Episode 177 

Welcome to episode 177. And today is about recruitment as we head towards the end of the calendar year. Because this is often the time when suddenly there’s a lot of pressure to get someone into the business before Christmas and our annual shutdowns.
Maybe you’ve had someone resign and you weren’t expecting it, or you’ve been trying to recruit for a while and you just haven’t found the right person. And, you know, it could just be that you’ve been growing and there’s just too much work and you just reach the point where you really need another person. And when that happens in October or November, It’s easy to look at the calendar and think, okay, we’ve got to get someone in before Christmas. And I can understand why, you know, that empty role does have a cost. Someone else is picking up the work, other people in the team want to go on holidays, and you know, sometimes it ends up as the business owner who’s back doing things that isn’t really the best use
of their time. And if you leave it for too long, eventually it starts affecting customers or other parts of the business as well. And there was some research from Robert Half this year where they surveyed 500 Australian employers and 54% were concerned about hiring quickly enough to reduce the cost of having the position sitting vacant.
So there can be a really genuine reason for wanting to move quickly. But moving quickly isn’t necessarily the same thing as rushing. And that’s really what I want to explore today, because I don’t think the answer is simply telling you to just slow down. Sometimes you just can’t. You really need someone.
So the more useful question is really, how do we move quickly without allowing the deadline to make the decision for you? So one of the first things I look at is, well, what is the deadline? Because sometimes if someone says, oh, you know, we need to have someone before Christmas, there are actually a few different things that they could mean by that? Do you need to have the person chosen before Christmas? Do you need to have them accept the offer and sign their contract before Christmas? Or do you actually need them working in the business before Christmas? Because those things aren’t all the same.
So you might think about it and realise actually, you know, really what we need to know is that before Christmas, the recruitment is finished, we’ve got the right person, they’ve signed the contract, and everyone can go on their Christmas break knowing that this new person’s starting in January. And if that’s the case, then you don’t need them working before Christmas.
On the other hand, you might have someone finishing on the 30th of November and there’s work that just has to be done in December. And so that’s a completely different situation. So before you put yourself under pressure to meet that deadline, I’d just spend a bit of time actually thinking about, well, what is my actual deadline?
because sometimes Christmas just becomes this day in our head that we feel we’ve got to get all this stuff done before the end of the year. And I know we feel that in our business, that we might have a client not contact us for a few weeks and all of a sudden everything needs to be done by the shutdown in December. So just thinking about
what is that actual deadline date? The other thing I’d be thinking about is why are we recruiting now? So obviously if someone has unexpectedly resigned, then we know the answer. But in a growing business, quite often the need for another person hasn’t just suddenly appeared. It’s been building for a while.
and perhaps one person has just taken on more and more work, or you’ve got a manager who’s doing a part of someone else’s job as though it’s their own, or you’ve got an owner that’s just picking up the work because it seemed easier than recruiting at the time. And you know, there’s not usually this clear moment where someone says, today is the day.
I need to recruit. What often happens is that everyone just learns to cope, and they cope a little bit more, and eventually realise that this is just not sustainable. So if you’re suddenly feeling a lot of urgency around recruitment in October or November, it’s worth looking at what has created that urgency.
And I don’t want you to spend 3 weeks analysing whether you really need the role. It’s more about making sure that you’re solving the right problem before you start recruiting.
And I’ve talked about this in much more detail in episode 151, where I had a guest recruiter on and we talked about how to run a simple recruitment process for small business. So if you’re right at the beginning and you want to work through that whole process, then go and have a listen to that one. For today, I really want to concentrate on what happens when
We know that we need to recruit, but we’ve got that tight time frame. And there’s another interesting part of this conversation at that moment, because the Australian employment market has changed. Some of our early recruitment episodes were recorded at a time when businesses were really struggling to get any applications, and the market isn’t quite there.
at the moment. So in May this year, the Australian Bureau of Statistics reported around 330,000 job vacancies in Australia. Still a lot, but it’s 30% lower than the peak in May 2022. So we just can’t keep saying that there are no candidates out there because that’s just not the full picture.
At the same time, recruitment hasn’t suddenly become easy, unfortunately. Jobs and Skills Australia July research found that 44% of employers have been recruiting, and of those that were recruiting, 43% were experiencing difficulty filling the roles. And that changes quite significantly depending on the role that you’re recruiting for.
So in the June quarter, for example, 58% of employers recruiting technicians and trade workers were experiencing difficulty. So one of the things that I’ve noticed is sometimes when we talk about the employment market, as though it’s this one big market, but it’s not. You can have two businesses in the same suburb having completely different recruitment experiences.
because they’re looking for different skills. You could even have two roles at the same business where one gets 80 applications and another one gets 5. So I wouldn’t go into Christmas thinking that, you know, we’re going to struggle to find people, but I wouldn’t assume that because there are more candidates available, generally finding the right person is going to be easier.
So it’s really about understanding the market for the particular role that we’re going to market for.
So once you know that, that’s where the difference between fast and rush becomes quite important. Because if I wanted to make a recruitment process faster, I wouldn’t start by taking steps out of it. I’d start by looking at all the places that we’re wasting time. So, you know, we advertise the role, applications come in, but then no one looks at them for a week.
Then you find a good candidate, it takes another five days to organise an interview because you’re trying to get three people’s diaries to line up. You have the interview, everyone likes them. And then you realise we haven’t actually agreed or approved the salary. So someone sends an e-mail, someone else has to approve it, that person’s away for two days.
You get the idea. None of this is making the recruitment decision better. It just makes the process longer. So if I knew that I had a tight time frame, I’d be thinking about all of that before I even advertised. Who is shortlisting? When are they doing it? Because you want to be looking at those applications every day.
who actually needs to be in the interview. Block interview times in the diary as soon as you advertise. Make sure that you know the salary, that it’s approved. Work out who’s making the final decision on the candidate and also who’s doing the reference checks. And if you’ve got two or three people involved in the hiring decision, make sure you’re all clear about
all of that before you go to market. Because it can take just a few days out of a recruitment process just by being organised. And that’s not taking quality out of the process, it’s just taking that administrative time burden out.
The other risk we’ve got with the deadline is that when we’re looking to start as soon as the deadline gets closer. So at the beginning, everyone’s clear about what they want and maybe the first few candidates aren’t right, another week passes. So that Christmas date is just looming. So suddenly things that were really important 3 weeks ago in terms of the hire, not so important.
anymore. Now maybe we’ve learnt something through the recruitment process, we’ve realised our original expectations weren’t realistic and that’s good. That’s a good thing to do because we should be able to change our mind when we’ve got better information. But there’s a difference between changing our mind because we’ve learnt something and changing our standards because we’re getting nervous about that deadline.
So I’ve talked before about getting clarity before starting hiring, so I’m not going to go through all that again here, but under a tight deadline, you just need to be really clear on three things. What does this person actually need to achieve in the role? What do they genuinely need to bring from day one?
And what could you reasonably teach them once they’re there? And that last one’s really important because sometimes we make recruitment much harder for ourselves because we are looking for someone who’s done exactly the same job, exactly the same industry, using exactly the same systems. And I would question, do you need that?
If someone can learn your software relatively easily, do they really need experience using that particular system? On the other hand, if there’s a capability that is genuinely essential to doing the job well, don’t suddenly decide on the 10th of December that it doesn’t matter anymore because you’ve just found someone that you quite like. That’s where we start moving from fast.
into rushed. And it’s also worth thinking about what are the skills that we can teach versus the behaviours or the qualities, the values of the person that we need, because we can’t really teach behaviours, qualities or values. We can teach skills.
So it’s also looking at the structure of our interviews. There’s another very early episode, number 38, where I talk about why a chat over a coffee does not work. So if that’s your interview process at the moment, I would suggest going back and having a listen to that episode. And the one thing that I would say here is that structure doesn’t make recruitment slower.
does make the decision easier, and it makes it more likely that you are going to hire someone that can perform in the role. If 3 people interview 3 candidates and everyone has a completely different conversation, then what happens afterwards is that you try and compare the candidates, but you’re not comparing the candidates, you’re comparing your feelings.
So someone would say, I really liked her. Oh no, I thought he had better experience. Oh, I’m not sure. There was something about that other candidate. And then you want to somehow turn that into a hiring decision. Whereas if you agree what you’re assessing in advance and you’ve asked the candidates reasonably consistent questions, you have something to compare.
Now, I’m not saying that the interview should feel robotic. They absolutely should not. It should still be a natural conversation, but you’re making sure that you gather the information that you actually need to make a decision. And when you’re under time pressure, that is even more helpful. So if I was working with a business that needed to recruit before Christmas, I would be very happy to compress parts of the process. So you want to shortlist quickly, do rolling shortlisting. You want to pre-book interview times, reduce the gap between 1st and 2nd interviews, and get the decision makers together straight after the interview. Don’t wait until three days later. And then have the contract process ready to go.
And the other important part is keeping candidates informed and moving them through the process quickly. Because we also need to remember at this time of year, sometimes people don’t want to look for a job. They want to have their holidays. They’ve got kids at home over the longest school holidays, it feels like in the world. You know, for some people it’s 7 to 8 weeks at this time of year. So we also need to keep that in mind of what’s going on in the candidate’s life at the moment.
And also don’t skip reference checks because just because we’re getting close to Christmas. If you’ve decided the work sample and assessment is important for the role, then don’t remove it because you’re running out of time either. There’s another reason that these unnecessary delays matter. Robert Half’s Australian Research this year found that 58% of employees were concerned about losing candidates to competing offers or counter offers. So speed matters. And if you’ve found a good person, you do not want them sitting around for 10 days, wondering if they’re going to hear from you. But also don’t make a less considered decision. It just means getting rid of the bits where nothing’s happening in between.
So this is probably the conversation that I’d really like businesses to have before they even start putting an ad up. And that is also around what happens if you don’t find the right person. Because I think if you answer that question now, you’re much less likely to make a decision you regret later. So let’s say you’ve worked backwards and you really need to make an offer by the end of November.
And you get to that week and you’ve interviewed four people, two aren’t right, one’s a maybe, and the fourth is okay. what do you do? We’ve spent the last six weeks telling everyone we must have this person before Christmas. It’s going to be really tempting to choose the least worst person.
And that’s not a good recruitment strategy. So you need to have a plan B. Could you use a contractor for a month or two? Could someone internally step into the role, at least temporarily? Can you redistribute some of the work? Is there a project you can delay? Can you bring in a temporary or casual worker? Could someone…
in the management team cover part of the role until you recruit again in January. None of those options might be particularly appealing, but that’s not really the comparison here. The comparison is between an imperfect temporary solution and bringing the wrong person into your business because you felt you had to choose someone. And if you’ve ever brought the wrong person into your business,
you will know the impact that it has, particularly in small or medium sized businesses. That poor hire impacts a lot of people. The rest of your team have to train them. They need to pick up the work if they’re not performing. Managers spend time dealing with the issues. The team can become frustrated and then it doesn’t work out and you’re back to recruiting again anyway.
So I’ve got another episode and article on 9 hiring mistakes that cost businesses time, money and team morale, which is episode 134 and goes much further into that. So we’ll link that one in the show notes as well. But for this episode, the important thing is to simply give yourself permission before you start to say,
If we don’t find the right person, we won’t hire the wrong one just to meet that deadline. We’re going to use our plan B. So once you’ve decided what your actual deadline is, what plan B looks like, then you can work backwards. If you want an offer accepted by a particular date, when do you need to make the offer? When do references need to happen? When does the final interview need to happen? When does the first interview?
need to happen, et cetera, et cetera. Shortlisting, advertising, and just going back. And leaving a bit of space in there as well, because candidates also have lives and holidays and other things going on. So the closer we get to Christmas, you know, people’s diaries tend to become a bit complicated as well.
So working backwards means you can see really clearly whether the timeframe you’ve got in your head is realistic. And if it isn’t, then that’s useful information. Better to know that in October than to discover it in the middle of December. So it’s not about slowing down. It’s really about thinking if you have a genuine vacancy that’s affecting the business, don’t just slow down and take your time. You need to move. But a fast recruitment process isn’t a rushed recruitment process. So just get really clear about what that before Christmas actually means for you and understand the role you’re trying to fill. Look for the waiting and unnecessary gaps in the process and be clear on what you won’t compromise on. And finally, decide on what you’re going to do if you reach your deadline without finding the right person, because success is not saying, yay, I hired someone before Christmas. It might be coming back after Christmas and still feeling confident that we’re going to hire the right person in January. And of course, there’s another part of this conversation because once the person says, yes, they’re not actually an employee sitting in the office yet. There might be 4 weeks between accepting the offer and starting. The current employer might make a counter offer. Christmas shutdowns come into it, annual leave comes into it. Then there’s a question of whether starting someone just before Christmas is a good experience. So that’s what I’m going to look at.
in episode 179, which is what happens between the offer and day one, particularly at this time of year. So thank you so much for joining me. If you’ve received value from this episode, I would love it if you could leave a rating or a review of Apple Podcasts or Spotify so someone else can find the episodes to help with their business. Episodes are released on Mondays, so click subscribe and you’ll be notified of when the next one is available. If you have any feedback, questions or ideas for future episodes, head on over to amplifyhr.com.au or connect with me on LinkedIn and we can start a conversation.