Hiring Has Never Been Harder

At Express Vancouver, we've placed over 15,000 people with more than 1,000 Vancouver companies. I've been in recruitment for 20 years, and hiring today is harder than it's ever been.

We continue to help our clients hire great people at our office in Vancouver because we're constantly forced to innovate, identify our threats and weaknesses, and turn them into strengths. Recruiting is a full-time job for us. For the companies we work with where recruiting isn't a full-time job, it can be one of the more stressful, challenging, and costly endeavours to go through, especially when you approach it "just like you always have."

As a staffing and recruitment firm, we get paid to place people with our clients. The things that have made life easier for us include working with clients who:

1. Have an exceptionally strong vision, mission, culture, and values. They have a great external brand reputation and market presence on sites like Google, Glassdoor, and Indeed.
2. They are clear on the needs of the position, even though we help them get even more clarity.
3. They trust us to run the recruitment process, and when we submit a candidate, they interview with urgency, strategy, and a desire to hire the best available person as quickly as possible.
4. Lastly, firms that maximize the value of recruiting through a firm like ours have exceptionally strong pre-boarding and onboarding strategies in place to set new employees up for success.

The biggest challenge for many companies, whether they work with agencies or not, is if they don't already have these elements in place is it takes a lot of time, effort, and energy to strengthen your front end and to build out the systems and processes on the back end.

Despite these challenges, the process of recruitment, although it requires you to avoid major pitfalls and landmines, hasn't changed a ton over the years. If you have the time to strengthen your front end and back end, great; but if you're faced with a need to reactively recruit, these are my suggestions to nail your search.

1. Is to get absolute laser clarity on what is realistic to hire for and what two to three needs your newly created or reactive position is going to solve for your business.
2. Define who in your office is responsible for what parts of the process. A) Who's going to post? B) Who's going to screen? C) Who's going to interview? D) Who's going to reference? E) Who's going to make the final decision? F) Who is going to formally offer the position?
3. Posting the Job. When you post a position, you are not posting an internal job description hoping somebody wants to buy it; you are effectively creating a marketing and advertising strategy and campaign. You need to captivate an audience. You need to inspire!
4. When you're screening candidates, there's a way to do this as efficiently as possible so you can move the best people forward through your process, and it needs to be done within 24 to 48 hours of receiving an application.
5. Two to three interviews, including your pre-screen, should be your absolute maximum. Within these interviews, you should be behaviour-based interviewing to not only assess fit but cultural alignment, while ensuring that there aren't any hidden red flags that a candidate is trying to slip past you.
6. References are often skipped over and strategic methods to ensure your offer is accepted are often missed. Having a clearly defined process and strategy to complete these is crucial.

These are the steps to hire somebody amazing. How you run the process, how thoroughly you execute these steps and how diligent you are is the difference between winning in the market.

And don't forget, if you do hire someone great, it's now on you to set them up for success. Happy hunting!