Align Your Recruiting and Training for Success

Published by Manage Smarter.com
February 09, 2007

By Lee Froschheiser

Michael Caito is a born entrepreneur, savvy and deft in handling business challenges. In 1993, he started a business with his younger brother and a childhood friend. Their new business filled an important need in our hectic lives, delivering quality meals from local restaurants to homes and businesses. Restaurants on the Run, a western-based food delivery company started from scratch in a single room and expanded rapidly.

However after a few years sales had flattened. Michael originally loved coming to work, but as pressures mounted the fun and excitement drained away. Profits grew stagnant, friction mounted among his employees and morale was at an all time low. Michael knew that something was fundamentally wrong.

In 2002, Michael asked me to help him get his company back on track. After extensive analysis, we discovered the key reason why the company had hit a wall. The company's staff was under trained. Employee development was considered to be a company goal and core value yet training had been overlooked. It was time to take corrective action.

At Management Action Programs (MAP), when we ask CEOs what their most important asset is, they consistently tell us it's their people. Yet many of these same leaders can't tell us what their company's training budget is in contrast to the dollars spent on capital expenditure and equipment. It's time to give the vital factor of company training its due. If people are your most important asset, the leaders of the organization should know what kind of resources they have to draw upon. This level of awareness will save your company money in the long run.

Many times, developing a strong performing team starts with getting the right people on the "bus" and then putting a structure and process in place including proper training to help them succeed. The reason may be that companies have improperly prioritized the importance of their people. Most new employees simply don't work out in the long run. The statistic I've heard is that seven out of 10 new hires turn out to be the wrong choice. Imagine if only 30 percent of your employees were properly trained? Putting the wrong person in the wrong position just to fill a job can have dire consequences to an organization by creating poor morale, low productivity and lost opportunities. The impact to the bottom line can be staggering.

A vigorous recruiting program must be rooted in proactive vs. 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 a less qualified candidate. Sometimes your new hire is whoever shows up first. I jokingly call this the "breath test"—have candidates breathe on a mirror. If it fogs up, they're hired! Even once these employees are hired, they are typically thrown into the water without adequate training, where they have to sink or swim. To avoid such dire measures, it is important to have in place 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. When I consulted with Michael Caito about Restaurants on the Run, I asked him, "What are your 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 core values are clarified. These precepts become the seeds that grow into a second set of interview questions for new prospects. For a trainer, company values are the foundation of the training program. Every step in skill development should enhance the team spirit of a new hire as his personal success becomes integrated with the organization's values.

The development of a well written, detailed job description—before the actual recruiting process—is paramount. A good job description includes the purpose of the job, a detailed breakdown of responsibilities, who the new person will report to, ways to measure the person's effectiveness, the vital factors of the job, how the person will spend their time, their authority within the organization and competencies, background and experience required. The job description also drives your interviewing process, what kinds of questions you should be asking and the new employee's 90 day training plan. A well-written, well-thought-out job description will drive your entire recruiting process.

The next phase in the recruitment process is developing your new employee. This will include ongoing coaching, skills development and plans to help the employee grow with the organization. Unfortunately most organizations have no structured orientation plan for new employees. By solely focusing on hiring and ignoring training and development, you are significantly reducing your organization's odds of retaining new employees. If the new recruit is one of those rare "A" players, it is even more of a loss. Imagine an organization going to the trouble of finding and successfully recruiting an "A" player, only to let them slip away because of poor planning and development!

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

In addition to orienting the new employee on the routine aspects specific to your organization, it is also important to train them on how your organization does things. This includes your business practices and how they fit into the organization. A key part of the 90-day training plan is to set up a mentoring team including a peer, a manager and a support person. The mentoring team should meet at least once a month to give feedback to the new person, ensure they have someone to go to with questions and to make certain that they're going to be successful in adhering to their 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 organization's expectations, establish accountability for results and make sure that the new employee understands their priorities and, most importantly, help you measure whether or not they are progressing at an acceptable pace.

Once the new employee successfully completes their first 90 days, the next crucial step is ensuring you have a solid personal development plan prepared for six months to a year out to help them continue developing and growing into the position. This plan should focus on consistent improvement and strengthening of job performance.

Finally, your organization should always have a well-developed and current business plan in place. The business 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, the unique set of critical elements that can either hold an organization back or propel it to success.

Today, Michael Caito's Restaurants on the Run no longer suffers from overwork and low morale. By implementing training and accountability for its employees, the company was forced to reexamine its values. After learning the MAP program fundamentals, Michael and his business partners realized that they should be focusing on the office side of the meal delivery business. As profits grew again, employees recognized that the company afforded an excellent opportunity for them to grow professionally and personally. How has the bottom line improved? By paying attention to vital factors, Restaurants on the Run's profits have increased 500 percent. You, too, will increase your odds of hitting your numbers with the right trained team in place.

Highlighted Recruiting Techniques:

1. Focus on creating a systematic, well thought out, proactive recruiting process
2. Formulate a good job description to serve as a blueprint for the job
3. Have a solid business plan in place that tells you how many and what kind of people you need to hire
4. Develop new recruits correctly with a 90 day mentoring plan, 90-day goals, 90-day training and a mentoring team that meets with them monthly to make sure they're successful
5. Have a development plan ready once they complete their 90-day training plan, to help them develop over the next year

Lee Froschheiser is president and CEO of MAP and author of Vital Factors—The Secret To Transforming Your Business and Your Life.

Contact MAP