BINDER #003 - Recruiting and Hiring - Cast a Wide Net, Part 1 -When to Put the Net In

Unfortunately for my father in law, I am not crazy about fishing.

Robyn, my wife, did buy my an awesome fishing rod years ago for our anniversary, and it is truthfully a real joy to use when I actually do use it. (If you’re reading this Robyn, I love it, and my reasoning is that by only using it a little bit every year, I will have it for a lifetime.)

Ironically enough, I am writing this newsletter while I am on board of a BC Ferry service, heading to an island off the coast of Prince Rupert, British Columbia, to complete an airport project we started last year. I imagine there are quite a few fishing boats out this way:

If someone told you "Get on this fishing boat, and catch as many fish as possible in the next 8 hours. If you catch over 50, I'll give you a million dollars", you likely would:

1. Have modest excitement about the prospect of getting a million dollars,

2. Get on the boat as quickly as possible, and

3. Begin assessing how to catch as many fish as possible.

If there were two drag nets on the fishing boat - a small drag net the size of bicycle, and a large drag net the size of a Boeing 747... which one would you choose?

Would it make sense to say to yourself:

“Well, if I use the BIG net, I might catch all sorts of things in my net that aren’t fish - garbage, non-fish creatures - and I don’t want those. So, I’ll use the SMALL net instead to reduce the chance of that happening.”

You probably wouldn’t like the outcome after the 8 hours.

If we would cast a wide net to catch fish, we should be casting a wide net to recruit employees.

Get busy fishing before it is actually busy

I see this happen a LOT with small pavement businesses. The cycle goes something like this:

1. Start business

2. Get busy

3. Hire first employee/second employee/third employee when they are needed

4. Wait to hire more employees until the work is “busy enough.”

This reality happens across a lot of businesses but is most exemplified in a seasonal pavement business. Things get going really fast during pavement season, forcing us to respond quickly with urgent hiring decisions.

When that happens, a job posting goes up and we are forced to fill positions quickly.

Often completely unbeknownst to the business owner, however, they are making terrible hiring choices, because they have not cast a “wide net” when it comes to recruiting. They simply grabbed the quickest net they could get their hands on, threw it in the water, and yanked it up at the first sign of something resembling a pulse in the net.

Instead, you will see successful businesses in our space continuously hiring. They always have a job position open, the business owners (and management) talk about it on social media, and there is a general feeling that those successful companies we look up to always seem to be adding people.

The reality is that they are not technically always hiring - but they are always putting the net in the waters, ensuring that when the time comes, qualified talent will reach out to them when a position opens (or sometimes, even before a position opens because they have seen the consistent message from the ownership and the social media - “We’re always hiring.”

Don’t wait until it’s insanely busy to start casting a net. Your hiring will probably suck. This is the direct consequence when you see people complaining online:

“I had 3 interviews and no one even showed up.”

“He said he could start Monday and he no-showed.”

“He asked for a cash advance on day 3 and then didn’t show up for day 4.”

Common denominator: These outcomes are all the direct result of not casting a wide net.

You can’t throw out a net when it is convenient for you and expect qualified talent to come bursting through the doors. (A rare exception may be when a really well-established, reputable, marketing-focused company posts a position, which catches the eye of the qualified talent who may have been “on the fence” about leaving their current position.)

How to apply this today:

• Go make a post on social media explaining that you’re always hiring qualified talent.

• Repeat that post consistently across all platforms - personal and business - multiple times a month.

• Go phone someone who you know would be a great fit at your company, and tell them “I really think you would be a great fit on our team. Would you consider a conversation with me about it?”

• Don’t hesitate to put a job ad up on Indeed or another job board for a position - even if you are not sure that you need it or can afford it.. No one ever died from applying for a job and not getting it, even if the reason is the business was not 100% ready for it. (I can promise you, though, that the majority of the time, it is worth it to hire them anyway despite your concerns. I regret not filling every key position we have hired in the past 12 months sooner than I actually did.

Next month, I will do “Cast a Wide Net Part 2 - Don’t discard them immediately". Thanks for reading!