On the Road to Recruiting
Your team members are your brand advocates and roadies. If they truly buy-in to the organization's culture and mission, they will talk highly about the owner, the business, its clients, their team members, and their own important role. When you send them out to the world—their community events, parties, networking, conferences, and client meetings—you want them to absolutely radiate satisfaction in the culture you've built within your company. A-Players are team players. A-Players want to (and will) attract other A-Players.
The Parascoping Team Member
When you send your team members to conferences or trade shows, remind them to be on the lookout for A-Players. Send them with a stack of your referral cards.
Ask your team members to come back with names and contact information for at least 3 or 4 people who could possibly be great team members for you. If you have an Employee Referral Incentive Program, your team members will be more than happy to do this.
When the team members come back, follow-up quickly with any contacts they made. Introduce yourself immediately with a short, handwritten note. Mention the name of the employee who mentioned them to you. Consider including a brief article, tip or resource that could benefit the other person.
Don’t forget to stay in touch with these referrals, so be sure to add them to your database. If you have a company newsletter, ask if you can add subscribe them to your newsletter. This is a great way to stay in touch and share your company culture with them. When you have openings, you can advertise through your company newsletter and often fill openings on the spot.
Publicize Your A-Players
Feature your A-Players in your company newsletter, local news media, and social media. Feature your best people, where they came from, how they got their jobs, why they stay and why they love their jobs. Your customers will love getting to know your team members and this puts a human face on your business. Your team members will be excited to share these posts with their friends on social media.
Have you promoted from within? Send out a press release. Build your reputation as an employer who provides opportunities for team members to advance their careers.
The added benefit: A-Players are reading! You will be piquing their interest in working for you.
Help the Family
When you are recruiting an A-Player who will be moving into your area, you must address the needs, concerns and hesitations of their spouse and children. A move to a new town is a significant life stressor, even when it brings a pay raise and improvement in quality of life.
Many a business owner has lamented to me about the problems “importing” talent into their business. If you don’t address the fears and concerns of the spouse and children, your candidate may disappear. Or worse, start working for you, only to leave six months later because their spouse couldn’t find work or their children had a hard time adjusting.
When a new A-Player team member is moving from out of town, help their spouse find work.
Also, find out their interests and help the family get integrated into the community. A-Players hang together; the spouse of your new A-Player employee is likely to be an A-Player. Helping the spouse find work makes it likely your A-Player will stick around.
Helping a fellow local business owner by bringing a potential A-Player applicant to their attention is a Win-Win-Win! They may return the favor in the future.
Find Their Hot Buttons
What else is important to your prospective team members? Find out what matters to them and show them how working for you will help them achieve these things.
Through her role as Director of Content for Professional Remodeler, Erika Taylor has learned a lot about what millennials want and what construction companies can do to appeal to them. In her words, “Millennials are about more than the money. They want a flexible work schedule.
They want the ability to bring their rabbit into the office. They want to align themselves with a company that’s doing some kind of social good.” If you’re looking to attract the next generation of workers, consider how you can add flexibility, fun, and purpose-driven elements to your work. Be clear with millennial candidates about these creative things you offer.
Let them know how your company gives back to the community and contributes to some kind of social good. Be specific about how their work will help further those efforts. Include these hot-button items in your job postings to let them know working with your company aligns with their hot buttons.
The bottom line?
Be an advocate for your brand advocates. Attracting the right people brings more of the right people and opportunities. If you are ready to be an example of a “highly profitable, great place to work” and elevate so you can grow into your personal vision… let's chat!
The above is an excerpt from How to Hire the Best.
One of the most overlooked systems in a small business is an A-Player Attraction System.
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