How Great Leadership Improves the Recruiting Process
Earlier, I mentioned starting a job on March 12, 1996, that I thought would get me through college and how much that organization invested into hiring forty of the one thousand or so candidates who applied. I didn't share how much of that investment came during the first two weeks we were on the payroll. The company certainly had a lot of time and money tied up in the process before we ever set foot on the property: several rounds of off-site interviews, competency testing at the local tech school, background checks, and drug screens-which shouldn't be confused with "drug testing" because testing drugs was a bit more taboo back then. That all carried a hefty price tag, even back in the '90s, but not nearly as much as the organization invested by having all forty of us go through two full weeks of orientation!
At that point, the starting wage for hourly positions at that facility was $9.48 per hour before factoring in any of the benefits-some of the best in the Shenandoah Valley at the time. They paid each of us almost $1,000 to sit in training rooms for two solid weeks, some of which covered the processes and procedures we'd soon be expected to follow to the letter. Still, there was just as much face time with the local management team.
I won't pretend like I remember the majority of the material that was shared over the course of those two weeks. My point here isn't to make a case for whether or not that much time was necessary. But I do remember like it was yesterday the impression the plant manager made with us from day one and how he walked the talk for the next few years until he retired. What stood out the most to me was his focus on the importance of safety, his making sure we knew he was always approachable, and his emphasis on paying little attention to the rumor mill. Regarding rumors, he assured us we'd hear at least one every day and said we should start one of our own if we didn't!
While joking about us starting rumors, he was incredibly serious about safety and how approachable he was. I saw him on the shop floor interacting with the off-shift crew I was part of more in my first month than I had seen the construction foreman at the job I came from in the entire year I worked there-and that foreman was only responsible for the six or eight of us on that one crew.
Fast-forward to late 2013 and most of 2014. I was doing almost all the hiring for that facility I started with in March of 1996. At that point, the amount of time we were given to complete all the new hire paperwork, cover all the rules and regs, and introduce the new employees to our safety and quality processes was limited to just four hours. Those new team members spent the rest of their first day engaged in something similar to what they were hired for. I'm still not making a case for whether the time for the orientation process was good or bad. Still, I will challenge you to consider which version of orientation in that same facility provided the new folks coming on board with more exposure to the local leadership team. Since I'm too impatient to give you much time to guess, I'll lay it out for you! During my final eighteen months with the company, when I hired around 225 people, I don't remember a single instance where the plant manager even said hello to one group of new employees. To that end, the only managers who were regularly involved in the orientation process were the safety manager and the quality manager, both of whom I consider close friends still today-which is likely tied to the fact that they gave a crap about the people we were bringing into the organization...
Here's one more question: If you worked in that facility under both of those management teams, which would you be more likely to recommend to your friends or family as a place to consider when they were looking for employment?
In March '22, Forbes.com published an article by Karla Reffold called "Three Reasons Why Your Leaders Are Essential in the Recruiting Process," which shared:
Improvements in the recruitment process often focus on candidate experience, an important thing to keep in mind. Further improvements might focus on interview training for hiring managers, ensuring they focus on a welcoming and fair process. Yet leaders are noticeably missing from the attraction stage of that process. In a world where the need for talent has never been more pressing, your best leaders might be the missing piece to the puzzle.
While the example I shared here was from one of our area's largest manufacturing facilities, I can honestly say that, with a select few exceptions, I've seen little difference in the level of involvement management/ownership has in small businesses. We are indeed in a world where every organization has a pressing need for talent! This absence of leadership in the recruiting and onboarding processes sends a loud message to every potential candidate, driving the recruiting costs even higher and killing our profitability!
With that in mind, let's look at the three reasons Reffold alluded to and dig into what this lack of visibility with leaders can do to a culture.
Where Everybody Knows Your Name...
If you've ever seen the '80s TV show Cheers, you can probably hear the theme sound in your head right now, wrapping up with the line "where everybody knows your name..." Whether it's a friendly neighborhood basement bar in Boston, our favorite local restaurant, or where we earn our living, don't we feel at least a little more appreciated when the people we're interacting with know our names? This certainly isn't something new! In his 1937 book How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie shared that "a person's name is to that person the sweetest, most important sound in any language."
With that statement in mind, think back to the examples I shared before contrasting the involvement of the management teams in just the recruiting process when I started at that local manufacturing facility in the mid-90s and just before I left in 2014. I won't ask you to consider which would have made you feel more welcome or appreciated; that would be a foolish question. I also won't ask which environment you believe yielded the most (and best) candidate referrals from existing employees-but if you need more clarification, you can reach out to me directly. I'll be happy to clear that up in short order! What I will challenge you to think about is how that distinct difference in involvement in just the recruiting process set the tone for how every supervisor reporting to those two (very different) management teams interacted with the newest members of the team as well as those who had been there for years...
When an owner of a company or an executive shows-through their behaviors rather than just the words they say-that each employee and customer is essential to them, doesn't it stand to reason that showing this same kind of value would cascade down to every other level of an organization? Whether that's saying hello each morning, making time in their day to hear a concern, or being able to call everyone by name, it sends a message that the individual is just as crucial as any transaction they're involved in.
Now, how about the inverse? If the door to my office is always closed, I'm not willing to take questions in meetings, and after more than a year in the organization, I still only know the names of a select handful of employees, how much value have I shown to anyone there? And if I've made it obvious that I don't value the folks who have been there for years, will I likely show any value to the new ones coming in?
Those are straightforward questions, and the answers are easy to figure out. The part that surprised me the most, though, was how quickly a few high-level managers taking that approach changed an entire culture and how fast that change impacted the recruiting process as well as the overall quality of candidates for a company that had a long-standing reputation for being one of the employers of choice in the region!
Consider what I've heard John Maxwell emphasize for more than twenty years once more here: "Everything rises and falls on leadership!" While I'm very intentional about whom I will and will not refer to as a leader, that doesn't change the fact that we in supervisory or management roles still have leadership responsibility-whether we accept it as such or not. How we do or do not handle that responsibility immediately impacts our team's culture and a candidate's desire to become part of that team. And that's where the cost of recruiting can become a significant profitability killer in our organization. To build a culture where we capture that lost profit, our actions need to speak louder than our words.
Being Involved From the Start...
I doubt it would be tough to choose which management team you would have preferred working for, the one where everybody knew your name or the one where NOBODY seemed to care if you had a name, especially if all the other factors involved were about the same... Quite frankly, I've seen a ton of folks accept substantially lower pay in more demanding working conditions to become a part of a team where the organization's leaders consistently showed that they valued the individuals working for them.
With that in mind, let's consider the three reasons why leaders are essential in the recruiting process that Karla Reffold listed in her article. She spelled out the impact leaders who were involved in the recruiting process could have on the overall mission and values of the organization and how this yielded a positive return on investment-capturing at least some of the profitability that's so often killed when leaders choose not to be present through the recruiting process, for whatever reason.
Another article, "Here's Why Leadership Should Be Involved In The Hiring Process For Every Early Employee" by Glen Alison, COO of a company called Honey, shared, "I believe every company should make sure that someone from their leadership team plays a direct role in hiring." Alison emphasized, "Leadership is uniquely qualified to screen for those less tangible skills required of working at startups." I'll take it further and suggest that leadership's involvement is just as crucial for long-established companies.
One of the critical points Cindy and I make when sharing a lesson we wrote called Building Buy-In Around a Clear Mission & Vision is that leaders CANNOT share the mission or vision with their team once and move on. Leaders also don't have the luxury of delegating the message to other supervisors or managers on their team to share on their behalf. Suppose leaders have any level of involvement in the recruiting and onboarding process. In that case, they can begin sharing the mission and vision with new or potential team members!
When leaders choose to show up early in the recruiting process and routinely maintain a positive presence with all of their team members moving forward, you can expect to see a significant increase in the number of candidates your current employees are willing to refer to the organization. While that can make a massive dent in the profitability that's killed in a typical recruiting process, there are a few specific things a leader can do that require more than just showing up!
