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O P I N I O N
Recruiting a full-court press Set your A/E/P or environmental consulting firm up for success this year with these five recruiting and retention tips.
T he year has just started and it looks like it’s going to be an exciting one for the design industry. There has been and will be a shortage of good people out there to hire, so you will need to set your firm up for success by making sure you do a couple of things.
Randy Wilburn
Here are five keys to being successful this year when it comes to recruitment and retention: “Don’t interview people for the sake of interviewing them or doing someone at the firm a favor.” 1)Recruiting is selling. If you’re not properly sell- ing your firm to potential candidates, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Part of the recruitment sell- ing process is making sure that you have the right people representing your firm in front of potential talent. You don’t want to put that awkward hiring manager in front of great candidates. You can have them meet with a candidate. But, I would bookend those meetings with hiring managers in your firm that can actually sell the opportunity to come work with the firm. 2)Make the firm a great place to work. You have to show that you’re committed to growing. That starts with your current staff. Make sure you show them that you are not trying to control everything and that you can delegate the opportunity to grow to other people. Another factor is pay and benefits. If they are not great now, you need to figure out ways to fix that. Do an internal audit of your benefits package to make sure it’s the best one you can offer.
You also need to keep young people engaged and figure out ways to let them know that they are doing a great job. This may mean a higher frequency of re- views and raises. If you are waiting till the end of the year to do this, you may be waiting too long. There are a ton of other ways to separate your workplace from the rest: free lunch (food and beverages), valet service for laundry, and a personal chef just to name a few. Do whatever it takes to set yourself apart from all the other firms out there that are not tak- ing care of the whole employee. You need to think outside of the box when it comes to making your work environment a positive place where people want to work, not just because of the opportunities that they are provided, but also because of the way they’re treated. 3)Recruit from within. Another thing that strength- ens your ability to be a quality place to work is actu- ally recruiting and promoting from within the firm. There are many mailroom-to-boardroom success “Now more than ever before people are heading to social media to find out about your company. You need to control the narrative.”
See RANDY WILBURN, page 10
THE ZWEIG LETTER February 8, 2016, ISSUE 1138
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