January 18, 2022
Picture this:
It’s January and your sales are continuing to climb. You are so excited that your business is doing what it is supposed to be doing. You look at the clock – another 9PM bedtime. Your partner is annoyed, you haven’t seen your kids (or dog) for a fully present and uninterrupted time period in weeks. You’re at a crossroads. You know you need help, but you don’t know where to begin. Then – recruitment guru Meg Baker pops up on your Instagram and you schedule a call. Meg and her team map out the perfect role for your new employee, they advise what to include so the job ad fits with what you can afford. They ask you all about your company, your goals, and spend time getting to know you.
Shortly after, you review the job ad (it’s like they read your mind!) and it’s posted all over the place: including job boards that seek out diverse applicants, and different networks that you have never even heard of.
3 weeks later, you get a message from Meg’s team that they have narrowed down your candidates and they would like you to review the top 3 interviews and schedule a final round with you. You get to review the recorded interviews on your own time, and you can see this is going to be a hard decision. Meg’s team facilitates your final interviews and help you narrow down your choice. They even send the offer over to your candidate. The following month, your new team member shows up ready to go because they have been vetted, prepped, expectations set, and on the same page.
What a freaking dreaaammmm right?
After hiring hundreds of candidates and sorting through thousands of applicants, I can tell you that the peace of mind that comes with this process is hard to find. Many of our clients need help with preparing their business for a hire, but they also need guidance in finding that person, and Meg and her team are the absolute gold standard.
How to decide whether hiring a recruiter is the right move for you:
There are many reasons why you may want to outsource a recruiter, but not everyone needs the help of a recruiter to hire an awesome team. I recently talked with my good friend Megan Baker of Meg K & Co, boutique hiring agency for socially conscious companies, and we are going to help you with the decision of whether or not to outsource recruiting in the very important process of expanding your team.
It may seem like a lot of money to hire a recruiter up front, but you really need to think about the time that you’re spending to hire an employee. The whole reason that you’re hiring in the first place is to get some of your time back, and when it’s so much time and trouble just to find the person you want to hire, you may be thinking, “I’m trying to find more time, and now I have this massive task”. If that thought has crossed your mind, it might be time to think about hiring a recruiter.
“A correct hiring process, doing your due diligence, takes 30 to 40 hours. That may seem like way too much time, but what you risk not taking that amount of time is not finding the correct talent. A good, solid hiring process takes a lot of inquiry and a lot of time to not only write your job ad, but also going through applications, asking the right questions, and then having conversations with a select few folks”.
Megan Baker
Lastly, using a recruiting agency like Meg K & Co helps to make the hiring process super replicable. Although we want to believe our “perfect” hire will stay with our company forever, that is not very realistic. Employees will come and go, but the role you create for your business will remain in place for you to fill if your relationship with a team member ends.
Hiring a recruiter or agency seems like a no-brainer, so when does it make sense to DIY your hiring process?
Megan says, “If you are looking for contract support, and you’re in those kind of early stages of building your organization, if you have the time, I think that’s a great time to DIY it. However, when it comes to having employee support, that’s when I typically recommend that you consider enlisting our help. I think a prerequisite for any of it, whether you are outsourcing your recruitment or doing it yourself, is being open minded, open to learning what you don’t know, and open to learning more about management and showing up”.
Whether you decide to outsource your hiring process using a recruiting agency, or you are going to DIY it yourself, there are some harmful myths circling the business world that you NEED to avoid.
Basically, don’t believe the hype. Here are the myths that we have to work together to absolve.
Myth #1- A good job application will “wow” you
An application is not supposed to “wow” us… Nail down your criteria and find the people that filter through, and then build relationships with those people and explore the other dynamics. Applications are a piece of paper, of course they won’t wow you!
Myth #2- Follow your gut when hiring an employee
Although you think your gut is not opinionated, there can be a lot of reasons why making hiring decisions using a gut response is extremely problematic. Your gut can act as a trauma response that disqualifies people for no fair reason. If there’s not a specific and valid reason for not moving someone along in the hiring process, you probably should not be disqualifying them.
Myth #3- Use personality assessments during the hiring process to find the best fit for your team
While personality assessments are a beautiful tool to use in managing your team, they should not be used as a shortcut for hiring. Personality assessments can give great insights into a person when used correctly, but they should never replace candidates’ personalities and the conversations that they have with you.
Closing Thoughts
The point is, hiring anyone to be a part of your business does take attention, time, energy and mindfulness. We wouldn’t be hiring if we had the time or bandwidth to be decisive and objective at the same time. I’m not saying you NEED to use a recruitment agency for your next hire, but it is definitely something to consider if you’ve already got a lot on your plate.
If you want to learn more about the services and courses offered by Meg K & Co, follow her on Instagram @megkco or go to megkco.com to find time to work together.
