4 Steps to Combat Hiring Apathy

As business leaders, we all claim to want the best talent on our team. We tout impressive benefits, great working conditions, and a strong desire to only staff our team with winners.

It is no secret that bad employees not only drain company resources, they can also hurt sales efforts and damage relationships with internal and external customers. Many of us wonder, “how did that happen? Why do we keep making the same mistakes?”

The answers often revolve around the fear and dread that surrounds the selection process.

In our professional lives we are taught how to sell, manage, and implement processes, but oftentimes learning how to hire the best people is overlooked. This lack of training causes a subtle degree of self-doubt and that doubt causes us to be less proactive in confronting the selection process as a whole. This can then result in people losing the direction and motivation they need to implement the best recruiting strategies. All of this eventually turns into apathy.

We have all fought these apathetic demons. Here are a few:

1. We are naturally lazy or less interested in activities we don’t like.

2. When we have the need to fill a position, we feel desperate.

3. It’s hard to find really good people.

4. It takes so much time and patience to hire the best people and do it thoroughly.

5. We may think we are better interviewers than we really are. We are naturally more interested in doing things we like, for instance, helping customers or dealing with other so-called “more pressing matters.”

Are you haunted by a similar sense of lingering guilt? The first step to recovery is being honest with yourself. It hurts, but it has to be done if you’re ever going to improve.  So, how do we defeat our own apathy?

1. Be honest with yourself.

Take some time to reflect on what is stopping you from doing what you know is right. Write down all the reasons why you don’t take the time to run a highly effective selection process.

2. Realign your priorities.

When you have a position to fill, ask yourself, “if I don’t give this the time and attention it needs so I can hire the right person the first time, how busy and overwhelmed will I be later?”

The point of having employees is to make your life easier, so if you are a manager or a business owner that says, “If I don’t do it myself, it will never get done right,” you have a major problem ahead.

Consider if you spent the time to build a great team. Think about all the free time you could have later on. Think about how the right people will increase revenue and productivity.

While the process of selecting the best people can be a slippery slope, it can lead you in the right direction. Amazing things happen even when you hire one top performer. Now, imagine two or three high achievers on your team.

3. Be realistic about how long it actually takes to find the best people.

• For high-level positions give it 3-6 months. I know that sounds crazy. How could you possibly survive that long without filling a key role? Trust me, you will be better off if you take the time to do it right.
• For mid-level positions, give yourself 2-4 months to find a really good person.
• For entry-level positions, give yourself 1-3 months.

Think about all it entails. You have to place the job ads, you have to phone-screen potential candidates, and you have to go through at least three rounds of interviews, followed by background checks, reference checks, and aptitude and competency assessments.

4. Create a strategy.

When you don’t have a well-thought-out plan it can be hard to stay focused. Check out some of the top-rated books on hiring and understand that having any strategy in place is better than none at all.

Write down your strategy and use it consistently. You never implement a marketing strategy that you couldn’t measure the results of, so why would you do that in your hiring practices? If you are consistent then you can figure out what works and what doesn’t, over time. If you are interested in how can you hire amazing employees and keep your recruiting budget low, check out our Road Map to Hiring Good People.