Leaders Recruit and Retain Simultaneously
So many of my clients are hiring right now that I thought a focus on hiring and recruitment was in order.
The only thing worse than unwanted turnover is…well…wait, nothing is worse than unwanted turnover! Okay, there are some worse things, but turnover is costly, a colossal waste of time and downright depressing for leaders who can barely keep their heads above their workload as it is.
One way leaders decrease turnover is to do a much better job of managing expectations with new hires before they are hired. While it is important to sing your company’s praises and to paint a nice picture of the future, it is much more important to first paint a realistic picture of the most difficult aspects of the job. Yes, even in this tight job market.
Ask your best (and worst—hopefully former) employees what the most difficult or disappointing part of their job is/was and make sure that new hires not only know about it but tell you how they are going to cope with it. For example, if prospecting strategies in your industry yield one sale out of 100 conversations, then be up-front with candidates and ask them to submit a written plan to you on what their prospecting strategies will be if they are hired. Or if a large portion of your revenue comes from a B2B clientele who are a high-maintenance group of politically motivated sycophants, then create a case study describing a typical, complex scenario and ask applicants to react and respond. This way you manage expectations while also testing their ability to deal with the reality of your organization.
Don’t worry that you may lose some seemingly “good” candidates in the process because the ones who soar through your process and get hired will stay longer.
The American Management Association estimates that “the cost of hiring and training a new employee can range from 25 percent to 200 percent of annual compensation. Costs include customer service disruption, emotional costs, loss of morale, burnout/absenteeism among remaining employees, continuity, and institutional knowledge walking out the door.”
