Scaling up your business requires careful planning to ensure that you have the necessary ingredients to enable and support growth. This includes funding, the right systems and processes, staff, technology and partners.
Arguably the most important factor to effectively scaling up your business is your recruitment strategy; ensuring that you hire the right people or the right roles, and that they deliver the right outcomes at the right time. Irrespective of where a company is in terms of its lifecycle, those that have a great people strategy in place, retain their best employees, and as a result accelerate the speed of their success.
The hiring process can be time-consuming and costly, so how do you develop a recruitment strategy that meets your business’ needs and doesn’t break the bank? Here are our top tips:
Develop your Employer Value Proposition
Understanding and articulating why someone should work for your business is fundamental to successful recruitment. A strong employer brand will build your reputation and attract candidates to your business, but you also need a strategy for each role to ensure you market to the right people.
Your Employer Value Proposition (EVP) serves as a living, breathing reality of your company’s corporate values, setting out what makes your company attractive to work for. It’s made up of a set of characteristics, features and values that describe what it’s like to work in your organisation and how it improves employees’ lives.
According to Gartner a well-crafted Employer Value Proposition can increase the commitment of your new hires by 50%.
It’s also an effective way to demonstrate the opportunities in a role and where it differs from your competitors. Crucially candidates can see if they are a good fit, saving time in the recruitment process and ensuring you attract the right people.
Use technology to simplify tasks for increased efficiency
Recruiting can be a labour-intensive process however there is a wealth of technology which, when used appropriately, can enhance the applicant experience and ease the administrative burden. Tools such as Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and video interviewing can be used to enable you to refine searching and recruiting processes and in screening and deploying employees effectively.
Be conscious that an over reliance of technology in the recruiting process can make it feel much less personal and may be off-putting to some candidates.
Hire for now AND the future
When your company is experiencing fast growth, focus on hiring employees that have the potential to make a significant impact in the long-term. The best scale-up recruitment strategies aim for recruiting future leaders who can be the pillars of your growing company.
High impact hires are likely to be intrinsic to the success of your business, with specialised skills and unique expertise that make them very difficult (if not impossible) to replace. These are the positions that will generate results for your company, whether it be through revenue, strategy, delivery, or another important area of the business. High impact hires also have the capacity to inspire others, in turn boosting your company’s productivity.
Research from Bain & Company suggests that inspired employees are the most productive.
Consider your company culture
When you’re hiring employees to scale-up your business, keep in mind that you’re also shaping the future culture of your organisation. The scale-up phase of your company’s growth is critical when it comes to culture formation, so keep important factors like inclusivity, transparency and your mission and values in mind when recruiting candidates. Culture is the key ingredient that creates sales, builds lasting relationships with suppliers and motivates employee engagement in the success of your company. Ideally you will hire people that share your energy and vision for what’s to come, which will ultimately improve employee engagement and retention.
Seek out expert help
If you’re struggling to develop and implement an effective scale-up recruitment strategy, you might wish to seek out expert support; this can be especially helpful, for example, if you need to fill highly skilled, niche roles.
It is worth remembering that, even where you do engage with a recruitment agency, you will need to work closely with them to make sure that they understand the job and person specifics and your requirements. Give them feedback on the candidates they’re bringing to you.
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Scaling up is challenging and to do it successfully you need a great team that you can rely on to get the job done. If you are a scale-up looking for support to grow we can help; we are experienced at working with scale-up businesses like yours, assisting with everything from defining your EVP to developing your talent management strategy. Get in touch.