Don’t take it personally, but unless you are a trained HR professional or have an amazing track record of hiring only the best, most loyal employees, you probably shouldn’t be doing your own recruiting. Here’s a few reasons why:
You’re successful. If your company finds itself needing more people it’s because you ambitious, successful and understaffed. You want the business to grow, you have a vision for the future, but at the same time you’re still catching up with your latest wave of success or expansion. The rule here is that you don’t find out what you really need until your really need it. All of your company’s growth to date happened because you had the right amount of employees to manufacture/design your product or service, market it and keep your current customer base happy. Somewhere in the recent past, though, your business took a turn for the better, meaning more staff is needed to keep current and new clients/customers satisfied. You’ve leveled up, and now the game has changed.
The bare facts are that much that worked for you in the old start-up days aren’t going to work anymore. Back then you could cull the brightest and the best from your personal pool of friends, old schoolmates and family to join your wonder team. Now that team has succeeded, so congratulations! But you’ve tapped your personal talent pool dry. You brought the best in right away, so don’t undermine your initial instincts by reaching lower in the barrel for the next easy, familiar recruit. Just like at the beginning, in this stage of your business success only the very best will do!
You’re busy. Since your business is booming and growing, it’s automatically understood that you are a very busy person. Even if you’ve found a streamlined and efficient way of managing your time and energy, if your company is expanding that means that there’s no time to step away from the helm and get distracted by other projects. And recruiting is a project. It’s a time-consuming process with a definite start and and serious follow-through. In this day and age you don’t simply hire a body then let them run free in the business. Not only is there the training time, but usually some type of trial period that needs to be evaluated (this can last up to three months for jobs that require a longer-term productivity cycle, for example producing a new expansion or developing a new line of merchandise.) If, as projected, your business keeps growing after you’ve brought in your new hire, you’ll be even more busy, and less capable of giving a new hire a fair trial evaluation.
You’re just not qualified. To begin with, if you’re not a professional writer or experienced copywriter, you should not be taking on the task of creating an in-depth job description to advertise the position(s) available at your company. Everything from the tone to the vocabulary to the actual grammar and spelling of an ad can make or break your chances of seducing the best talent to your side. Secondly, you may be a master of your own career universe, but how good are you at basic human psychology? Trained HR persons know how to spot trouble – the bluffers, conners and liars – as well as hidden talent gems like the shy or awkward type who just needs a chance to prove their worth. Finally, an HR professional knows how to deal with resumes and references and all the time-consuming effort that goes into speaking with their equivalent number at a prospect’s previous job. There’s a certain jargon that goes along with the recruitment business, and you don’t want to end up making yourself sound like a fool when it turns out you just don’t know it.
So even though you are really good at what you do, it behooves you to hire a professional Human Resources staff for your growing business because recruiting is what they do best. If you don’t have any connections to solid HR personnel, hire a recruitment agency to help you find them, or if you feel you can’t afford full-time HR, then let an agency manage that end of your business for you until you can. Remember, you wouldn’t do your company’s taxes by yourself, would you? To even have a successful business in the first place, recruitment is just as, if not more, important!
Byline: This is a guest post by Andras Deak, a part-time guest-blogger and a full-time communication consultant. He currently works at a UK based IT staffing solution company, Cognitive Group. In his free time Andras is up for sports and traveling, his favorite destination is South-East Asia.
