Top 10 Recruiting Tips (2)

Look First at In-house Candidates

Providing promotional and lateral opportunities for current employees positively boosts morale and makes your current staff members feel their talents, capabilities, and accomplishments are appreciated. Always post positions internally first. Give potential candidates an interview. It's a chance for you to know them better. They learn more about the goals and needs of the organization. Sometimes, a good fit is found between your needs and theirs.

Be Known as a Great Employer

Pfau and Kay make a strong case for not just being a great employer, but letting people know that you are a great employer. Take a look at your employee practices for retention, motivation, accountability, reward, recognition, flexibility in work-life balance, promotion, and involvement. These are your key areas for becoming an employer of choice. You want your employees bragging that your organization is a great place to work. People will believe the employees before they believe the corporate literature.

Involve Your Employees in the Hiring Process

You have three opportunities to involve your employees in the hiring process.

• Your employees can recommend excellent candidates to your firm.
• They can assist you to review resumes and qualifications of potential candidates.
• They can help you interview people to assess their potential "fit" within your company.

Organizations that fail to use employees to assess potential employees are underutilizing one of their most important assets. People who participate in the selection process are committed to helping the new employee succeed. It can't get any better than that for you and the new employee.

Pay Better Than Your Competition

Yes, you do get what you pay for in the job market. Survey your local job market and take a hard look at the compensation people in your industry attract. You want to pay better than average to attract and keep the best candidates. Seems obvious, doesn't it?

It's not. I listen to employers every day who talk about how to get employees cheaply. It's a bad practice. Did I say, "you do get what you pay for in the job market?" Sure, you can luck out and attract a person who has golden handcuffs because they are following their spouse to a new community or need your benefits.

But, they will resent their pay scale, feel unappreciated, and leave you for their first good job offer. I have seen employee-replacement costs that range from two to three times the person's annual salary. Did I say that you do get what you are willing to pay for in the job market?

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