Author: M3 Placement

If you run a high-growth business and you expect to need an influx of employees—for initiatives like launching a new product or entering a new market—how much lead time will you need to get those new team members on board?

The answer may surprise you.

With all the movement of employees today, you might expect there are lots of candidates looking, so the hiring runway can’t be that bad. But if you hope to achieve significant growth, you can’t simply run recruitment ads and hope job seekers find you on a reasonable timeline. Those days are long gone.

To ensure you find the right talent at the right time to fuel your growth, you need to develop a strategic hiring plan before you’re ready to start the hiring process—and do some housekeeping in the meantime to position yourself for the best results. No matter where you are in the journey to build out your team, it’s never too soon to evaluate your hiring plan and set up your organization for success.

How the Job Market is Changing 

In the current job market, you can’t assume the right talent will find you precisely when you need them. Yes, it’s true that people are still switching jobs—sometimes for more money, other times for a better work/life balance or a more supportive work environment. But it’s not the same job market as it was in 2020, when the term “The Great Resignation” first surfaced.  

In the early days of the pandemic, some employees were willing to leave a job without having a new place to land. Others made relatively impulsive decisions to switch companies simply because the new job paid more. For many people, the emotions and uncertainty fueled by the pandemic encouraged job moves that might not have happened only a year earlier. 

Now, employees appear to be taking a more measured, cautious approach to changing jobs, partly because some have found the grass wasn’t necessarily greener on the other side. With potentially fewer people actively looking to make a move—or willing to consider a recruiter’s call—companies are finding the process even slower than before. That means you’ll need to start preparing your hiring plans sooner and get your recruiting house in order faster.  

Why Your Hiring Plan Needs to Change, Too 

One reason you need more lead time to develop a hiring plan is because that plan needs to go far beyond what you might have expected in the past. 

Of course, a good hiring plan must always include fundamental components like these:

• The number and types of positions you need to fill
• Accurate, comprehensive, compelling job descriptions (which involves doing a deep dive with your hiring managers – not simply dusting off the same, tired role descriptions you’ve been using for decades)
• Your intended outreach methods 
• The evaluation and assessment methods your HR team and hiring managers will use
• The available recruitment budget

But an effective hiring plan today must also go beyond those basic components. Before you can begin to recruit the top talent it takes to run a profitable, thriving, high-growth company, you may need to do housekeeping on critical aspects like the following.  

• Your employment brand. What does your employment brand say about your organization and what it will be like to work there? Have you even given much thought to your employment brand? Many companies don’t because they haven’t had to in the past. But just like a product or service brand prepares you for the experience of buying and using it, your employment brand tells candidates what to expect of your hiring and onboarding experience. It should be consistent with your values, convey a positive and compelling message, and differentiate your business from other employers. Consider whether you’re setting up your candidates to expect the Ritz Carlton or the Holiday Inn. 
• Your interview experience. Are you still interviewing solely through channels like Zoom or can you conduct some interviews in person, especially for senior roles? The more high-touch the experience, the better you’ll connect with candidates. Also consider the tone and frequency of your communication during the hiring process. If you’re rigid, aloof, slow to respond, or go entirely dark for weeks, viable candidates will lose interest. 
• Your onboarding experience. If your new hire onboarding will take place virtually, is the experience set up in a way that makes people feel part of the culture? 
• Your pay scale and benefits. Have your salaries, bonuses, and benefits kept pace with changing conditions and expectations over the last two years? To attract top talent and meet the requirements of today’s workforce, you need to ensure your compensation package is competitive.  
• The state of your leadership. Are your leaders in a good place emotionally, ready to help you build out your team and provide the guidance your new hires will need? Are any of your key leaders approaching retirement age? If so, you’ll need a solid succession plan, along with sufficient lead to time to recruit for those tough-to-fill positions and provide a smooth transition during a time of high growth.   
• Your managers’ EQ. Emotional intelligence, often called EQ, is one of the most important factors in any employee’s success. When those employees are charged with managing others, especially in these volatile times, their EQ becomes even more critical. For example, if your new hires will work remotely or hybrid your managers will need to be equipped to supervise, motivate, and lead effectively in this environment. 
• Your online presence. Have you checked your company’s reviews on websites like Glassdoor and Indeed? Do you know what your current and former employees and job candidates are saying about your company on social media? Your online presence may be a candidate’s first encounter with your company, so be sure you have a good handle on what they’re seeing and be ready to mitigate any issues.    

How the Right Partner Can Help 

Given the increasing complexity of hiring in the current market, it’s never too early to start developing a strategic hiring plan. That’s especially true if you have aggressive growth objectives—whether you’re in a transformative industry like clean energy, you’re developing breakthrough technologies, or you’re building out your geographic footprint or product portfolio.

A well-conceived hiring plan will help you obtain the talent you need to turn your growth goals into reality, enabling you to attract new team members who can support your strategic objectives and initiatives, proactively build out your bench, and plan for the smooth succession and transition of senior leaders.  

When high-growth companies need hiring plans that help them attract and retain top talent to achieve their goals, they turn to M3 Partnership & Placement! Our team is highly experienced in developing strategic hiring plans that position high-growth companies for the best outcomes.

Contact M3 to schedule an introductory call!

Sweeping changes have redefined the workplace over the past three years, creating new challenges and opportunities for HR professionals. Consider, for example, how quickly the pandemic digitally transformed companies, shuttering offices virtually overnight and transitioning employees to remote, work-from-home models. For essential businesses and others that remained open, the challenges have been just as great, leaving HR professionals to grapple with the unpredictability of outbreaks and shifting health and safety mandates.

Recent changes in consumer behaviors have also presented new challenges for HR teams, tasking them, for example, with quickly hiring and reskilling employees to meet a sudden influx of e-commerce business. And just when the building blocks of our advancing digital economy were in place, the nation’s reopening brought with it an entirely new set of HR challenges: rapid economic growth that has led to significant labor shortages and wage increases.

Amidst all this upheaval, the role HR plays within organizations has changed as well, with C-suite executives relying on their HR colleagues more than ever for direction on how to build the kind of workforce and culture they need to seize marketplace opportunities and navigate today’s uncharted economic waters. As the scope of HR responsibilities continues to grow, many industry professionals are feeling the pressure of increased workloads and lengthy hours – and many are simply burned out.

So, how can organizations provide the support these vitally important employees need today, and when does it make sense to implement an outsourcing model to assist?

The Case for Outsourcing Professional Placements

Many HR functions are easily handed off to external providers to reduce the burden of routine tasks. However, investments in outsourcing partnerships should yield more than time and productivity for HR teams. They should add value up and down the organization by supporting and advancing a company’s strategic objectives. And they should stand the test of time.

Savvy organizations recognize this – and they also know that that succeeding in a fast-evolving economy often comes down to a single overriding factor: leadership. Accordingly, many organizations are seeking to expand their senior management teams today with experienced individuals who align with their values and vision and are well prepared to unlock innovation organization-wide.

Executive searches are complex, though, and often take the kind of time and attention busy HR departments don’t have. Enlisting the services of the right professional placements firm can help.  

Here are four reasons to outsource your professional placements now – and what factors to consider when selecting a partnering firm:

1) To Bring More Hands On-Deck

The HR role has never been more expansive, challenging, or critical to an organization’s success. The right outsourcing firm will allow your HR department to stay focused on its core responsibilities, giving professionals the added capacity they need, along with the all-important networking resources required to identify and effectively pursue top-level talent. Look for a firm with a proven track record of success both within and outside your industry who can speak to the importance of aligning new senior-level hires with your strategic goals and corporate values.

2) To Gain Insights from an Outside Perspective

When hiring a professional placement firm, you should get more than its employees’ recruiting skills and expertise. You should also benefit from having an objective source of input and guidance on your own internal hiring processes, especially those serving the highest levels of your organization.

Top firms in this space will get to know your business well, impart best practices they have implemented time and again, and help you apply proven strategies and recommendations to improve your own hiring practices going forward. Bringing in the right neutral partner will also ensure that emotions, personal relationships, and other intangibles don’t influence the hiring process – so the best person for the position, department, and organization is ultimately brought on board.   

3) To Tap a Broader Network of Connections

When a key leadership position goes unfilled, this puts strain on managers and employees alike. An experienced professional placement firm will be in close contact with internal stakeholders to forge relationships and gain an understanding of their own individual needs and vision for the new hire.

The right firm will also leverage its own network of trusted candidate contacts in the search. In fact, the most successful professional placements often result from established relationships between prospective candidates and professional placement firms, long-term connections built over time and based on mutual trust.

4) To Extend the Search Beyond Traditional Channels

While job seekers at all stages of their careers often look to social sites to peruse opportunities, these resources rarely produce the pool of talented candidates companies need to successfully fill senior-level positions. Factors such as whether an applicant is a good fit for your company culture are difficult to discern from resumes, cover letters, and online profiles.

This is where the expertise of top professional placement firms truly shines. Through strategically crafted interviews, assessments, and personal communications, the partner you select should evaluate candidates through the lens of your immediate needs, long-term goals, and corporate culture to ensure the candidates they recommend are right for the job and will become productive, innovative, and professionally fulfilled members of your organization over time.

The firm you select should also effectively champion the position and your company with candidates, serving in as much a marketing role as a recruiting one to inspire excitement for the position you are offering today – and the growth opportunities available down the road.

Exceptional Leadership Is Worth the Investment: We’re Here to Help

Given the challenges of the current labor market and the increasing complexities of HR and talent acquisition functions, outsourcing professional placement processes is a smart move for many companies today. When the time is right, M3 Placement and Partnership is here to set your strategy on track and your search in motion with:

• The experience, relationships, and depth of cross-industry knowledge your professional placement search deserves
• A roll-up-your-sleeves approach to the search, giving you the boots on the ground your HR team needs, as well as strategic advisory services you can tap to take your hiring processes to the next level going forward
• Multi-channel sourcing strategies that effectively get the word out to the right audience in the right way while leveraging the trusted relationships we have built over time with our expansive network of corporate leaders
• Proven strategies for attracting top-level talent to meet each organization’s needs, an approach that holistically considers where your company is today, where you want to be tomorrow, and the unique characteristics that make a qualified candidate the ideal match for your firm, your industry, and your future

Find out how outsourcing professional placements with M3 can help your business grow and lead even in the most challenging environments. Contact M3 to schedule an initial consultation.