Fish Where the Fish Are
By Andrew Hammer

Finding and hiring qualified employees is fast becoming the most challenging aspect of growing a business. Without the key human capital, it doesn’t matter how much manufacturing capacity you have, how much funding is available, how good your product or service is, or how big your market could be. Your business can’t grow without the key employees that make every successful business successful. As demographics shift and necessary skill sets change, finding qualified applicants to fill your key positions becomes a function of finding, recruiting, onboarding, and retaining highly skilled and motivated employees. The early stages of this process are a lot like fishing as you move around the landscape searching for the right candidates who want to work for you.

The Old Ways - there are a few tired old methods that many companies still rely on. Some work better than others, some don’t work at all. Here are a couple of the most common methods of fishing.

1. Throw out some bait and wait
That is, rely on your company’s name, brand, and local image – and the fish will jump in your boat and happily stay in your boat even if you stop feeding them.

For many years companies with a solid reputation and a strong employer brand could sit back and wait for new employees to come knocking on their doors. Generations of workers passed on jobs from grandfather to father to son because, ‘company X is a good place to work,’ or ‘company Y has always been here and they will take care of you.’

This method simply doesn’t work any longer for most companies. Employee attitudes have changed and employers have abused the privilege of a loyal workforce. Jobs are seldom passed from one generation to another and the concept of “lifetime employment” has become a dinosaur. Even companies with the strongest employer brands must step outside this antiquated model to find employment candidates. Then, once the candidates have been located, you must keep feeding your employees more responsibility, increased salaries, and better training if you hope to keep them very long.

2. Hit and Run
This is the method of those looking for instant gratification. Throw the hook in the water, (run a one-day classified ad), use as little bait as possible (put a 12” sign in the front yard that says “now hiring”), fish for about five minutes then move to a new lake (declare that there are no good candidates). This method is full of problems that begin with the concept that great candidates can be found overnight. Successful recruiting and staffing is a long-term process that takes commitment. There are still a few industries where this method will yield a few candidates, but overall, hit and run recruiting results in higher turnover and higher recruiting cost than other methods.

3. Fish Like a Trawler
In this method, you cast as wide a net as possible by advertising on the biggest job boards, in the largest newspapers, on college campuses, at concerts, ballgames, local events, and more. Your referral program is fired up and your recruiting department is mining databases, searching resumes, and flipping Web sites. You are bringing in “candidates” by the basketful; hundreds of them. And, you are happy!

Happy! – That is until you realize how much time and effort goes into screening, interviewing, and testing a large volume of candidates. Not to mention the time it then takes to manage all the applications, emails, and piles of paper created by fishing for your candidates like a trawler. And then you start to throw the candidates you don’t need back. Just like a fish and release program, you have to release all the fish you caught that you can’t use because they are the wrong size (too little experience), the wrong species (wrong education), bottom feeders (the terminally unemployed), or they are poisonous (poor attitudes or work ethic). There are a lot of reasons why you will throw them back – and you will throw a lot back.

This is just an inefficient process that turns valuable HR staffers into a paper factory. Instead of spending their time and talents on recruiting, training, motivating, and engaging the right candidates or your current employees, which by the way leads to increased performance, many HR departments are completely absorbed in the daily grind of processing applications from non-qualified candidates.

The New Way - FISH WHERE THE FISH ARE
That is, go where your candidates are and target them with a specific recruiting message. Here’s how.

1. Know your Fish - This method of finding and recruiting candidates requires that you first learn a little bit about your fish. Who are they?, what skills do they have?, where did they get their education?, how many years of experience do they have?, what motivates them?, etc. Take some time to learn as much about your quarry as you can. The more you know, the easier your job will be.

2. Go Where the Fish Are - Once you know who you are fishing for, you must find out where your fish spend time and go there to recruit. That doesn’t necessarily mean physically traveling either. You can take your company and your recruiting message many places through advertising, sponsorships, and the like. The places your best candidates spend time might be a specific Web site, a certain store, a discreet event, etc. The key is to spend your time and your marketing dollars in the right places. If you are hiring local customer service representatives, you don’t need to advertise on a nationally focused Web site because your candidates probably won’t come from any further than what they would drive to work (about 25 miles). Similarly, if you are looking for mechanical engineers, you don’t want to spend your advertising dollars on a site dedicated to banking, or worse, on a site not focused on anything.

For instance, if you are hiring certified mechanics you must go where certified mechanics hang out. . Many mechanics are gear-heads at heart and spend time with cars outside of work. So, you might advertise your openings and promote your company at local racetracks or performance shops. Or, sponsor the local cruise in on Saturday nights as a unique way to find mechanics. This is a good start, but where else would mechanics spend time? How about the parts store? Most independent mechanics have a relationship with the local parts vendor which means you should be spending some time there also. Quiz the store manager or the person behind the parts counter and ask for the names of the “best body man” in town, or the “best diesel mechanic” etc. You will be surprised how many leads you can get with just one visit.

3. Use the correct bait – When you are recruiting, your bait is your position description or job ad. Each description must be unique to the position you are trying to fill. Just like in fishing, you can’t use the same bait to catch every type of fish. Chum is great for catching sharks but won’t do much to help you catch lobster. Within your job ads you must focus on the candidates you are trying to recruit and speak directly to them. You do this by knowing the candidates well and by crafting your advertisements and job descriptions to clearly explain why your jobs are challenging and interesting. (see Better Job Ads = Better Candidates). By using customized job ads as the correct bait, you will by default eliminate some unqualified candidates and save yourself time in the screening process.

4. Get other people to fish with you and for you – Fishing alone isn’t nearly as much fun as fishing with friends. Recruiting alone isn’t nearly as successful as recruiting with friends. When you have identified specific types of candidates you need to recruit, you can find specific people who can help you fish. Ask everyone you know for referrals and leads and create an incentive program to reward people for bringing you good candidates.

Using the mechanic example from above, you could easily enlist the help of traveling tool salespeople to help you identify mechanics you should contact. The message you want your fishing partner to relay in this case is pretty simple. “Hey, did you know that the XYZ garage is hiring mechanics? I hear they have excellent benefits and they just installed brand new lifts to help their mechanics. If you are interested you should call Bill.” Enlisting the help of people near your candidates is a great way to increase your ability to catch the candidates you need.

5. Keep your hook in the water even when you don’t need to catch fish. This step is pretty simple. If you are serious about finding and hiring the best possible employees, you must constantly be recruiting, even when you don’t have an open position to fill. (See Building a Consistent Candidate Pipeline Part 1 and Part 2 for more details)

6. Don’t Forget to Feed the Fish You Already Have! – Finally, you can’t forget to feed and nurture the employees you already have. Your existing workforce is a great source of candidates to fill new positions; if you take the time to train and mentor your existing employees. The efforts your company puts into current employees typically pay back huge dividends in performance, quality, cost savings, dedication, and customer service. And if that isn’t enough, by focusing time and effort developing your employees you can groom them for new positions, test their abilities under fire, increase morale and performance, and create employee loyalty. After all, someday your competitor is going to come fishing in your pond for your employees. You can allow your employees to be tempted by their bait, or you can have employees who are so satisfied they won’t even know there is another hook in the water.

Andrew Hammer is President of CareerMarketplace, Inc., a leading network of geographic and profession-specific employment Web sites focused on engineering, sales, information technology, and healthcare. Mr. Hammer has over 10 years of experience with Internet recruiting as a former Director of Internet Strategy and Vice President of Top Echelon Network, the world’s largest Network of independent recruiters. In his current role he works with employers from across the United States to create candidate sourcing opportunities that allow his clients to compete in the global “war for talent.”