Recruiting For Success by Lee Froschheiser

Reprinted with permission of SuperVision Magazine, 
June 2007 Edition, SuperVision Magazine Website

Supervisors and middle managers have some of the toughest jobs in a company. Half the time they are managing. The other half they are team members. They are true player/coaches. But if a supervisor finds that he constantly has to pinch hit for an employee, the fault could be with your company's recruiting process. When a supervisor puts the wrong person in a job, it soon becomes a performance issue that needs constant fixing. By spending more time on the selection and training process, the right employees will enable middle managers to manage more and step up to the plate less often.

One businessman who learned this lesson was Steve Campbell. He was owner of his own firm, but spent more time acting as a player than a leader where he could realize his strategic vision.

Steve came up through the ranks in the concrete business where he learned every aspect of the job. At the age of 26, with a single employee, he decided to start his own business. Campbell Concrete did well, butwhen expansion forced Steve to exercise more of his management skills he got into trouble. When his business was small he could rely on referrals and former coworkers for new hire referrals. but when demand for manpower grew, he stumbled because he hadn't formalized hiring and training procedures.

Developing a strongly performing team starts with getting the right people on the "bus" then putting a structure and process in place that emphasizes proper training to help them succeed. Most new employees simply don't work out in the long run. Some say that seven out of ten new hires turn out to be the wrong choice. Imagine if only 30% of your people could do their job? Putting the wrong person in the wrong position just to fill a job can have dire consequences to an organization by creating poor morale and low productivity. The impact to the bottom line can be staggering.

A vigorous recruiting program must be rooted in proactive versus reactive recruiting. In today's world,finding good people is very difficult to do. Multiple ongoing strategies are required to keep pace with your company's ongoing needs. Companies have the risky tendency of waiting until a job opening occurs to initiate an emergency job search. This is reactive recruiting at its worst. Due to the pressures of having to fill an open position and the lack of any consistent recruiting procedures, the company is more likely to take less qualified candidates who are typically thrown into the water to swim without adequate training. To avoid such dire measures, it's vital to establish a very structured and systemized selection process well ahead of when your company actually needs it.

Another major aspect of solid recruiting is to know your company's core values regarding your customers and employees. 'What values determine your decision making? What of these are most important and how do they relate to your company's daily operations? You can't recruit or train new people effectively until your company's values are clarified. These precepts become the seeds that grow into a second set of interview questions for new prospects. When training begins, every step in skill development should enhance the team spirit of a new hire as his personal success becomes integrated with the organization's precepts.

At Campbell Concrete, Steve had a solid values regarding job performance. He had established a reputation for delivering quality work on time under budget. A former front line worker himself, he made a point of recognizing how much his success depended on his employees. Since he rose through the ranks he trusted his gut to both hire and promote. When choosing people to handle greater responsibility, he should have asked a trusted employee to take a second look.

One of the first steps in recruiting a quality employee is the development of a well written, thoughtful job description - before the actual recruiting process. This is paramount. A good job description includes the purpose of the job, a detailed breakdown of responsibilities, to whom the worker reports, ways to measure the person's effectiveness. how the worker will spend his time, his authority within the organization, the competencies, background and experience required. It's important to delineate how the job contributes to a company's Vital Factors, the unique set of critical elements that can either hold an organization back or propel it to success. A detailed job description will drive your entire recruiting process from the questions to ask in the interview to the elements of the new employee's 90 day training plan. Once you have hired a new employee, the next phase in the recruitment process is developing him/her. This should include ongoing coaching, skills development and planning to help the employee grow with the organization. Unfortunately most organizations have no structured orientation plan for new employees. By solely focusing on hiring while ignoring training and development, you are significantly reducing your organization's odds of retaining new employees. If the new recruit is a rare "A" player it's more of a loss. Imagine an organization going to the trouble of successfully recruiting a stellar prospect only to let her slip away because of poor planning and development!

The first 90 days of employment are critical to a new employee's long-term success. Develop and implement a solid 90 day training plan to secure an employee's place within your organization and facilitate her growth within the existing culture. Based upon the new employee's experience, you can vary the time needed to train her in the position's responsibilities.

In addition to orientating a new employee on the routines specific to your organization, it's also important to train him on your business practices and how he fits into the organization. A key part of the 90 day training plan is to set up a mentoring team including a peer, manager and support person. The mentoring team should meet at least once a month to give feedback to a new person, ensure she has someone to go to with questions and to make certain that she's going to be successful in adhering to her 90 day training plan.

It is critical to set clear, results oriented expectations during the first 90 days. The purpose of these goals is to establish the organization's expectations, set accountability for results, and make sure that the new employee understands his priorities and, most importantly, help you measure whether or not he is progressing at an acceptable pace.

Once a new employee successfully completes his first 90 days, the next crucial step is ensuring you have a solid 6 months to one year personal development plan to help him continue to grow into the position. This plan should focus on consistent improvement and strengthening of lob performance.

Finally, your organization should always have a well developed current business plan in place. The plan will help new employees understand the direction of the organization and what role they play in it from day one. The new employee should clearly understand the organization's Vital Factors. Vital Factors are the critical success measures that make or break a company.

When my firm, Management Action Programs (MAP) was called in to analyze Campbell Concrete, we quickly determined that the company was failing to set goals and hold employees accountable. New employees were hired into this culture which compounded the problem. The problem began with Steve Campbell himself. He realized he was more buddy than boss. As Steve made changes to his leadership style with coaching from one of our consultants, things began to change. Managers were held accountable for their own Vital Factors that were instrumental in delivering Steve Campbell's aim of delivering quality work on time and under budget. Everybody in the company had to adhere to goals thatwere measurable regarding output, cost, quality of work and timeliness. The aims were explicity stated with the results spelled out. Responsibility was crystal clear with both consequences and incentives built in. It took discipline, but soon Campbell Concrete became profitable and well managed.

In 2004, consolidation in the construction business moved at a brisk pace. Steve Campbell recognized that he'd have merge or sell out. Construction giant BMC examined Steve's books, found a well run company and bought him out for $285 million - not bad for a 46 year old without a degree who started his business twenty years before with just two thousand dollars!

Highlighted Recruiting
Techniques:

• Focus on creating a systematic, well thought proactive recruiting process.
• Formulate a good job description to serve as blueprint for the job.
• Have a solid business plan in place that tells you how many and what kind of people you need to hire.
• Develop new recruits correctly with a 90 day training program that gives personal feedback.
• Have a one year development plan ready once employees complete their 90 day training plan, to take them to the next level of performance.

Lee Froschheiser is president and CEO of MAP (Management Action Programs, and author of the newly released book, Vital Factors - The Secret To Transforming Your Business and Your Life