Your business is growing, and it needs people to support that growth. You’re given a brief to hire a lot of new people, for a variety of positions, and now you’ve got targets to hit. There’s pressure to make it happen because your business can only grow if its workforce does – so how do you cope?
If you’re an HR Manager or internal recruitment specialist, you’re going to be given a huge block of work if you’re the first person in that role in your business. Because of that, you need to find ways to make your life easier – to ease the pressure of making the hires you need more manageable.
The Pressure Is On
Companies that are rapidly scaling find themselves with a whole host of positions to fill. Let’s say a small startup with a founder and a few core team members secures investment. That investment is given with the goal of growing the business. To achieve that, they need more people to make it happen.
When this is the case, one of the first hires is going to be an HR or hiring manager who can take on the burden of onboarding and make it work well. If you’re that person, your target, straight out the gate, will be to get the key people into the business that are going to facilitate its growth. This could be developers building products, salespeople pushing products, or administrators supporting the increased day-to-day work.
Whoever you’re looking to hire, two things are critical – you get the right people, and you do it quickly. This task is particularly daunting as an HR professional if you’re first through the door because you’ll also have every other typical HR task to take care of. Whether it’s looking after existing employees, working on the company’s employer branding, or organizing events – you’re going to be stretched.
At this point, it’s critical to reach out to your C-level executives and ask them for support. You need a budget to be able to hit targets, and you also need their direct input on who to look for to grow the business, and how to go about achieving their sky-high hiring targets.
More For Less
This is the tricky part, you don’t always get the budget, or even worse, you don’t get the help you need. C-level needs to be involved in the process because there is a much higher chance of attracting someone to a role if the C-level is involved.
If you need to hire people, your first port of call is going to be your own network. But that will dry up very quickly, particularly if you have a lot of people to hire. The next best source of candidates is going to be the networks of your C-suite. If you’re struggling to get support from C-level, then show how their connections could directly impact the success of your hiring drive.
Beyond that, you’re going to need tools which help cut down on how long your tasks take. That means getting a seriously good Applicant Tracking System (ATS) in place, as well as having a way to make candidate sourcing deliver you the top talent from the best recruiters – that’s Hireport by the way;).
Minimizing the time to hire, and the cost of hiring can be significant pressure, especially for scale-ups with even greater hiring targets. Don’t let them get on top of you though. Find the right tools, get the right support, and make it a success.