Are you ready for the recovery?

COVID-19 has left us all in a quasi-state of panic.  The fear of the unknown, shelter-in-place orders, social distancing, non-essential business shutdowns, schools closed….where does it end?  I don’t know.  

What I do know is that we cannot sustain this forever or perhaps not even for the foreseeable future.  I don’t know when we will return to normalcy but I do know we will. We’ve been through major crises before and at the time of the crisis, it seemed like we would be working in a new normal but then we returned to business as usual.

Are you ready for the recovery?  It may not be tomorrow but it’s coming.  How will you handle the surge in hiring requirements?  If a company had 5-10 hiring needs per month pre-COVID-19, imagine what that will look like post-COVID-19 especially if this isolation and shutdown continues for 2-3 months.  Many companies are still hiring, thankfully! Many others have put their recruiting and talent search on hold until we come to grips with this pandemic.  

For companies that were struggling to hire the right people pre-COVID-19, they will struggle even more post-COVID-19.  In times like these, why not explore using an executive recruiter who will go way beyond the conventional recruiting methods?  At Patrice and Associates, we use our proprietary methods to find, vet and present only qualified candidates. If you want to sift through hundreds of candidates, be my guest and please continue your struggle.  If, on the other hand, you want to make your recruiting and talent acquisition streamlined so you can work on all your other important tasks, look to partner with strong recruiting firms that streamline your efforts.  

Great recruiting firms help companies hire the right people in an effective manner.  Here are some characteristics that can help surge your talent acquisition efforts:

Put the power of the economy of scale that great executive recruiters can surge great, vetted candidates to work for you.  How does this work?  Simply, by hiring an experienced recruiter or recruiting firm, you can handle your other talent acquisition tasks such as onboarding, benefits management, interview scheduling while you have an effective recruiter screen several great candidates versus you screening hundreds of job applicants.  Recruiters have one job- recruit. I spend 8-10 hours a day talking to candidates. I don’t have countless meetings and other tasks to do because my job is to hunt the right candidates for your open roles. When you employ a national recruiter like mine, you get the power of hundreds of recruiters who are following the same system to find, vet and send you great candidates.  Our goal is to find 3-5 highly qualified candidates, not send you hundreds of unvetted and unqualified candidates. When you do the simple math, I can employ 100 recruiters x 8 hours/day to find good candidates. That means in one day, I can have 800 manhours in the search versus an overworked HR Director and staff trying to do the same work.

We use proprietary methods to find great candidates.  Many internal recruiters and even less effective recruiters/recruiting firms all use the same basic methods to find candidates.  The number 1 method is to post a job on the company’s website, job boards, social media and throughout networking groups. While you can certainly find candidates passively using that methodology, it’s not the most effective means.  When we return to some normalcy, you will quickly become overwhelmed by the amount of candidates that will apply to a post in this fashion. We go the extra mile to actively search for candidates.  95% of my candidates are not actively searching for a new role.  This means that you will not even find my candidates and most of these candidates are employed, qualified and are simply looking to see if there is something better out there.  In other words, they are passively looking. There are 4 types of candidates- 1) unemployed; 2) employed but actively seeking; 3) employed by passively looking and; 4) employed and happy.  We concentrate on #3- employed by passively looking. Those candidates are NOT normally applying to jobs.

We have a code of ethics that governs how we do business.  We work for the client company.  While we want our candidates to be happy with a new role, the client’s needs always trump the candidate’s desires.  Our ideal situation is to create a happy marriage between our client and our candidate. If the client is happy with a hiring decision and the candidate is happy with the client company, the increase in productivity has just paid the fee for the executive recruiter’s efforts.  With a strong code of ethics, you are getting the best that we can offer. We go out of our way to ensure that the candidate does not misrepresent their skills and experience. We do reference checks and employment checks based on what our client asks us to do. Of course, we do not always get that right but we do as much due diligence as we can on all the candidates that we represent.  The client company still needs to do background checks, drug screens, etc.  

If you are waiting for the economy to return to some level of normalcy, you may find yourself in an overwhelming talent search situation.  I get calls everyday from candidates that I have placed asking me if I can help them just in case they get laid off. Candidates are looking right now.  It would serve you well to keep your pipeline full even if you are not hiring right now. Let me help you with filling your pipeline!