Today’s guest blogger is Patti Steen with The Pelsten Group located in Seattle, WA. The Pelsten Group is a recruitment firm that focuses on all levels of positions within healthcare and medical device organizations. The majority of their clients are in the Seattle area but they actively support NPAworldwide across the US. Patti is currently serving on the NPAworldwide Board of Directors.
2023 is starting off with a lot of change! Companies are right sizing, flattening management structures, repositioning in their markets, and limiting hiring. With all this change do we need to look at how we, as recruiters, change to meet the customer’s needs? Will the candidates or strategies for hiring change? Yes, and yes!
Our normal process of the customer providing us with a job description that includes everything they could ever possibly want in their perfect candidate and us drilling down to identify the 3-5 key requirements may not be enough. They will still want their “perfect candidate” but what does that perfect candidate look like in this ever-changing environment?
As companies lay off workers, limit hiring and stretch their current workforce this will shift some to a focus of “generalist” hiring. Companies will be looking to hire employees that bring a broad spectrum of experience that can fill the needs in multiple areas of a company. Managers will have to rethink what they really need when they can only hire 1-2 people instead of 6-8. The key requirements, soft skills and transferable skills will carry equal weight in the hiring decision as companies work with slimmed down teams.
This provides us with an opportunity to challenge our thinking and become a true consultant to the customer. Sometimes the best solution will not produce revenue for us, but it will build goodwill and confidence in us as their business partner. Hiring may slow down now but you will reap the benefit when hiring rebounds.
What can we bring to the table with our consulting hats on?
- Help them look at current employees to see if their technical experts are spending time on tasks that don’t drive revenue. Are there pieces of their work that can be pulled off their plates and realigned to a support or administrative team?
- Do they have defined projects over a defined period that would be better suited for a consultant/contractor versus a full-time employee?
- With the economic shift are there retirees from the company that may be able to come back to fill a void – part or full time? Reduces the upfront training.
- Help broaden their minds to look at candidates that have some of the hard, soft and transferable skills needed but might still need a bit of training. We can identify training options for them and you may be able to provide it through testing/training software you have access to.
- Develop customized screening and testing for customers to support quality hires.
- Offer to benchmark employees to help identify skills in top performers to be replicated in new hires.
- Present unbundled services on an hourly basis. Their HR department may have been reduced as well so an extra set of hands could make a difference. Could include resume screening of candidates applying to their site, initial interviews, testing, developing interview documents, etc.
- Broaden your footprint within the company. Are there departments you have avoided in the past that don’t fall in your core expertise? Embrace the challenge of recruiting in new niches.
*Depending on the customer some of these can be fee-based services.
The key right now is to stay in touch and listen to your customers for clues of what is challenging them. Be the one to solve their problems.