If you feel like The Great Resignation is going to affect your business, then you should consider these hiring strategies for 2022. When turnover is likely, you need to focus on having your new employees become as productive, as soon as possible. That should start during the hiring process.
The better you can qualify applicants and define the open positions, the more likely you’ll end up with a good match. The era of Covid-19 has changed much about the way we work and that also extends to how you add people to your organization. Consider these tips for your hiring strategies for 2022:
Avoid Listing Endless Responsibilities
While you want to give a full picture of a position, listing 30-40 duties may lead to problems. If you must list every possible task, then add a section explaining where most of the employee time will be focused. You could say something like, “You’ll spend 80% of your time on X, Y, and Z,” rather than saying, “You’ll be doing A to Z.”
Confusion over duties and responsibilities may convince some qualified candidates not to apply. They may feel you’re promoting an unrealistic workload and a no-win situation.
You may also end up interviewing and perhaps even hiring people who tick a lot of the boxes but not necessarily the most important ones.
Hiring Stunt Doubles
We’ve talked before about how some businesses are so eager to fill a vacant position, they hire what I refer to as a stunt double. Fans of movies and TV shows know them as the performers who step in when an actor or actress can’t perform a complex action move or should not try to do it for safety reasons.
Typically, a stunt double is about the same size as the performer he or she is replacing. The person may also wear a wig or makeup to fool the audience into thinking the stunt double is the star.
With the right camera shots, the illusion works. On set, after the stunt, the double’s work is applauded and the star returns to play the role. You wouldn’t want the stunt double, someone who looks a lot like the actor, to continue performing in the main role. Their strength may not be acting.
In your businesses, you may need an exact copy of the person who is leaving. But is it possible what you need from the position may have changed over time? Certain skills may not be as important as they were in the past.
For instance, when I was fresh out of college, I worked some office temp jobs to bring in some money, as I looked for a position in broadcasting. Most of these menial office jobs no longer exist today, due to automation making them unnecessary.
As part of your hiring strategies for 2022, you may want to step back and decide if the position needs some reinvention. You may want to network some to find out if others have made similar changes.
Onboarding and Business Culture
During the pandemic, did your business go into survival mode, where much of your focus was on making it through the day and keeping your doors open. That’s understandable but did the disruption, with things like working from home, hurt processes like onboarding?
Do new employees feel like they’re working at a special organization, where goals and company culture are well defined? Or was it quickly touched upon during a Zoom interview and never mentioned again.
Make sure, your onboarding process represents your organization as well as your best sales or marketing presentations to your customers. You want to make sure people see their new jobs as a career, rather than a short stop on a resume.
If your hiring has shifted more to the virtual world, you may want to increase the time devoted to onboarding and discussing company culture.
You may want to ask recent hires what has surprised or inspired them about the businesses, as a way to discover if there are missing elements from your presentation. You don’t want your best stuff to be hidden in plain sight. Unveil it during the hiring process, as company culture may play a big role in making a position attractive.
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