Hiring in a down economy would seem like a breeze, but in some recent initiatives with two of our expansion stage portfolio companies finding good talent proved more difficult than ever before. While recruiting for a position we have hired several times in the past with great success and in a short amount of time, on this round of hiring we had fewer and lower quality applicants. We did end up hiring some very talented individuals, but at four weeks into the sourcing we still hadn’t found any really good candidates and by then we were expecting to have extended an offer.
We began thinking about what was different in this search than in others and we came up with the following hypothesis:
In a down economy companies have to “trim the fat” and then some to decrease expenses. This means letting go all or most of the B, C, and D players at the company. Simultaneously, the A players, who a small percentage of may have otherwise been casually looking for a job, are not only clinging to their jobs for their lives, but have inherited additional responsibilities from the B, and C players who had to be let go. Being A players they are naturally inclined to take on additional responsibilities and excel at those, so they become even more attached to their current jobs
As a result the market becomes flooded with unmotivated B, C, and D players which effectively even further dilutes the A players that are actually out there looking for jobs. This means that you have to source and screen a lot more applicants to uncover the same number of qualified candidates for any given role.
This kind of environment can make finding good people even more difficult than it already is, and often people end up making a bad hiring mistake, which will inevitably lead to “hirer’s remorse”.
Here are some tips for how to avoid hirer’s remorse:
- Make sure all of the key stakeholders have a very clear picture of who the right person really is
- Don’t settle for anything less
- Birds of a feather flock together, so try running an internal referral program to get your best people to recommend candidates for the opening
- Always do reference checks
- Don’t underestimate the importance of cultural fit
Good luck hiring!
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