Don’t Rely on Luck for Hiring
“It is a great piece of skill to know how to guide your luck even while waiting for it.” – Baltasar Gracian y Morales
There are 52 cards in a standard deck of playing cards. In blackjack, the idea is to get a combination of cards that add up to 21. The odds of being dealt blackjack are about 1 in 20 hands or 4.83%. If you double the deck to 104 cards, your odds actually go down to 4.78% probability of being dealt blackjack. And you are paying money for each possibility that a deal will result in a winning blackjack. You are obviously being dealt many more losing hands than winning hands and it’s costing you money to find out. Yes, there is some skill and playing the numbers and odds involved. A lot of it is luck.
Do you treat your hiring process the same way? Do you pay to view hundreds of resumes and applications hoping the winning card will be in there? That costs you money to post the job, costs you time to review resumes, coordinate and conduct interviews. And if you bet on the wrong person, you can spend a lot of time and money training someone only to replace them in a month or two. So let’s talk about how you can shift the odds in your favor when hiring. Don’t rely on luck for your hiring needs.
Have a Plan
One of the most important things you can do to have a successful hiring process is to have a plan in place. First, how are you going to find the candidates? Do you have an internal HR team? Will you be using a recruiting firm? Will you be posting it online?
Once you find candidates, what is your interview process? You need to determine who will be conducting the interviews, what is the interview medium, and how long is the overall process? For example, you are looking for an Acumatica ERP Implementation Consultant. You have a 4-step interview process. Joe Smith conducts a phone interview first for an overall assessment. Joe passes the candidate to Jill Thompson for a deeper dive into the candidate’s technical skills through Zoom. When Jill gives the thumbs up, the candidate moves on to a group interview for a culture fit assessment on Teams. Finally, the candidate has a Zoom meeting with the department head for a final approval. Having this clear plan of action in play is essential to moving the process along and keeping interested candidates engaged.
Using a Recruiting Firm
Unless you have an HR team dedicated to posting jobs, vetting candidates, coordinating interviews, you’re probably going to want to use a Recruiting firm. And there are many reasons why. According to TOGGL Hire, the average time to fill an IT position is 50 days. Of course, that varies based on several factors, but the average is 50 days. Using a recruiter can help keep that process to a reasonable amount of time. According to an article by Robert Half, 23% of candidates lose interest if they don’t hear back with 1 week after the initial interview. Recruiters act on your behalf to keep the lines of communication open, to keep track of your candidates, and to drive forward the overall process.
Saving Time
Another way a Recruiter can save you time is sifting through hundreds of resumes. According to Glassdoor, each corporate job opening attracts 250 resumes. At DyNexus Recruiting, we’ve seen double that, triple that, or more for job openings. Just as in blackjack, the more applications and resumes you get, your odds actually increase that you could miss the best candidate. Unless you have a team dedicated to reviewing each one. At DyNexus, we screen each resume to ensure they are the right fit. We then pre-screen the interested candidates before presenting a very few select candidates to you. And it’s not by luck that you see these candidates. Recruiters are constantly looking for better ways to source for qualified candidates. They are always learning new ways to do their job better and faster for you.
Saving Money
Working with a Recruiter can also save you money. TOGGL Hire also noted that small business owners spend around 40% of their working hours on tasks that do not generate income, such as hiring. If you have a dedicated internal HR team, it is estimated that it costs around $17,000 of time and resources to hire a new candidate. If you don’t have that HR person, that time and money coming from you. Some Recruiters earn a % of the new hires’ salary. Others, like DyNexus Recruiting, offer a fixed rate for recruiting efforts.
Guaranteed?
Let me ask you one final thought regarding the benefit of using a Recruiter. After you have invested all that time and money and effort into finding and hiring the right person, what guarantee do you have that they will stick around? Terrifyingly, you’d be correct if you said none. Imagine putting all that into finding, vetting, hiring, and onboarding someone only to have to do it all again. Nearly every Recruiter offers a guarantee of some kind. At DyNexus Recruiting, we offer a 120 day guarantee. If things don’t work out with your new hire for any reason in the first 120 days, we’ll replace them for no additional charge.
Every open job position inherently comes with its set of challenges. The most important thing you can do is have a plan in place. Who is writing the job description and posting the job? Who is reviewing and vetting resumes? Once you have candidates, who is conducting the interviews and how? Are you using internal resources or a recruiter? Having these answers before you get started will greatly increase your odds of getting the best candidate in the shortest time. Being prepared means you don’t have to rely on luck for your hiring needs.