When is the Best Time to Lay the Groundwork for Recruiting Executive Talent?
As a teenager, one of our former team members was prone to procrastination. In many cases, he’d say that his excuse was that he was too late and had missed his chance to seize the best opportunities. That’s when his father would tell him, “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago… the next best time is today.” It’s an old saying, but he discovered that it’s as relevant today as it was when he was 17 years old.
But aside from being a piece of pithy life advice, what does this saying have to do with recruiting top talent? Well, as we covered in The Holidays Are Here. Is Your Hiring Deal Dead?, the holidays are where deals go to die, and in an extremely tight candidate market, they pose an even greater obstacle. The same holiday celebrations, end-of-year vacations, and even the general downtime at the end of the year and again at the start of the year that enables us to relax and recharge cause us to lose momentum and focus.
Now that the holiday season is winding down, this is the time to re-engage with candidates in what continues to be an extremely tight job market. So, in keeping with the theme… the best time to manage candidate expectations and momentum through the holidays was pre-Thanksgiving, and the next best time is today.
If you were able to keep contact intervals, interviews, video calls, and engagement consistent through the holidays, then you don’t need to plant any new trees as the new year begins. If, however, you had trouble getting interviews scheduled with candidates who were not responsive, or with executives who were physically or mentally absent for extended periods over the past month, then it’s time to put your forestry skills into action.
Here are a few things you can do to re-engage with those high potential candidates.
Project Excitement and Eagerness
Conveying a sense of urgency can wake everyone up from their holiday stupor. Here are a few ways to energize everyone involved in the process:
- Make recruitment a priority and communicate its importance to candidates.
- Give candidates a defined process from time of re-engagement through to offer.
- Work with your executives internally to set up a cadence of video interviews and on-site visits and give that to candidates when you re-engage with them.
Make It Personal
When you have the opportunity to reconnect with candidates in person or over the phone, ask how their holidays were this year and whether they were able to spend time with loved ones. Ask whether they traveled anywhere special over the break and, if so, whether they have any recommendations. You will be surprised at how open people are when you ask for advice. After a week or longer from your last contact, this personal touch can lead to rapport-building engagement.
Leverage a Past Success
With last year just now ending, highlight a notable accomplishment that your organization or business unit achieved that will get people excited about joining your team. Sharing a recent success with candidates sets you apart from others and makes candidates feel welcomed.
Be Persistent
In what is still a candidate-driven market, continued outreach is critical. If you let two or more weeks pass without engagement over the holidays, you will have to overcome a sense from candidates that you were not serious or really interested. Be appropriately aggressive with your outreach to make sure these high-level candidates understand how much you value what they can bring to your team.
Even in the midst of a slowing economy, the battle for the best talent persists. You can’t control what happened — or what didn’t happen — over the past several weeks, but it’s still possible to get the best people into your organization. You do this by planting trees now to create an impeccable recruitment and retention program, generate excitement around your organization, and start building relationships with the top talent in your industry.