Is Your Business Experiencing Growing Pains?

A cornerstone of scaling up is having a solid team in place. It can be difficult for an executive to relinquish some duties and delegate. Still, it just makes better business sense to pass on lower-level tasks because their time is valuable, sometimes even priceless. Like a child suffering growing pains associated with a rapidly developing body, so too can businesses and stakeholders suffer a bit in the process of scaling up.

Once you’ve determined the division of labor and defined job roles, set priorities, it’s time to hire your dream team. 

Here are my top 5 tips to alleviate some of the growing pains associated with the hiring process.

1. Well-defined job descriptions. In this instance, less is not more. A thorough, detailed description of a position is important because candidates want to know as much information as possible before applying to ensure it matches their skills and interests.  This description may also be used to evaluate the progress and performance of the employee once a candidate has been hired.
2. Develop a branding strategy for your company, including corporate culture. In today’s information-saturated world, good news travels fast, but bad news travels at the speed of light. To recruit (and retain) quality candidates who are compatible with your mission, it’s essential that your company enjoys a good reputation – not just as a provider of a product or service to the general public or your corporate customers but also as an employer. I’ll pose a few rhetorical questions to consider as you develop your corporate identity:
   • How would you define your corporate culture? People want to feel engaged and enjoy what they do, getting the right people in the right seats doing the right jobs.
   • How do current employees feel about your company?
   • How do past employees feel about your company? (Did you cringe a bit when you thought about this?) Indeed.com allows employees to rate the companies they work for, with a star rating system similar to Yelp. While a poor review by a disgruntled employee may be easily explained, you may not have the opportunity to do so. Balancing the good becomes paramount so that the positives will eclipse the negatives.
3. Work smarter, not harder … why reinvent the wheel? You already have a great team, so why not ask your employees for referrals for job candidates? Some companies even offer bonuses to employees who refer a new hire. There are some compelling statistics for employee referral programs. For example, the time to hire is significantly reduced, as is the cost. Those are two key factors, but if you need further convincing, employee referrals minimize who is often a better fit in corporate culture.
4. Communication is key. According to CareerBuilder, “81 percent of job seekers say employers communicating continuous status updates would greatly improve their overall experience.” Clear expectations of the interview process, including how many rounds (and with whom), testing procedures, background checks, etc., are all important details to convey. If a stakeholder needs to be out of the office during a subsequent interview phase, it’s crucial to convey this to the interviewees – for one, it’s a common courtesy, but also because if too much time elapses without hearing from you, a candidate may move on with another company or accept another offer.
5. An oft-underestimated aspect of the hiring process happens after an offer has been accepted, which is onboarding. According to Zippia.com, “employees who attend a structured orientation program are 69% more likely to remain in the company for at least three years.” But the best statistic is that “78% of organizations invested in onboarding reported increases in revenue in the last fiscal year.”

 The doctor is in. If your business is experiencing growing pains, contact me today to see how I can help you.