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hire Archives - SourceMatch

Mar 15
1
recruiting

So you want to grow? Start with Recruiting.

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Recruiting is crucial for growth

Talent, what a tricky little thing! It is hard to find, hard to manage, let alone to retain, but truth be told, a company can’t thrive without it. Companies that are capable to hire talented people are more likely to achieve high success rates that in turn translate into financial gains. In other words, talent is money. Therefore, in the world of HR, talent is put on a pedestal and is viewed as a diamond. Chiseled or in the rough, diamonds are a precious sign of prosperity. It is exactly the same with talent and recruiters know it: if they place talent in the company, that company will prosper beyond its means. And this is why at SourceMatch we refined the ways we search for talent because we understand the impact and value it can have for our clients.

So, talent is important for growth. But the acquisition of high performers takes significant effort and expertise. Imagine you hire a very talented professional and you find yourself in a scenario resembling that joke with the gamer arriving in hell: after he wreaks havoc and destroys everything, he keeps asking where the next level is. Talent combined with pride will not lead to growth, it will create chaos. Or think about how important it is to hire people that do not only have potential but also have a sense of loyalty. You most definitely want to hire people who strive to grow in the environment you offer them. These professionals are not only great team players but when they outgrow their role, they ensure continuity by coaching others on their own development. Identifying personality traits that lead to growth-generating behavior isn’t easy. The recruiting process needs to be tweaked in such a manner that it will generate the best fit for your company. Therefore, many companies after encountering all sorts of hurdles in the recruiting process choose to either outsource it or bring in a partner to assist and advise them. Whether they specialize in recruiting consulting or head-hunting, these partners work with a diverse number of client organizations, using and improving their best practices. Unless they do, they become irrelevant for the purpose of their business existence.

Having said that, we should all agree: companies can have significant benefits by working with recruiting companies. We are talking about the experts of the field who are hacking growth through recruiting. Efficient recruiting companies will help you scale up the recruiting process to generate the same level of quality candidates as before despite the increasing number of positions to fill. They will shed light on how to best show candidates what your organization’s values are. They can help you define aspects of HR you didn’t even know existed. For instance, let’s say that you embark on a hiring initiative and three months later you find yourself desperate to find a fit for a crucial position in your company. You are in the midst of organizational growth and you’re not able to move forward because you don’t have the right people in the right positions. And then you come up with the brilliant idea to bring in a partner to assist with the recruiting efforts. The recruiting company has inbuilt HR automation technology used to process information about the labor market faster. Its recruiters are able to build a list of prospective candidates in a fraction of the time you would on your own. Moreover, they create pipelines that allow them to swift through candidates ending up with those that are suitable for you. The right recruiting partner will act as an extension of your team, expanding your efforts and amplifying what has worked, improving what has not and so on.

There are many skills and there are multiple personalities. And to understand how these intertwine with each other is part of a recruiter’s role. When you identify a candidate for your company and give them a job, you expect them to grow with you. But if their personality and skills are not a match then it can be in your detriment. Our team is trained to recognize what matches your requirements beyond just the job description. But these requirements aren’t just related to candidates’ technical experience and need to also encompass behavioral traits and cultural fit. This is why we’ve developed what we call a “360-degrees look at who the candidates are”. At SourceMatch, we use this approach to assist clients with their hiring needs, so that their decision making is based on reliable information. When you want to grow in the right direction you want to have the depth of knowledge to make the right decisions. SourceMatch has developed its recruiting process so that we focus on what truly matters to our clients, which will be different from organization to organization. That means that we reach the best candidates at the right time within the shortest timeframe while making the client’s job significantly more effective. For instance, one of our clients was looking to fill two positions for a Project Manager role. After several months after we placed the candidates, they came back. They said they would like to continue our collaboration, as the candidates we placed were top performers. We knew how to look for those ingredients that would make someone great not only from a hard skills perspective but more importantly, from a soft skills standpoint.

Someone once had a thought: “Great things in business are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people.” It was Steve Jobs, the creator of the mighty Apple. He was on to something and we believe that it applies to all organizations. Engaging with a recruiting company such as SourceMatch is useful because it provides your business and talent acquisition team with a partner. When companies decide to partner with SourceMatch, they instantly have access to a team that’s committed to their growth by identifying the right talent. Searching and hiring talent isn’t about a transaction but about a relationship. Our purpose is to identify the professionals that you need in order to advance your development strategy. As of that moment, it all comes down to integrating them into your organization, vision and especially making it crystal clear how their work contributes to it.

In today’s market, having access to resources can make a difference in a company’s ability to compete. But more than any other, human resources are crucial in the development of those companies that have a clear strategy for growth, innovation, and impact in their market segments.

Reach out to us to help you do what we know best: recruiting.

Nov 16
1
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.

Apr 18
4

Is it more Important for a Company to hire Based on Skill set fit or Based on Cultural fit?

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Of course, no one feels comfortable having to choose between the two. And yet, we don’t live in a perfect world and candidates bring different things to the interview table.

To even start thinking this topic through, it’s important we understand what a skill set is and what makes up the cultural fit.

Are skill sets important?

A skill set is a particular category of skills or abilities necessary to perform a job. Skill sets are easy to showcase based on previous jobs, numbers, achievements or in other words quantifiable facts. A good recruiter would have no problem to assess these looking at a resume, through interviews or tests.
So why even have any debates when a candidate can fit the job from a skills point of view?
After all, they will require less hand-holding, less training, and a shorter ramp-up period in the new job. They are people that hold a certain level of expertise that can just be plugged into an organization and bring immediate results.

What about culture fit?

It’s very tempting for recruiters who spend merely seconds to pick and choose what candidates will make it forward in the selections process. Candidates have complex personalities and unique combinations of upbringing and experiences.
When searching for new hires, hiring managers and recruiters want to ensure that the person who’ll join the organization will have preferences, personal and work styles that aren’t far from the hiring organization’s culture. Organizational psychology guru Adrian Furnham offers a definition for the cultural fit in his seminal academic textbook, “The Psychology of Behaviour at Work”: “A fit is where there is congruence between the norms and values of the organization and those of the person.”
Asking candidate’s questions such as the following will help you uncover their, likes, dislikes and expectations:

 -> Why do you want to work here?
 -> How would you describe your ideal workplace?
 -> What makes the work environment frustrating to you?
 -> Do you prefer working in a team or alone/as a sole contributor?
 -> Who was your best boss and what made them so great?

It’s critical however you take these questions and customize them to help you compare with your organization’s culture. Some companies are more loose when it comes to time and make results the sole main requirement, some are very eclectic and laid back wanting to foster creativity and outside-the-box thinking, and some that are very formal such as banks and other financial institutions.
If he/she is a fit, then they will feel good working for the company’s goals. The importance of cultural fit will reflect on the employee’s productivity. They will also be interested in the results they bring.

So what now?

You do need people to bring the right skills to the table to fulfill their jobs, and you also want a great alignment between the person’s and the organization’s values. However, as mentioned we don’t live in a perfect work: What if you had to choose between the skill set and culture alignment?
Culture always comes first.

Culture is the glue that holds an organization together, and the cost of poor culture fit can cost that organization between 50% to 60% of the person’s annual salary. So before you start vetting candidates, it’s critical that you define and articulate the organization’s culture (values, goals, practices, etc.). Only then will the recruiting process highlight the best candidates that fit the culture.
Everything considered culture fit should never be at the expense of different personalities, backgrounds, and a diverse workforce.

However, you do need to prioritize. First, make sure the values, ethics, morals, principles, etc. are there. Otherwise, you may find yourself hiring someone who has outstanding skills with a poor cultural fit. They will challenge your organization’s existence at every step of the way, either silently, or vocally. Sometimes it’s useful to have a new and constructive perspective on things. But if you have a culture that has proven time and time again to be beneficial for the organization’s development, for its employees and not the least its customers, then you should stick to it. Someone new who will not integrate with the team and organization will only cause unnecessary friction.

Lastly, in order to decrease the probability that you need to be in such a tough situation to choose between skill set and culture, hire continuously. Always be on the lookout for people who are shining in their current roles, who are delivering value to their customers and enjoy being part of something greater than themselves and their jobs.