Make Smart Hires: What is Your Plan to Hire in Q1?

The ball has dropped, the champagne has been drunk, the smoke has cleared and the End of Year Fog has lifted – 2013 is officially under way and we are already half way through January.

A lot of us have been through our Kick Off meetings and we are off and running but some of us have not gotten off to the quick start we were hoping for. For a lot of you, you are just getting your 2013 budgets and you need to fill your head count by the end of Q1. This is no small feat. If you are one of these people, I have a question that I would like to help you answer – What is your plan?

How are you going to build your team and hire good talent? If you did not start building a pipeline of good candidates in the slow period of the holidays, you are behind schedule and chances are some of your competitors are already talking to candidates you would find interesting. This is where I will start – 2013 is a whole new game – this is not 2009, 2010, or 2011 – 2012 was a good year (‘good’ by today’s standards). Candidates are being selective with their searches, it is no longer a buyers’ market for companies. I have had more candidates turn down offers in the past 6 months than I have had in the past 4 years. What this tells me is that good candidates know the value they will bring to a company and they are going to leverage their skill to set them up with the best opportunity for them and their career. This makes the hiring manager’s job all the more difficult.

You can build volume through the job boards but I think that for a targeted search – this resource is antiquated and out-of-date. Plus, the volume of responses can be so overwhelming at times (with qualified and unqualified candidates) that is impossible to have enough band width to review all the applicants. You can leverage LinkedIn – this is an incredibly powerful tool, but if your network is not big enough – it can be painstakingly slow and clunky.

You can use traditional search firms and this is obviously a strong model for a lot of companies. I think it is wise for any company to have good relationships with a few recruiters but be real with those recruiters. Make sure your relationships are strong enough for your partners to be honest with you and offer enough services to support your hiring needs. Most importantly, call your recruiters when you are ready to hire and have a game plan – most searches take about 30 days. If you are ready to hire and have a plan – you should get great activity from your recruiter and you should be making offers within 30 days of launching a search. That works.

Now, maybe you need to constantly see candidates and you want to keep a good pipeline of talent in the wings. This is not the most effective way to hire mostly because any talented candidate you will meet, who is on an active job search, will most likely not wait in the wings. Regardless, if this is your hiring model – you are going to need more than your traditional job boards or search firms. Companies, such as Treeline, have developed innovative search options that allow our clients to choose which service will best suit their hiring needs. Your company and role are unique, it only makes sense that your search process be unique as well. Please visit us at www.Treeline.com or call 781-876-8100 and you can learn more about what new and innovative recruiting services are available to you.

No matter how you plan to fill your sales openings, you still need a plan. If you post a job opening and hope an A+ candidate will walk through your door – you are probably going to be disappointed with the results. You are a sales person, be proactive, generate activity, build a pipeline, and close. Otherwise, you may find yourself making some bad hires and you will find yourself in the same situation ahead of schedule.

If you are interested in hearing more about new innovative ways to build a pipeline of qualified candidates to fill your headcount, get in touch with Treeline today and get back on schedule for a successful 2013.