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recruiting quotes

10 Recruiting Quotes that your Business Needs to be Aligned with

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Here are the top 10 recruiting quotes that inspired us in the day-to-day operations and decision-making processes. We hope you find them useful, whether you are a recruiter or a hiring manager.

1. “People are not assets – they are highly valuable human resources that determine your competitive advantage. ” SourceMatch

Human resources can be the biggest differentiator for businesses in the marketplace, and hence should be a priority. Why? Products, decisions, strategies, brand, values, are all created and managed by people.

With all the challenges of today’s economy, businesses need the right people to address them, to innovate, and push the company forward. By doing that, businesses can develop a significant competitive advantage.

2. “Sourcing and finding people is very important. You can’t recruit, message, or network with someone you haven’t found.” Glen Cathey

As the workforce becomes broader and more diversified, recruiters need to cast a wider net and need sharper tools to find the needle in the haystack. We have to go outside of general recruiting channels that are flooded with very active candidates, and focus on the passive candidates. Most of them are not looking to change jobs and are successful in their current role.

3. “A recruiting company should be viewed as a business partner, someone who is critical to the success of the business.” Mathew Caldwell

You need two hands if you want to clap! The recruiting process should be viewed as a partnership where you get to know each other, you focus on everybody benefiting from it, and create long-term relationships. When that happens, a recruiting partner will boost your ability to reach the best talent faster and will make any cost associated with it easily justifiable.

4. “Trust your recruiters to be your digital warriors. Don’t second guess them.” Celinda Appleby

Recruiters, first of all, listen to your needs. You have to share the context of the role, the job description, the organization’s vision, values, and objectives. That will help them have a holistic view of the candidate that could be a perfect match. Achieving that at the forefront of the recruiting process will set it up for success, and clarify expectations.

5. “The more seriously you take your growth, the more seriously your people will take you.” John Maxwell

Employees are motivated by leaders, and if leaders see beyond the title and job description, so will the employees. If your employees understand your vision, the big picture, and know their part, they will be willing and capable of contributing exponentially to the company’s goals.

6. “Hire for passion and intensity; there is training for everything else.” Nolan Bushnell

What do you need to know about your future employees? Skills and experience are important but should only come second to their attitude. That’s what you need to consider first in the hiring process.
For instance, when you review their resume, it’s quite easy to follow tangible outcomes, results, and facts. However, what matters is “HOW” they worked towards those results. Was it because of their dedication to client satisfaction? Was it because of their positive attitude despite challenges in the process? Was it because they proactively thought of potential drawbacks? Answers to questions like these will show you the true attitude of the person beyond the resume, and help you understand whether you need to hire them or not.

7. “Accept the fact that AI will change our work, but look at it as an enabler of your work and the future of talent acquisition.” Przemek Berendt

According to a Deloitte Bersin report, companies that use AI, predictive data analytics and other technology tools are more successful than those who don’t. However, AI needs to be a tool that complements our own abilities. In talent acquisition, AI is especially helpful in making sense of large volumes of applications, effective usage of time in reviewing the required skills and clarity of one’s experience in their resume. Naturally, there are still parts of the recruiting process which are inherently still most effective when handled by human resources. For instance, the interviewing process will allow the recruiter to get to know a candidate based on their nonverbal communication, which is estimated to account for up to 93% of all communication.

8. “Understanding what “best talent” looks like is a journey into your organizational culture.” SourceMatch

Think this way: there are great candidates out there. But hiring someone that matches your job description isn’t enough. What does “best” mean to you and to your organizational culture? They’ll need to align with your vision, mission, and values, to ensure that they are going in the same direction as the company. Otherwise, those new employees won’t be able to contribute to the company’s momentum for growth. This is why your vision, mission, and values determine what “best” means, how it’s measured and appreciated.

9. “Interviews don’t need to be stressful, neither for recruiter or candidate, but rather a pleasant incursion into one’s experience, personality, abilities, and potential.” SourceMatch

Beautiful isn’t it? Or at least it should be! Hiring managers are responsible for creating the right experience for candidates being interviewed. They will influence the candidate’s’ openness to be transparent and fair about their responses but also create the right setting for a two-way street. We are used to thinking that candidates show up at interviews just for the job, but the truth is that it’s the perfect time for companies to have a positive impression on them too.

10. “If you think it’s expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur.” Red Adair

According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the price of a bad hire is at least 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings. It’s easy to dismiss a candidate based on salary alone and the true cost of a bad hire is only visible after a few months. Not paying attention in the first place can lead to a mismatch of expectations, bruised personalities, useless conflicts, financial and sometimes motivation loss. So think well and evaluate what’s the trade-off between candidate salary levels, expertise, abilities, and especially attitude.

Reach out to us to learn more.

How can a manager best motivate his team

What Motivates Someone to do Their best, and how can a Manager best Motivate his team/ Employees?

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Motivation has a lot to do with a few factors: source (why), time (when) & space (where), and outcomes (what). The first two are for context and in my view are important to get a deeper understanding of what motivates people, and if you’d like to have the “what can I use now “ part, you can just skip to “3. Outcomes”.

  1. Source

It would be superficial to assume motivation is just external – i.e. I give someone a bonus that will motivate them, if I create the right environment, everyone will be motivated to be productive, etc.

In our experience, intrinsic motivation comes prior to external motivation. Take for instance the case of a person going to work from 9 am–5 pm. Why do they do it? Is it the salary? Yes, and why are they motivated to have a/that salary? It’s the level of comfort given by an income, not having to worry about tomorrow. It might be that the person is motivated to start their own business and needs the assurance of a fixed income until the business is up and running. Yes, and why are they motivated to have their own business? It can very well be a sense of independence, fulfillment, and happiness.

That’s why before you can pinpoint someone’s motivation, think of what is their true (intrinsic) motivation. Most of us don’t go flaunting these hidden motivations around. Someone else (say a manager) will not have access to them unless you see in them a genuine interest in what motivates you. In essence, not unless they win your trust first, the basis of human relationships.

External motivation is typically tied to an action/outcome that can be more or less evident.

For instance, the less evident one is when you try to motivate children to walk and you applaud them at every step they take so that they feel the happiness of having progressed. Although they might not be aware of the connection between the applause and their increasing ability to walk, they instinctively pursue the external motivation by repeating what caused it. (I’m not a psychologist, we just have kids!)

The obvious one is clearly defined with cause and effect (finite as opposed to the intrinsic such as happiness). When our annual revenues reach a certain amount, you get a certain bonus. If your performance assessment indicates that you’ve reached all of your goals, you will be provided with an award and a cash bonus. You’ve done well in the past couple of years, and your manager tells you that you’re being promoted (recognized) for your hard work.

Understanding the source of motivation is pretty straightforward, and there are plenty of books and research done on this topic.

However, a simple strategy is to just ask “why” until you have a hard time providing an answer, or know that there’s no deeper level (i.e. like happiness).

  1. Time and Space

Throughout our career, motivation changes with each time period and place we are in. The first job after graduation might be all about making ourselves valuable, earn a good salary, building our knowledge and expertise beyond a piece of paper, and gather as many wins in a renowned organization. Once we go past our second or third role, we first start thinking about where we could have the most impact, how long it would take to grow enough to become the next best version of ourselves and finally it would be great if we could earn an even better compensation. You’ll notice people taking time periods of 3–5 years to plan their career.

Time and space influence what motivates us. As a manager, you must be aware of the kind of time period and space that each person in your team is in. Some might have just joined your team right out of school and some others might be experienced professionals that can already bring a certain set of knowledge and expertise. For instance, the recent graduate employees might be motivated by working with the more experienced professionals in your team. And the more experienced professionals might be motivated by the possibility to coach and mentor some of the young team members.

  1. Outcomes

Whether intrinsic or external, motivation always needs to be tied to outcomes.

However, understanding the time and space helps you correlate the right outcomes with the right motivation. When someone new comes in, be aware of the fact they are not going to be with you forever. They could be there for 2 years or 5 years. But for them to be motivated to give their best, you need to commit to helping them be their best, regardless of how long they’ll stick around.

  • Create a personal development path (i.e. not related directly to company performance requirements) for them with the sole purpose of enabling them to reach their potential and beyond. Make their job about them first, and your company second. It’s a counter-intuitive approach, but when your employees and teams are motivated by their own personal growth first, they will thrive in their jobs and bring results to the company. I like to call that “owning your job.” Even if they work for you today, when they walk out to take another job or open their own business, they leave with all of what they’ve learned, whether you like it or not. So better use that knowledge today to build a win-win situation. Meet regularly to review with the employee the progress of their personal development. This will help you discover the deeper way that feeds your employees’ motivation.

People are motivated to do their best when managers help them know what their best is.

  • Open up problem-solving and decision making to all of your team. Its double effect is a tremendous gold mine, that managers tap into so rarely. The first benefit is, of course, the potential of crowdsourcing ideas which can bring so much creativity to the table. Brainstorm, talk about them, turn problems around, and be ready to discuss any apparently crazy idea. The second benefit is the team’s motivation through empowerment. Your team will feel motivated because their manager acknowledges that everyone can contribute, can voice their ideas and be part of the solution. If you can, allow the winning idea to be implemented by the person in the team who came up with it!

People are motivated to do their best when managers give up on trying to be the best by themselves.

  • Set, measure and celebrate your team’s impact on your key indicators like client satisfaction, quality of service, a decrease in product returns, process improvement, and even your bottom line. Take time to quantify what performance impact looks like, and challenge them to get there. Start measuring and let them know when you see progress/milestones being achieved and where things didn’t go as expected. Recognize their effort, and challenge them to reach the next milestone. As you quantify the impact, people understand the connection between doing their best to the nitty-gritty details of an organization’s performance.

People are motivated to do their best when they can see or envision an outcome. It’s a manager’s responsibility to paint a vision of that outcome in as many details as possible, and let them know when they have gotten closer to it and by how much.

A motivation that isn’t aligned with your team members in mind is bound to be short-lived, and of little impact.

If you are already a manager or own a company, and have not considered motivating your team, switching to a culture of motivation might seem impossible.

The great news though is that you can tackle some of the possible and apparently impossible things in the real world. And we are advocates of starting small.

Start with building trust and transparency with your employees, without expecting anything in return. They will be skeptical at first. Repeat it every month, start writing down what you hear, holding them accountable to their own words (again, not performance items, but rather what they are good at, what they appreciate about the team, or environment or not, etc.) just by asking (not imposing). Then find out whether there’s anything you can help them with: to either help them grow or integrate some of their personal objectives in what they do at work (if possible). And finally, when you are able, help them see their potential when they can’t.

“People don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care”

― Theodore Roosevelt

Schedule a chat with us to start the conversation about your future employees.