6 Strategies For Hiring The Right Talent At The Right Time

Hire the right people upfront — and cut the bad apples loose quickly

Employee turnover is not only inconvenient, but also extremely expensive. According to a recent Gallup poll, replacing an existing employee can cost anywhere from 50% to 200% of that employee’s annual salary.

While losing an employee can damage a company’s bottom line, keeping a toxic employee onboard can wreak even greater havoc.
 

The solution: hire the right people upfront — and cut the bad apples loose quickly.

Here are six ways to attract, hire, and retain good employees.

6. Put Relationships First

Never rush into a new hire. Instead, put significant time into establishing relationships before, during, and after the recruitment and hiring process.

Relationships play a vital role long before a job opening happens. It takes great relationships and networking to identify and attract new talent. Referrals from coworkers (who are essentially brand ambassadors) and industry colleagues are invaluable.

According to Gallup, 71% of workers use referrals from a company’s current employees to learn about job opportunities. So, rather than pouring resources into job advertisements or impersonal, ineffective, and often unwelcome social media e-blasts (a.k.a. spam), focus on nurturing both internal and external relationships, which reliably generate good leads when the time is right.
 
Once you have identified a prospective hire, do not skip straight to the intensive interview stage. In other words, get to know the person, not just the candidate on paper. Start with casual meet-and-greets with a variety of team members, and keep the lines of communication open with timely check-ins. By making the effort to assess personality fit upfront, you can hone in on quality candidates long before you get into the nitty-gritty of what the job entails.

5. Invest in People (And a Killer Culture)

Put people first. When employees feel valued, they tend to stick around. Furthermore, a strong team of loyal employees tends to attract new hires looking for a positive, engaged workplace. A caring leader will know their employees’ struggles, proactively collaborate on solutions, and anticipate an employee’s departure long before they jump ship or are asked to leave.  
 
Every human within a company needs to be heard, appreciated and supported. Much of that nurturing and positive feedback comes from leadership, but it also comes from the company’s culture.

Building a strong culture takes work. It requires the establishment and communication of clear, company values, cross-generational inclusion, and a strong, team-building environment. By creating feedback mechanisms, you can nip any issues that arise in the bud. To get actionable feedback, take the personality out of the situation at hand. Simply ask: What’s working? What is not working?

4. Make Onboarding and Growth Easy

After recruiting a new hire, ensure that your company’s onboarding and training procedures are tight, your new team members know what to expect, and the entire process is set up to be a positive experience.

According to a study for Glassdoor by Brandon Hall Group, companies with a strong onboarding process improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by more than 70%. New hires should feel welcome, informed, and familiar with the team and the company culture and values from the get-go. Remember it should be all about the person, not the paperwork.
 
Policies, procedures, and management protocols all need to be evaluated and refreshed regularly. Seamless systems are important but do not just set it and forget it. As an employee’s tenure with the company lengthens, it is vital to continuously nurture each employee’s growth and strengthen relationships.

By implementing skills and personality assessments and professional training, such as DISC, leaders learn how best to manage their employees. Notably, a small team management structure (15-20 employees) is much more effective when it comes to retaining employees than top-down management.

A department head responsible for hundreds of people simply does not have the bandwidth to check in regularly with their colleagues and build those valuable relationships that counter turnover.  

3. Accentuate the Positive

Attitude is everything. From the moment you bring a new hire on board, emphasize the importance of managing mindset. Leadership needs to set a positive tone and guide team members toward solutions-oriented thinking. By rising above negativity and approaching unexpected hiccups as opportunities, leaders create a comfortable and creative environment where new hires feel empowered to ask questions, seek career growth, and ultimately thrive.

2. Cut Your Losses, Quickly

Toxic employees are costly on several levels. Often likened to hurricanes, they have the potential to inflict serious damage to culture, productivity, and the company’s bottom line — and the longer they are allowed to rage, the more harm they can do. According to a Rotterdam School of Management study, one toxic employee can cause a 30% to 40% drop in their team’s performance. Anecdotally, a toxic employee can undermine leadership, fuel discontent, create drama, stress coworkers, and essentially deteriorate the workplace.
 
It is not always easy to cut an employee loose. However, if you have done everything you can do to support that individual and they are still not producing the results your company needs to be viable, let them go — no matter how much you like them as a human being. It is kinder to ease an employee, who is not a good fit, out of a position, than to keep them on board. As the adage about the bad apple goes, one toxic employee can negatively affect the entire staff. Conversely, great employees, who feel valued and mesh well with the company culture, can motivate others in a positive and productive way.

1. Stop Fronting

Companies that are the best at what they do organically draw talent — as long as they are also authentic and good to their employees. In addition to performing well, your company must be relevant. Put your company out there and contribute to your industry in a positive way. Maybe you pay it forward via a non-profit partner or deliver tips and tools via a social media platform.

Whatever you contribute to the greater good will come back tenfold in terms of forging relationships and reinforcing a stellar reputation. It is not all altruism, of course. Prospective hires vet their prospective employers online, and if your company is engaged with the world-at-large in a positive way, you are more likely to attract the talent that you seek.

Author Bio

As CEO of Delta Hire, Noelle Federico oversees the company's recruitment and training services for its clients. Dedicated to helping companies find top talent to meet their business needs, Noelle is also an experienced business leader, entrepreneur and philanthropist in addition to her work at Delta Hire. She currently serves as the director of project management for Bryn Law Group and is the founder of two organizations: youth literacy nonprofit A Generous Heart and consulting firm Fortunato Partners. Connect https://www.linkedin.com/in/noelle-federico/