. If you aren’t the place everyone has already decided they want to be, what can you do? You’re going to have to start by putting some time – and creative effort – into recruiting.

Pick Us! Creative Ways to Recruit

Recruiting takes many forms, and like anything, there are trends and phases. Tried-and-true methods will always exist (asking employees for referrals), and there are some things you do because they seem to be the accepted norm right now (advertising online). But here are three additional, non-traditional recruiting strategies you should absolutely implement consistently. Without a doubt, at least one of these tactics will help to generate some buzz about your company among job seekers.

• Social Media – Companies are using social media for business communication as well as recruiting. Caution! Don’t simply treat social as an avenue to post your latest job. The idea here is not to focus on the actual job opening. Instead, utilize social channels as a way to share fun photos and videos about the people who work at your organization, for example. Make your recruiting posts about the overall culture and experience available at your company. Maybe share a collage of images from a Friday when you catered lunch for the entire staff. People can always find your open positions on your “Careers” page or via web-crawling employment tools. Don’t just use social as if it’s just another job posting resource. Social media (for those who consume it daily and live there more than anywhere else online) is much more about “feeling” and “associating” with people and places. Make yourself a magnet for interest and talent.
  
  
• Career Fairs – Sure, these seem like “old school” recruiting. But if your team needs some recent college graduates or early-career talent, don’t sleep on modern-day Career Fairs! Vendors are often invited to set up at no cost. And forget the stodgy old college campus library settings. These days, a lot of Career Fairs take place in cool locations. They are designed much more like open networking events where attendees can interact with companies as well as peers, grab a complimentary beverage and a snack, and connect on various levels with impactful professionals. Think of Career Fairs as an interactive, in-person branding strategy, and go into them with the goal of meeting some new people and expanding your network of valuable connections. Even if the potential candidates you meet are not the right answer for your job, they might know some awesome people to refer – and they will happily send them along to you now that they have met you in person and enjoyed the exchange.
• A Company Event – Rent an event space or clear away some tables in the large conference room and host a social gathering. Offer free drinks and snacks as well as a chance to network. Post about it socially and encourage your employees to share the event details with their friends (particularly those that might be solid referrals for hire). Ensure that the event is themed around what makes working for your company fabulous. Maybe even set up some games or raffle off some prizes. Ever-increasing numbers of employees are making career decisions based on both the image they have of a company and what they believe the experience of working there will be like. Help show them that you are amazing!

Companies that are thoughtful and creative about their recruiting efforts will attract more and better talent. Period. Why not use social media and in-person events to really amp up the number of people who you engage, both directly and deeply? Good experiences and positive vibes can spread very quickly.

Need help with recruiting? Reach out to us to get started.

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Why hire an external recruiter when you can go find candidates yourself? In this episode, Will and George talk about this frequently asked question. Many companies handle their own hiring. But like anything, there are pros and cons to managing the process internally when compared to finding some help. Will explains some examples when companies who already handle hiring will work with a recruiter, and how teams like his fill in the gaps for smaller ones.

Outsourcing some or all aspects of recruiting makes excellent sense in certain situations — and in others, it does not. We get asked quite frequently, “Why should I pay a fee to a recruiter instead of handling the hiring myself?” Fair question. Honestly, what it most often comes down to is the monetary value of time.

Cost: Money vs. Time 

What is the best use of your workplace time, and what is the financial impact of your time on your business/company? These are critical questions to answer when it comes to any decision related to outsourcing. If your role directly impacts company revenue, or if you are a high-level company executive — is your time best spent working on tasks that take you away from the thing(s) that the business truly needs you to be doing daily? Should you use work time — or even worse, precious personal time — doing something you could outsource? What is the cost of your lost time on the company’s business development and growth goals?

When it comes to recruiting, the role of hiring often falls to a manager/leader who has plenty of urgent and business-critical things to do — things that help the company generate more revenue, operate more effectively, etc. Hiring is going to cost you, no matter what. Time is money, regardless of how you slice it. So is it a better use of time and money to keep everything in house, or does it make more sense to outsource recruiting support, either occasionally or entirely?

Let’s think about: 

• What is your company spending to post ads online? Have you studied the cost per hire of using online tools?
• What is the value of your time as an hourly breakdown? How many hours are you investing in recruiting, and what is that cost to the business?  
• Hiring a contingent recruiter means there is zero financial impact until a hire is made and someone begins work. 
• Honestly examine the definition of “best.” Recruiting professionals should be the “best” at what they do. They focus all day every day on delivering top talent quickly and effectively. That level of expertise should free up their clients to use their time to focus on the things that they do “best.” “Best” use of time is critical.

Impacts of Company Size

When it comes to the decision to outsource recruiting, needs and utilization certainly differ depending on company size.

Large Companies — 500+

Companies with 500 plus employees certainly have an internal Human Resources team and often a Talent Acquisition team as well. When it comes to companies and hiring-related staff headcounts of this size, the decision to outsource recruiting remains a cost vs. time analysis. On the cost side of things, an HR and TA team of five or more people might have close to a $500,000 payroll impact on a company per year. So why would an organization then agree to take on additional recruiting expenses? 

• First, large companies often outsource hiring in situations where they are seeking temporary or contract staff. An organization may only need additional team members for a specific project or a set period. Outsourcing to an agency and having those temporary employees on someone else’s payroll is a smart business decision.
• Additionally, a large company may reach out to external recruiters when they have a very challenging hire, which is often referred to in the industry as a “unicorn” or a “purple squirrel.” The person they seek is very niche and specialized and may not be scanning job boards or be found within a company’s network of connections. If a company’s internal recruiting load is already substantial and there is one particular job — or more — proving extremely difficult, it often makes sense to outsource. Use internal recruiting’s time on those positions that are most fillable.
• Also, if a large company is expanding rapidly and needs to hire a significant number of people by a predetermined deadline (end of year, end of quarter, etc.), they will often turn to outside recruiting resources for support. The priority in these situations is to meet the hiring goals successfully — and on time.

Mid-sized Companies — 50-500

Companies more in the medium size range, especially those on the smaller end of the scale, may only have one or a few HR professionals on staff, and little to no dedicated talent acquisition personnel. Generally, these mid-sized company recruiting teams do not have enough bandwidth to manage all components of HR while also overseeing recruiting effectively. There is only so much time in a day. 

• In these cases, it, of course, makes sense to outsource for “unicorn” roles as well as during times of compressed, bulk hiring, and/or when project-related temporary staff is required. No difference here as compared to large companies.
• A lot of companies in this middle range often have small, overburdened HR crews, and many of those teams might not count Recruiting among their list of “best” skills. When that is the case and recruiting pops up as a top, painful priority, it’s time to outsource.  

Small Companies — <50

Small companies typically don’t have any internal HR or TA, leaving hiring on the plates of managers who very definitely have other essential, “best” use of time responsibilities.

• A Sales Manager, for example, should be focused on developing revenue-producing staff members and closing deals as opposed to reading dozens of applications and potentially off-target resumes. In that case, this hiring manager’s time is better spent on business development activities that directly impact the company’s bottom line. 

Pain Drives Change

Regardless of time or cost, pain is what ultimately drives change. This is very true when it comes to the dynamic of outsourced recruiting.

A critical open position remaining unfilled causes pain. An unmet hiring deadline causes pain. An internal recruiting staff that is not equipped to satisfy company talent acquisition requirements causes pain. Wasting money causes pain. That’s when external recruiting can step in, save time, end pain, and make sure that everyone involved is spending money effectively and focusing on what they do “best.”

If you are having recruiting-related pain, contact us to quickly and effectively connect with your next incredible hire.