“When do you need this person to start?” you ask the hiring manager.
“Yesterday,” the manager replies.
Does this sound familiar? Recruiters hear this hear this every day.
Hiring is based on factors like sales, product demand, growth, or attrition. It’s dependent on budgets, demands of the investors, stockholders, and the board of directors Decisions then come down from the CEO, the VPs, senior management, and the managers themselves. Recruiting has its highs and lows. One minute it’s hot, the next minute it’s not. There are hiring peaks, hiring slowdowns, and even hiring freezes. During hiring peaks, recruiters and managers are extremely busy.
There are some things to consider during a hiring peak. Managers are often anxious to get people hired and in the door because they do not want to lose their headcount. This is completely understandable. Recruiters are hired to handle stressful situations. They must be able to multitask and deliver candidates in a timely fashion. With all of this being said, there are some real dangers to consider during a hiring peak. Here are three things to consider:
- Managers have deadlines to meet without interviewing. Projects have to be delivered. Their time is very valuable. Recruiters must prioritize with managers. More times than not, managers are going to bring on multiple individuals in a hiring peak. Who is most important to hire today? Who can wait? Who can help with the interviewing? Managers can end up without hires, with wasted time interviewing, with increased stress, and with supervisors who will be unhappy.
- Recruiters and managers must have a partnership and understanding. Recruiters are working multiple positions at once. Regularly occurring meetings are necessary to determine where recruiting is in the process. Too many meetings and too many metrics will eventually frustrate the recruiter and slow down the actual recruiting process. Recruiters are allies of the managers. They want the positions filled as badly as the manager. This needs to be clearly understood. Find a happy medium that works for both parties. Both of you are investing a lot of time in getting the right people to come and work for the company.
- Onboarding too many people at once could be an issue. Paperwork, laptops, training, and desk space … they take serious time. Bringing on too many people at once could really hurt the flow of the way the business is being run. Do yourself a favor and stagger your hires. You want the recruit to have a great first impression. The last thing you want to do is bring someone on board only to have to start the recruitment process again because they left the company prematurely. If it was you that was getting hired, wouldn’t you want the red carpet also?