Hiring Crisis: 3 Lessons To Learn While Growing Your Staff

Amid a nationwide hiring crisis, it’s never been more difficult to recruit and retain quality team members. Consider the top three lessons we’ve learned over the past three years to better manage the new hires you bring into your company. 

How To Find & Hire The Right Staff Members

Are you having trouble hiring right now? You’re not alone. 

Month after month, new reports hit the headlines showing that companies across the nation are struggling to fill their open positions, keep people on staff, and manage their workload. The past few years have hit the working world hard in many ways, and one of the emergent and long-lasting effects is the ongoing labor shortage. 

3 Lessons You Need To Learn About Hiring New Staff Members

Priorities Have Changed

Far and away, this was the hardest lesson we had to learn while trying to hire new staff members of late. The simple fact is that so many of the people you’ll want to hire may not have the same work/life priorities that they had two or three years ago. 

The mass pivot to remote work demonstrated the possibility of a different work/life balance for millions of people around the world. These people had become accustomed to living a life that often prioritized work over the time they spent with friends and family or in recreation. 

When they switched to remote work, most of them discovered they were able to accomplish the same work without having to commute, pack a lunch, or deal with the other trappings of conventional work. 

The issue is that, while you’d like everything to go back to the way it used to, it’s risky to mandate in-office work. It could lead to a toxic work culture, or a workplace with a high rate of turnover—or, more likely, both. 

To be clear, this doesn’t mean to have to stick with a total remote work model. You can compromise with a hybrid arrangement instead. A hybrid work model is a great way to increase workplace productivity, flexibility, and agility. 

It allows employees to utilize both in-office and remote working environments, which helps them become more productive and engaged with their work. In addition, hybrid remote work helps employers like us better manage costs as it reduces the need for office space. 

Furthermore, it increases employee morale and retention, as employees have more flexibility and control over their work hours. It helps to promote a healthy work-life balance for employees, which can lead to greater job satisfaction. 

Overall, hybrid remote work is an excellent way to increase workplace productivity and employee morale while reducing costs.

Don’t Rely On Employment Apps

On the more direct and practical side of our advice, we want to ensure you don’t make the same mistake we did by relying on employment apps. You know the ones we’re talking about: Indeed, ZipRecruiter, etc. 

At first, these seem like wonderful tools for a manager trying to hire new staff members. You simply post a job description, and applications start flooding your inbox. However, as soon as your start reviewing the applications and reaching out to applicants, you’ll start noticing the issues:

Application Volume

Getting hundreds of applications for your job really isn’t a good thing. First of all, it’s a lot of work for you and your team to review these applications. The small portion of strong applicants will be hidden in a mountain of bad ones. 

The core issue is that these apps allow applicants to automate the process of applying to a job posting. They can upload their resume, and tell the app to send it to any open jobs that meet specific criteria. They never even need to review the job they’re applying for; the first they may hear about it is when you offer them an interview slot. While this automation may be convenient for the applicant, it makes your job that much more difficult. 

Applicant Interest & Investment

The other downside to the automated nature of these apps is that they do not engender any personal investment from the applicant. Instead of scouring job postings boards and seeking potential employment about which they can be passionate and excited, applicants are completely removed from the process. 

This results in a total lack of investment from the applicant. In practical terms, this means you won’t necessarily get a response when you reach out to them. 

If you do get a response and schedule a time to meet with them for an interview, they may not actually show up. In my experience, more than half of the applicants to which we offered interviews (and who confirmed the appointment), did not show up. 

Overall, this resulted in hours and hours of wasted time for the management team. This is why we don’t post jobs on these sites anymore. We post through our social media, we rely on our staff for word of mouth, and we utilize industry-specific job boards. 

Be Patient

This may seem obvious, but we think it’s a valuable reminder. If you want to find a talented new team member with the attitude and work ethos that fits your company culture, it’s not going to happen overnight. 

It’s important to understand that building an effective team that has real longevity is no small thing. It will take months, if not years. You need to be prepared to sift through the many applications you receive, to interview potential applicants multiple times, and to provide structured training once you’ve made your selection. 

Is it a lot of work? Yes, of course—but it is an investment. 

Over the course of a year or two of intentional and careful development of your team, you’ll start to see the fruits of your labor. In fact, it will get easier over time, as your currently established team and the culture they embody will actively cultivate itself in new additions to your staff. 

Don’t Get Discouraged

To whatever degree you may find these lessons helpful, we know they don’t solve anything for you immediately. There is no magic solution to this problem. 

More than anything else, we want to make sure you don’t get discouraged. Don’t just hire anyone because you need a body to fill a position; that’s a band-aid solution, and it won’t last. 

Lastly, while we can’t help with the recruitment or training processes, our team can assist with your onboarding process. Setting up new computers, configuring secure accounts and remote access, you name it—we’re here to provide technical expertise if you need it. 

Book a meeting with us to get started.