Great Offline Recruiting
“Just walk up to the manager, give him a firm handshake, and hand him your resume.”
Hiring has changed. The old ways to find employment are pretty much dead. However, the old ways of hiring can still work, if you’re willing to update your mindset.
ConnectedHR prides ourselves on building multigenerational workforces. We’ve already discussed how to find whom you’re looking for online. Offline hiring is a whole different ballgame.
Job Fairs
Job fairs are great. The key to a successful job fair is finding one that’s worth your time.
Universities are always throwing job fairs. They’re often targeted at specific majors, like an engineering or business job fair, which means you know your crowd is what you’re looking for. Furthermore, the college will often send attendees advice on how to dress, act, and prepare their resume. So, your applicants are typically prepared. Lastly, these events will almost always have a dress code, which means that the students who aren’t properly prepared can’t even get in.
College job fairs are a win-win-win. The students find jobs. The college gets to say they work with local businesses. You hire someone.
School (college and high school) Partnerships
This is extremely industry and company dependent. Obviously, an Army recruiter or a trade apprenticeship program absolutely want to reach high school kids. Obviously, a tech firm or auditor wants access to promising soon-to-be-grads. Make sure this is for you.
A School Partnership is often something students look for when choosing programs. They want access to scholarships and preferential selection for internships. You may be a guest speaker at certain courses, which puts your company in front of your hiring pool. They’re amazing.
That said, partnering with a school requires investment. You’ll need to commit time and money to it and ensure that the school itself makes the program known to students. Check out the marketing that the school dedicated to such partnerships. Make sure you have the staff. This can be a great way to create a community or a complete waste of time.
Internal Promotion
Why are you even headhunting?
Constant outside hiring can be demoralizing to employees on your workforce. If you can always find someone better outside your company, your current people may not be getting the right training or opportunities to improve. People have to show initiative and talent, but you want to see it unless you look.
However, you must be familiar with “The Peter Principle”: the tendency for people to be promoted based on their prior success until they are in a position they do not excel at. A great assistant becomes a salesperson. A great salesperson becomes a manager. A terrible manager never advances and drags down their department. When considering the accolades of a promotion candidate, ask yourself if the qualities and skills that made them good at their current position are all they need to excel at their next one. If the answer is no, train them. Maybe they can’t be trained- that is when you look outside.
Some people will only hire people who have worked for them before- they have no talent for hiring and value loyalty over skill. Some people are looking for someone hot- they are a liability. Some employers only work on referrals (it’s who you know) – this often fills a workplace with dishonest tension that prevents people from improving and deadweight from being removed.
If you have any questions about hiring or want to hire us, give us a shout. Thank you for reading.