Recruit People That Stick

One of the problems that three or four of my clients have at the moment is keeping talent in the business.

They find that the best people they have will often leave after 3 or 6 months, or they get to a certain point where just as they’ve got them to be productive they find something else.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m no recruitment expert, I’m a leadership coach and I work with teams and careers and whatever, but hey, I’ve got my own opinion around how to manage this so I’m going to share it with you…

If you get this right, people will stick in the business longer than they ordinarily would. I’m not saying they’ll stay forever…

If you get this wrong, people will often leave before probation or they’ll leave unexpectedly and leave you in a hole.

If you get the recruitment thing right from the start, you get people that you really want to stay in your business in the long term and it makes your job easier.

Here is a framework and a way of thinking about who you should select.

There’s three pieces that fit together, like all these lovely matrix things! This triangle in the diagram is what we want, in an ideal world, but… you know, whether you get that or not, THIS is what you’re after, in here.

The first piece that people often forget is culture fit, so this is – Are their values and behaviours aligned with the culture of your team, the culture of the organisation?

If you get this wrong, people often perform but they’ll damage relationships with other people which makes your job harder.

Clearly in the recruitment process you’re going to ask some questions to establish whether they’ve got cultural fit.

The second part is value, which is that in the recruitment process we need to establish – Can they set a strategy and then execute on it? Are they able to identify the two or three problems in the role you think really need to be addressed? (And this is really their view, not your view).
And then have they got the ability to actually make an impact in the organisation by executing on that strategy?

Both of those things are as important as each other.

Alright, so, first one is cultural fit – do the values and behaviours that they exhibit on a daily basis at work fit with your team and your organisation. The second is the value that they can provide in terms of their ability to see the problems and the strategy and then execute on them, is it there?

Can they be who they need to be? Can they do what they need to do?

The third one I think people forget is their personal fit. So this is about – Does this job fit with their life? And this is all the way down to things like –
What’s their family situation?
Where do they want to live?
Where are they going in their career?
Long term aspirations?

So the problem with not focussing on the fit is they could be a great cultural fit and they could deliver a whole lot of value but it mightn’t work for their situation a year from now or two years from now.

Let me summarise. If you’re recruiting people for your team and you want them to stick around and stay in the organisation, I want you to use this framework to be able to think about the people that you select and the idea is to consider three things. The cultural fit, the value that they can deliver, both strategy and the execution, and then the personal fit of this role for their life both now and in the medium and the long term.

If you do this you’re going to more likely find people that you’re going to love working with, and lose less good people.

I hope this has been helpful, please share it with those that you think might benefit from it and I’ll see you next time on The Reason & The Road.