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2019 wood snowflakes

Your 2019 Recruitment Plan: Hire Better and Staff Smarter

Skill shortages. Position vacancies. Growth targets. Changing workloads.

Your Middle Tennessee business’ challenges, priorities and goals are as unique as a winter snowflake. But regardless of what you’re trying to achieve this year, a strategic staffing and recruitment plan will help you stay on track.

If you’re new to workforce planning, this earlier post explains the why’s and how’s of creating a strategic staffing plan. To meet your long-term hiring needs, a formal recruitment plan can help ensure you find good people – even in a tight employment market.

How to create a recruitment plan:

  1. Update job descriptions. Over time, roles evolve. Gather input from team and department leaders to find out how their responsibilities, as well as their direct reports’, have changed. Revise job descriptions as needed, so that when you need to hire, this step is already complete. If you don’t have a formal job description process yet:
    • Conduct a job analysis for each type of position, to determine each job’s duties, requirements and career trajectory within your organization.
    • Arrange interviews with employees to review their roles and responsibilities; use their input (and management’s) to round out descriptions.
    • Create job description templates to standardize and simplify information-gathering.
  2. Conduct a gap analysis. Analyze your staff’s current skill level and identify both hard and soft skills your organization needs for the coming year. Consult with your executive leadership team to determine how business goals translate into future skill requirements. Compare where your company is now to where you need to be, prioritize your needs, and then create a training and hiring plan to close the gap.
  3. Revisit your hiring process. Consider the following to identify opportunities for improving your process and results:
    • Communication. How well do hiring teams communicate with one another and candidates?
    • Speed. What could you do to speed time-to-hire, without sacrificing quality?
    • Interviewing. Are all interviewers properly trained? Do you have formal/standard processes for creating good questions, conducting interviews and objectively evaluating answers?
    • Diversity targets. What are your goals, and how will they impact your recruiting and hiring process?
    • Timelines. How long will it likely take you to hire new employees in this market? Work backward from needed start dates to ensure adequate lead time.
    • Success. How well did 2018 new hires perform during their probationary period? What percent of those new hires are still employed with you?
    • Changes. Is there anything related to your recruitment and hiring policies you need to update to ensure compliance?
  4. Use the right technology. Depending on your organization’s size and hiring needs, evaluate the benefits of adding or upgrading technology like an ATS (applicant tracking system), pre-employment skills testing, and more.
  5. Widen your net. In our current employment market, simply posting jobs online is not likely to yield the qualified candidates you need. Here are a few additional tactics to consider:
    • Referrals
    • Social media recruiting
    • Job fairs
    • Community and industry partnerships
    • Direct recruiting from competitors
    • Staffing and recruiting firms like Wood Personnel
  6. Build your budget. Once you have planned your hiring needs, determine your total cost-per-hire (which may vary from role to role) to build a recruitment budget.

Hire better and staff smarter in 2019. Consult with your staffing partner.

As you evaluate your staffing and hiring goals for next year, ask your staffing firm for their insights. Involving them in the planning stages helps ensure you:

  • properly analyze your talent needs;
  • understand your available talent supply (and shortages);
  • develop a comprehensive, strategic staffing and recruiting plan to ensure you have access to the right people – right when you need them;
  • achieve your business goals in 2019.

Schedule your free workforce consultation today.

What does your organization want to accomplish? Let our Nashville staffing experts help you create a smart workforce plan to thrive in the year ahead.

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