Rapid Growth: Recruiting, Hiring, and Training
A very common set of problems that companies run into during rapid growth times are the problems associated with recruiting, hiring, and training staff members. Like a lot of things during rapid growth times, the quality levels typically go down a few notches when everyone gets busy.
Recruiting & Hiring:
I am so happy when I have already covered things that come up in series. I talk quite a bit about hiring. Here are some posts that are worth reviewing:
- Guest Writer: Identifying Good Customer Service Candidates
- Who else wishes there were no moronic idiots in customer service?
- Guest Writer: Stop the Revolving Door of Employee Turnover
- HR & Customer Service (Part 2 of 2)
- HR & Customer Service (Part 1 of 2)
These posts address a few key issues (where to find people, how to ensure you hire the right people, etc.). By the way, I discovered this article about Headsets.com’s hiring process. It is pretty lengthy process (as Mike Faith described in his interview with Service Untitled) and is worth looking at.
The most important thing when it comes to recruiting and hiring is not to settle. You need a big batch of candidates to pick from and to get that, you may need to spend some money. Post ads everywhere, hire recruiters, setup an employee referral program, and quite a bit more.
Training:
Hire trainers.
If your company doesn’t already have a dedicated trainer (or more), it should. My general rule of thumb is for every 50 employees, one needs to have a job related exclusively to training. Depending on the company, this number may need to be higher or lower. An average company with 150 employees should do well with three dedicated trainers.
A dedicated trainer is someone who wakes up everyday and thinks about how to make the training process at Company XYZ better. They then go into work and do the actual training or something related to it (i. e. writing documentation for training) all day.
Hire other people.
Hire other to help with training, recruiting, and hiring. You may need an employee assessment expert, someone that specializes in interviewing, and a few recruiters. You can bring these people on as full employees (if you think it is needed) or simply as consultants. Companies that are growing quickly don’t have time to “figure it out.”
If you are hiring 5 people a day, you need to make sure they are right for your company. If not, the mistake can be costly. It is far less expensive to hire someone to do it right. The same goes with your training programs – why waste a week of your new employees’ time? Make sure the time counts.
