What You Need to Do to Be a Strong Recruiter at a Growing Company
Working in recruitment can be an extremely rewarding career. Helping your organization thrive by identifying and hiring the right employees can provide you with the satisfaction of contributing to the company’s success.
However, recruiting isn’t without its difficulties. In fact, the more successful the company is, the more difficult it can be to fill new roles. This is true for very simple reasons: the larger an organization grows, the more positions will open up, and the harder it will be for recruiters to fill said positions.
None of this is to say it’s impossible to remain a strong recruiter at a growing company. On the contrary, a successful organization offers the ideal environment for a recruitment specialist. Follow these tips to help you stay productive and efficient as your company expands rapidly.
Enlist Extra Help
Don’t assume you need to identify and hire every single new employee at your organization. After all, at many companies, recruitment specialists also work in HR. That means hiring new workers is only one of their responsibilities. There’s a good chance they have other duties they must attend to in their own work.
That’s why it’s often smart to enlist the help of outside experts when filling certain roles. For example, if you started at the company when it was only a small startup, growth has likely brought the company to a point where it’s necessary to hire a CEO who has more experience than the founders. (Though it may not sound like it, taking on a new CEO is often a smart move. Even Steve Jobs admitted he wasn’t experienced enough to be the CEO of Apple until much later in his career.)
The CEO obviously holds a crucial role in the organization. Although every employee contributes to a company’s success, the CEO makes perhaps the most significant impact.
As an HR recruiter, you might feel intimidated by the prospect of making this hiring choice if you don’t have experience filling executive positions. If this is the case, you should coordinate with an executive search firm instead. They’ll have both the experience and resources necessary to help you find the best candidates for major executive and C-suite roles.
The help of an executive search firm doesn’t merely make the process of finding a CEO or C-level executive easier — it also gives you more time to focus on other important tasks.
Plan Ahead
A business plan plays an essential role in the success of any organization. To thrive, business owners need to define their goals, determine what steps they must take to achieve them, and prepare for any difficulties they might face.
The same principle applies to recruitment. As your company begins growing at a faster rate, get in touch with major decision-makers and set at least one meeting (although these meetings should ideally be regular occurrences) in which you’ll discuss how the company’s hiring needs will grow as the company itself grows. To use a basic example, many startups and smaller companies tend to outsource their accounting and bookkeeping work during the early stages of the business. As they grow, these companies typically transition to full-time employees to address these needs.
Coordinating with important players at your organization gives you the opportunity to attend to any needs before they arise. This, essentially, allows you to begin the early stages of recruitment in order to save time later.
Consider an Internship Program
If recruiting is among your primary work responsibilities, it’s unlikely you have the authority to create an internship program at your company. This is probably another instance in which you’ll have to coordinate with other important decision-makers.
An internship program offers you a consistent pipeline of talent you can turn to when you need to fill roles later on. Odds are, not all of your interns will go on to become full-time employees at the company, but many of them will make strong candidates in the future.
Just make sure the program provides interns with a valuable and enjoyable experience. If interns feel they were taken advantage of, they won’t be inclined to work for your company, and they may warn others not to as well. This, of course, has a negative impact on your employer’s brand. Remember, you want your employer’s company to grow. As it does, you will eventually get extra help in the HR and recruitment departments.
