Wednesday, July 11, 2012

HIRING VS. RECRUITING

It is common in service industries such as janitorial or food service to look at the positions as ones that will have high turnover thinking "the employee will leave anyway as soon as they find something better so why spend a lot of time in the interview process and detailed training program". I hope that is not your attitude but if it is, they will leave as soon as they can because they will sense that attitude in the interview or shortly thereafter.

Let me suggest it is important for us to change the way WE view the positions we have available. I suggest to you that it is time we begin viewing the industry we are in and the positions we have as careers, not just jobs. But, you may be saying, I am only hiring part time employees at a low wage and they are just looking for extra spending money. Let me ask you, how do you think we will ever get people to think of our industry as a career choice if we are not showing them the opportunities that exist? How you treat them may determine if they want to eventually pursue the industry full time. How a prospective or current employee views their job will often mirror the way YOU view their job. It is important that we begin to RECRUIT employees instead of HIRING employees---the difference?

THE DEFINITION OF HIRING IS THE ATTEMPT TO FILL VACANCIES BY WHATEVER MEANS POSSIBLE. (reactive)

When you are hiring people you are reacting to the immediate needs of the day. A supervisor comes to you and says, "I need someone to start tonight in the south end location beginning at 6 PM and working till midnight. They will need to know how to dump trash and run a vacuum". So what do you do?

You begin to go through the stack of applications you have on the corner of your desk. "Okay, I'll call the first three on the top of the stack. That seems to be a good way of screening. I don't remember them but I kept their applications so they must be good".

And of course the first two don't answer but by golly the third one does and you offer them the job by going through a tough screening process. "Have you ever dumped trash? Why yes, my wife has me take it to the curb every Thursday morning. Great, have you ever run a vacuum cleaner. I vacuum the carpets every Saturday morning. Have you ever cleaned a bathroom? No, but I've used one. Sound perfect, can you meet the supervisor here at our office at 5:30 this evening"?

At 5:30 they arrive at your office not looking like the best recruit you have ever seen. They sure sounded better on the phone, older too. You're not sure your new recruit is even breathing so you take them over to a mirror and ask them to breathe on it. They do, but it doesn't fog up. So you breathe on it, see a little fog, and say, "Close enough".

Oh, and did you tell them the job was 25 miles from their home? Exaggeration? Maybe, but if you think backI will venture a guess that you have hired someone in the past in a similar manner.

You see, when all you are doing is trying to hire to fill slots, you are getting whomever you can get because all you are doing is reacting to the current situation.

Now let's move on to recruiting and how it differs from hiring.

THE DEFINITION OF RECRUITING IS THE SYSTEMATIC PROCESS OF LOCATING, SCREENING, HIRING, AND TRAINING POTENTIAL QUALITY GREAT EMPLOYEES.

You see, hiring is only one step in the recruiting process. Unless you do all the steps mentioned above in a professional, systematic way, you will forever be in a panic, high turnover, never ending cycle of frustration.

I suggest that everyone in your organization should be working toward recruiting and not just hiring. A company that I am very familiar with began the process of recruiting and implementing the processes listed above and in my book, Finding, Training, and Keeping GREAT Service Employees 101, was able to reduce their turnover to 25% of the national average for the cleaning industry. It takes a commitment and not just a token memo from the front office.

Don't forget our free week pod casts at www.tripodcast.com. Also, BSCAI has posted the convention program at www.bscai.org. Check it out and register for this exciting October event in Chicago. Hope to see as many of you as possible.

Till next time.

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