9 Things About Hiring for Hyper-growth You May Not Already Know – Pt 2 of 2
5) Streamline and Minimize the Hiring Process
As you probably already know, delays in hiring are the bane of hypergrowth hiring. Every delay only puts you more at risk of being short-staffed during the expansion. However, you also can’t sacrifice the quality of your hiring assessment for speed. A bad hire will only lead to slow-downs and unfortunate lay-offs later on.
So how do you speed up without making hasty decisions? The answer is to cut your hiring process down to precisely what you need, and none of what you don’t. You don’t really need two weeks to consider candidates. Or to wait a few business days while HR approves of paperwork. Instead, build your schedule around making final decisions quickly. If you do skill assessments, make them more efficient so that results are available immediately. If you really need several interviews to decide, schedule and conduct them as quickly as possible. Do not allow delays to build up as they usually do.
6) Skill Assessments Are a Must
When your business is in hypergrowth, you are at the greatest risk of conducting ’emotional’ hires. Meaning that rushed managers hire whoever ‘seems’ the most competent. Even if that is artificial confidence in an interview rather than real capability. And you need everyone you hire to hit the ground running with all the skills and background knowledge they need already in place.
This means that skill assessments go from optional to necessary. The best way to make sure people you’re hiring can do the job quickly (instead of feeling around their knowledge over several interviews) is to ask them to perform a few key tasks. These assessments should be different for every role, carefully thought out and streamlined by the hiring managers to prove exactly what you need proven. Without wasting time on slow result returns or skills that aren’t critical.
Checking references is another important aspect of this which pairs interestingly with skill assessments to confirm that you are hiring who you think you are hiring.
7) Temp Agencies are a Useful Resource
Most businesses in a state of hypergrowth are looking for long-term hires. After all, you don’t plan on shrinking back down any time soon. However, there is an entire sub-pool of available and skilled professionals who are currently finding jobs through temping platforms and agencies. Many of them are even looking for long-term positions, but have chosen the temping route as their way into these positions. Temps are a resource normally tapped by businesses with seasonal staffing demands, like handling tax season or the holiday buying frenzy. But temping professionals are also a great resource for businesses in hypergrowth.
If your business is scrambling for verified, skilled professionals in specific industries (there are many temping accountants, for example), consider checking in with your local staffing agencies and online platforms. This is a highly under-utilized group for modern business strategies and you might be surprised how many quick hiring opportunities are available with people who are already good at on-boarding quickly.
8) Hire for Rock-Solid Skills
On the subject of on-boarding, you’re going to want to streamline that as well. Many hypergrowing businesses decide to dedicate a special team just to handling expert on-boarding for all the new employees. This is probably a good idea for your business, as well. But another way to ensure the success of your new hires is to prioritize rock-solid skills above other qualifications. People who can dive into the job and get started at whatever position they signed on for. This will ensure that you’ve got reliable hands on all the levers while you’re still in a state of hyper-growth. There will be time to optimize the teams and provide for upward and lateral mobility as the new teams solidify over the next few months. But at first, you want to prioritize proven ability to avoid later SNAFUs.
9) Don’t Forget About Internal Mobility
And finally, the key to your rock-solid hiring is that your hand-selected specialists can quickly come from within. Hypergrowth means that you don’t have time for a long onboarding time. But that same sink or swim environment means that many employees will gain skill and experience quickly. In the midst of the War for Talent, you have a lot to gain from investing in cross-training, internal professional development, and a great deal of internal mobility as each new employee finds their natural place. This can win you rising stars and custom-trained specialists who can fill roles that are currently very difficult to hire for.
Internal hiring and mobility allow your current employees and those you hire in the future to make the best possible use of your state of constant growth. There are always positions available and new teams forming. Re-assigning already trained employees is also an deal way to form new teams and carry over earlier months invested in training and familiarity with the company culture.
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Hypergrowth is a unique state that will require dramatically rapid hiring. The keys to ROI and success in this constantly accelerating company culture are to stay on your toes and make hiring one of your top priorities. Streamline your process, become experts at hiring good people and training them on-the-go. And most of all, constantly look for ways to optimize how you use every single member of the team. The best way to avoid being short-handed during the hiring scramble is to cover your bases like a pro. Contact us today for more hypergrowth hiring insights or to get in touch with the talented professionals you’ll need to keep growing at break-neck speeds.
