Advanced Recruiting 101: How to beat your competition at the hiring game
October 1, 1999 7 minutes read
Advanced Recruiting 101: How to beat your competition at the hiring game
Study tip: Know your game
"The major problem facing everyone in business today is that there aren’t enough good people to go around. All the good people already have jobs," says human resource consultant Mel Kleiman.
Sound depressingly familiar? Well, cheer up. Kleiman, president of Houston-based Humetrics, which designs employee recruiting and selection systems for hourly employees in service-driven industries, has some good ways to move through the recruiting maze and emerge successful.
The first part of your journey is identifying what you need.
"Good recruiting comes from knowing what you need to recruit," says Kleiman. "Good selection comes from knowing what you need to hire. Retention comes from knowing what you need because if you recruit right and hire right, it’s easier for you to retain, because my people are satisfying their desires and they are satisfying yours. The first part of every step of this process is to identify what you need, identify the goal, identify the perfect candidate, even though no such person exists.
"When you go to the grocery store, what’s the one thing you need to take with you besides money and coupons?" he asks. "It’s a list. If you go without a list, there are four things you do: You spend more money, buy things you don’t need, forget something you wanted to take — and then you have to go back and do it all over. If you go shopping for an employee without a list, you do the same things."
He carries the shopping analogy a step farther: "Never go to the grocery store when you’re hungry. The best time to be looking for the next employee is when you don’t desperately need one. And be aware that your hiring competition is not other private duty home care agencies. Your competition is Wal-Mart and Publix supermarkets. In short, your competition is anybody else your potential employee could go to work for."
Kleiman believes the most important attribute a private duty home care worker can have is capacity. Can the candidate do a job that may require climbing stairs, bending, stooping, reaching, helping a client to take a bath? Is the candidate smart enough? Are the skills required for the job already in place? If not, can you provide to acquire them?
"You always hire for capacity, but you may not hire for skills. Next to capacity, what you need most is attitude. Reliability is an attitude. Dependability is an attitude. Caring and honesty are attitudes. Above attitudes on the pyramid is personality. Personality has some effect on the job because your organization has a culture. If you get people who fit your culture, it’s going to be an easier work situation."
The message is: Get out of the box’
"Today’s world demands target marketing, so take a marketing approach in your recruiting," Kleiman says. "Ask yourself, Who’s my target population? Where do they congregate, where do they play, what do they read? If I wanted to hire a live-in employee, my target would depend on the current environment. What is the work force?
"If it’s Hispanic, are you advertising in the Hispanic newspaper? How many of you have gone to the churches your target employee groups attend to inform them of your employment opportunity? And by the way, when you do your Christmas shopping, also shop for new employees. Stores hire a lot of temporary worker over the holidays. When the holidays end, you might want them to work for you.
"Are there some people who might be mentally challenged who could still do this job? Could they go along with somebody else? Think about redesigning the job. Recently I was at a meeting where beverages were served in 24-ounce glasses. The wait staff didn’t have to refill the glasses very often. If you can’t find enough people to keep small glasses filled, buy bigger glasses."
Once you’ve identified your targets, get out of the box and tailor your ads to the answers. Reach for something different, something that cracks the mold and lets people look at it. For example, to target a stay-at-home mother, try Be at home when your kids are home.’ Or, Are you tired of not being appreciated for doing housework? We pay you and appreciate you.’ Or get attention for your ads by awakening pleasant memories. How about, Did you like your grandparents?’ This should definitely be an interviewing question as well. If you’re looking for older candidates, go to the local malls and post signs on the bulletin board for mall walkers. My motto is, Write fun ads.’ Have your employees write them. What appeals to them will appeal to people like them."
Kleiman lists the seven best sources of employment prospects as:
• All the good employees who have ever worked for you and left. "Create a system where you pick up the phone and call the good employees who have left you and ask them if they’d like to come back. What’s the worst answer you could get? It might be No’ or it might be Hell no, I’d never work for you again in your entire life!’ Maybe you would learn something from that message because you need to find out why. That’s market research. There are statistics that show 20% of the people you call and ask to come back at some point in time will come back. The second question to ask these folks is, Do you know anybody else who might like doing this job?’ If you have more than one supervisor, make sure the former employee’s supervisor does not make this call. If the former employee’s relationship with her supervisor was her reason for leaving, offering placement under another supervisor may be all you need to do to get your good employee back."
• All the good people you have presently working for you. Give them incentives to give you referrals. Give the incentives to them when they give the referrals to you, not three weeks later. Ask them for the people they know. Employees who come by referral last longer than employees who are simply hired. Kleiman did a workshop recently in which he played a game. For purposes of illustration, assume there were 50 home health care providers in the audience. "OK, I have a great home health care employee looking to go to work for you," Kleiman says.
"She likes working with the elderly, is very compassionate and caring, has never done this kind of work before, but is smart and willing to train. What will you offer me for this employee if I get her to go to work for you? Can I get $50? $75? $200? When was the last time you told your employees that if they referred someone you hired, there was $200 in it for them?" The bidding stopped at $250. The incentive doesn’t have to be money. You can give a day off with pay, a dinner for two, and two movie tickets.
• Spouses or spousal equivalents of all the good people you have working for you. And if you hire from this pool, make sure that the employee, not the spouse, gets the incentive. If you have 50 people working for you, you now also have 50 people who are also looking for other people to work for you.
• Every applicant is worth at least three to five more applicants. Say to your applicants, "We’re very concerned about whom we hire. So I need to not only talk to people you worked for — I need the names of at least four of the people you worked with."
• New employees who start working for you, at the end of their first week. If you make the first week on the job great, at the end of the week you debrief the new employee and ask how everything went, what are the problems, where do you need help? Then say, "When you decided to come here, there were probably other people where you worked who wanted to change jobs. Who’s now working there you would like to see working here with?"
• Everybody who ever gives you good service. You and every single one of your employees should be carrying a recruiting card that says, "Wow! You are terrific! We appreciate the great service. We are looking for people just like you to be part of the home health care customer service team. If you’d like to explore an employment opportunity with us, call me for a confidential interview. And by the way, keep up the good work!"
The back of Kleiman’s card reads: "Our agency offers great perks, including casual Fridays, dress-up Thursdays, free sodas, candy and popcorn every day, free bagels with cream cheese on Fridays, a party and present on your birthday. All this plus regular paychecks and L-O-N-G hours." Was the person to whom you gave your card applying for a job? No. She was giving you good service. She already passed one test.
• Volunteers. People who have volunteered in hospitals have given away more work than they’ve ever made money for. Where do they congregate? What do they read? Do they belong to AARP? Post or run an ad that reads, "If you’re a volunteer, how would you like to get paid for what you’re doing for free?"
Kleiman acknowledges there are some real hiring restraints and difficult challenges in hiring for the private duty home health care sector. "You have to hire people who have a high degree of integrity. Your employees are entering homes where, in some cases, the only other person there is the person for whom services are being provided, and often that person isn’t as lucid as we might want. There is a real need to make sure you recruit, select, and train the best caregivers. You must be much more diligent in the hiring process than most people ever think about being."
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