Having the right people on your team means more time BUILDING your business rather than spending excess time IN your business.  The committed, highly trained and motivated employees that you have are invaluable. Business is kept or lost daily based on the interactions that occur. Recruitment allows you to maintain and build your strength.

Reality check: everyone leaves your organization eventually. On a happier note your business plan might be calling for substantial growth that can only be achieved with additional staff.  Some recruitment planning before the urgency hits will provide you with the most options. As the saying goes there is no time like the present.

Some suggestions:

How will the work get done while you search for a replacement? Looking at your current staffing situation will let you determine how to handle any possible disruption. What roles must be filled at all times and by what calibre of staff? Yes all staff matter but some roles really are mission critical. What are they in your organization? Departmental capability can change frequently depending on personal circumstances. Review regularly!

During interviews try asking applicants about an achievement within their current role. This will provide some valuable information on the environment that they came from and the results they helped to generate.

In positions with a high degree of complexity and ambiguity a multipart question will give some insight into how a person organizes a response and their attention to various key components.  Our clients tend not to ask one question at a time. How the information comes to us from clients can be mirrored in how the question is asked of the applicant.

Much has been made lately of the use of social media for recruitment. It is without question an excellent option to explore but only if you know that enough of the people you are seeking are to be found on a site. Using one means only is risky unless you know about the degree of saturation. As an example what percentage of GTA marketing specialists are on the site? Does a person’s absence from a site really equate to a poor applicant? Maybe yes for marketing but can we say that for accounting specialists or maintenance staff? It all depends so be careful not to exclude qualified candidates on the basis of poorly reasoned conclusions.

Recruiting is as complex as your operations so ensure that a transactional approach is not used. For thinly stretched teams, new managers, confidential searches, rush hires and very specialized roles working with a trusted staffing specialist makes the most sense. You will learn as you work together!