Anyone who has ever been in a position to hire employees knows how difficult it is to find the right people. Too often, employers find themselves in situations where they need to replace someone quickly or add staff, and they don't have time to do the due diligence to recruit the best people. Other times, it seems like the best people just aren't out there, or they end up going to the competition.
Jeff Jensen understands these issues and he suggests ways to resolve them by recruiting at the forefront of your business processes. He's been recruiting people for over thirty years for various companies he has owned or where he has held executive positions. Now, he shares his experience and his methods for success in his new book What a Hoot! Let's Recruit!
Plenty of Jeff's advice and information can be used immediately to start making a difference for your business or organization, even if you have no plans to hire in the near future. You should always be looking for good prospects who will fit into your company's culture and help your business to succeed. Jeff walks readers through all of the ways you can find recruits, many of which you probably never considered, including networking events, asking for referrals from others, using social media, and making your company attractive so people will want to work there.
Then Jeff moves into more specifics about the hiring process, such as interviewing and negotiating with a prospect. Having conducted many employee interviews myself, and admittedly having made some bad hires, I greatly appreciated all of Jeff's advice and wished I'd had this book to read years ago when I was in a management position. He covers everything from when are the best times to interview, to how to read and mirror body language with interviewees, handwriting analysis, and which questions to ask. He also discusses how to negotiate, when to make an offer, when to increase an offer, and what to do when a candidate is leaning toward going to work for a competitor. Most of all, I appreciated Jeff's information on how to win over a candidate by showing how much you appreciate his or her time coming in to discuss a potential career with the company. He discusses how to create the "Wow" factor for prospects, part of which includes expressing gratitude to the prospects' spouses for sharing their partners' time with the company.
Of course, it's no good to hire the right people if once they start, they discover they don't like working for you. So Jeff explores how to create a culture where people want to work, how to get rid of people who don't fit the culture, and how to show your employees they are appreciated. Jeff's employee retention skills shine as he discusses the more than fifty ways he has shown his appreciation of his employees, as well as why it's important to promote from within.
Personally, I found the networking chapter one of the most helpful. Jeff provides tips for remembering people's names, opening conversations, and how to think outside the box to see new possibilities for ourselves and our businesses. Possible recruits for your company are everywhere if you just look, as Jeff reveals:
"By placing yourself around people who are making things happen, you move further away from your routine of typical acquaintances and expand your environment to one of unforeseen relationships that continue to multiply. I see a lot of recruiters who sink into their own small comfortable environment. If you continue to do that, you will always get the same results.."
Another part of the book I found valuable was the discussion of understanding the different generations who are in the workplace. Jeff goes into detail about the different beliefs, work ethics, and expectations of Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Gen-Xers, Millenials, and Generation Z. Knowing how to communicate with employees from these different generations and how they will expect to communicate with each other will make your workplace run more smoothly and help you in your hiring and employee retention efforts.
Finally, I briefly want to mention Jeff's focus on the importance of momentum. The problem most of us have is we get excited about something like recruiting after attending a seminar or reading a book like What a Hoot! Let's Recruit! Then after maybe a little success, we stop our efforts. Instead, Jeff tells us how important it is to keep the momentum going:
"Too many people will stop and take a break after they meet some goal or objective. When your competition thinks it deserves a reward, it takes a break. If you take a break after each small success, you're robbing yourself of the momentum you can achieve. You have just beat a deadline and gained a tremendous amount of energy and confidence from that action-so take advantage of it and make the next step."
While Jensen doesn't have all the answers, he offers plausible strategies for recruiting that will make your company better in the long run.
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