5 Recruiting and Training Strategies for Your Business

Finding the right people for your team takes time, but these methods can help you maximize the results of that time spent so you can grow your business

5 Recruiting and Training Strategies for Your Business
Mike Agugliaro

Interested in Business?

Get Business articles, news and videos right in your inbox! Sign up now.

Business + Get Alerts

If you want to grow your business, you need to recruit and train a team. But you can’t just hire anyone. You need to hire the right people — talented professionals who will represent you in the right way to your customers and prospects.

This takes time. Probably time that you don’t have. Fortunately, there are ways you can maximize the use of your time to create a powerful recruiting and training process that will attract amazing team members and help you grow. Here are five strategies that you’re probably not using right now that can improve your recruiting and training:

#1. Recruit in large groups

One-on-one recruiting is the most common way to hire, but it can be time-consuming. If you spend 30 minutes on resumes and interviews with every potential employee, you could spend hours each week just to find one person.

Instead, host a “hiring event” and invite a group of people to participate in a group interview. You’ll see how people interact in this unexpected group setting and the leaders will shine. Whether your event has 10 people or 100 people, you’ll dramatically accelerate the process to find the cream of the crop and bring only those few in for one-on-one interviews.

#2. Be different

Many small-business owners can be frustrated if a larger company in the area seems to hire away the best people simply because they can afford to pay more. But you can compete on more than just pay. Amazing employees don’t only look for bigger paychecks.

Instead, choose to be different and find ways that you can attract great employees outside of the typical payday benefit. For example, you might offer more hands-on training, faster career growth, or more flexible hours — any of these will attract long-term, career-minded employees to your team, exactly the kind of employees you want.

#3. Recognize your successful employees

Provide avid, generous and frequent recognition to your best employees. Through contests, awards nights, and “Top Performer” employee announcements in the newspaper, you should be recognizing your employees regularly for amazing work.

You might think this is a retention strategy, but it is actually a powerful recruiting and training strategy, too. That’s because employees at other companies may not always feel appreciated, but they’ll see the appreciation of their friend who works at your company, and they’ll want in on that. And it’s a powerful training strategy because your employees will model successful behavior when it’s being rewarded generously.

#4. Build a video training library

When a new employee joins your company, how are they trained? Many companies pair a new employee with a seasoned one and turn them loose. But how can you be sure your seasoned employees are teaching the new ones in the correct way? Not all of your experienced employees are doing things the way you want, while others may not be great teachers.

Instead, identify your best employees and have them start recording. Make a list of each job’s best practices and ideal workflows, and record your employees doing these. Do this for both your expert’s in-house service calls as well as for office employees, such as those who answer calls from customers. (Do not record face-to-face conversations with customers. Instead, use expert employees to role-play those scenarios.) Once the best-case-scenario recordings are done, move on to more challenging topics to equip your employees for all eventualities.

#5. Never stop training

Do you have a training period for your new employees and then “graduate” them out of your training program to become a regular employee? Stop doing that.

Instead, build a robust, ongoing program that trains employees every single week — even if only for an hour or two. Train your employees on new systems, cross-train them in customer service, sales, leadership and communication. Never ever stop training your employees.

Bonus tip: You should never stop getting trained either. As an owner, your team relies on you to build a business that will put food on the table for their families. So it is imperative you create your own training regimen to become the best leader you can be.

About the author
For more than two decades, as the co-owner of New Jersey’s largest and most respected home services company, Gold Medal Service, Mike Agugliaro has played a key role in building the company’s success. In the last 10 years, his business-growing acumen has taken the company from a business making less than $1 million a year to making more than $28 million a year. Through his varied experiences — including founder of CEO Warrior, author of three books, and publisher of Home ServiceMAX magazine — he’s been successful mentoring business owners and leaders while creating profitable business models and actionable processes for other businesses, both small and large. For more information about CEO Warrior, visit www.ceowarrior.com.



Discussion

Comments on this site are submitted by users and are not endorsed by nor do they reflect the views or opinions of COLE Publishing, Inc. Comments are moderated before being posted.