Fast away the old year passes … and with the fourth quarter rapidly winding down, you need to be ready for whatever hiring challenges come your way in 2016. For many HR pros, this means vowing – once again – that their time in the new year will be spent less on putting out staffing fires, and more on proactive planning and building for the future.
What can you do differently to actually realize your annual HR goals this time around?
Hire Proactively
Make it your New Year’s resolution to avoid reactive hiring. This is what happens when your business has a sudden customer challenge or wave of unexpected, business-critical vacancies, and you find yourself scrambling to staff up with the first warm bodies available. Does it sound painfully familiar?
- Hire in the direction of your company’s future. Anticipate potential business issues and the related effects on your workforce. Implement a plan to build your bench strength and stay ahead of the hiring curve.
- Put the right people in the right roles. This helps ensure that your company will function better and can put its focus on what matters most: being productive and profitable. Hire at least six months out at a time, with the goal of staffing for where you want to go, instead of backtracking and fixing where you’ve been.
Hire Stronger
Hiring great talent starts long before you need to bring them on board. For success in 2016, that means deepening and strengthening your talent pool now.
- Have a plan. Your workforce plan should be in place three to four months ahead, addressing 80 percent of your hiring needs for the following quarter. If not, you won’t have enough good people when you need to start interviewing.
- Build performance profiles. Top candidates – active or passive – want to know what they will be doing before they’ll even discuss the possibility of a job change. Create strong performance profiles before even opening a job requisition.
- Maximize your quality of hire. Predict QOH before making an offer. This requires that jobs are clearly defined as a series of performance objectives, and a candidate has done comparable and exceptional work in a similar business environment.
- Every job should represent a non-monetary increase. The basis for any career move needs to be the sum of the increase in job stretch, job growth and job satisfaction. If this equates to at least 30 percent, compensation will be less important and success and retention rates will be significantly higher.
What better time than now to partner with a specialized staffing firm as you pave the way for successful sourcing, recruitment, retention and staff development in 2016? Read our related posts or contact the PrideStaff Fresno team to learn more about how we can help you make this happen.