Tips for Hiring FAST
If you're struggling to find someone to fill an open role and are on the verge of feeling desperate, this is the post for you. As a volunteer Chair of the House Corporation Board for my sorority, I was in this position the summer of 2022. It certainly wasn't my first time urgently (read: within a month) hiring a new House Director, but I decided to take a new approach that resulted in hiring a candidate who continues to perform as our best House Director hire to date. This is advice I would give any entrepreneur or scrappy small business who needed to find a quality hire - fast!
Don't Settle Out of Desperation - Easier said than done, I know. As a volunteer and primary parent, I was shouldering our $100K+ worth of summer projects while dragging my kiddo to the house every day, so I was feeling the pain of not having hired someone. It was tempting to provide an offer to a candidate who seemed to check our boxes, even though I had a bad feeling in my gut. She ended up using our offer with another sorority on campus to get a better deal, and I had even less time to find someone who could help us. Had I settled for her or just any candidate who checked the boxes and was available, it would've resulted in a lot more work for me down the road. I knew my priority was finding someone who could fully own the position and all of the work it entailed.
2. Prioritize Accordingly Against Other Projects - It can be tempting to not put time towards this task, especially if you have a lot of "billable" work on your plate where you can see immediate tangible results. However, investing in hiring the right person to join your team is going to result in time and cost savings down the road. If you truly need this role to be filled, put the appropriate amount of time and "manpower" towards it and you will get better results.
3. Pivot if Needed - If you know, you know - the typical House Director of a sorority often falls into a specific demographic. We were receiving applications from many candidates who were already in the role at another chapter, and fit that bill. I was okay with a similar hire, but I had always wondered if we should be taking a different approach. With the blessing of my board and in alignment with our values, we decided to pivot to a different type of candidate- someone with no experience with Greek Life, but plenty of experience in property management which would mean they could easily handle the bulk of our job responsibilities. We had concerns there may be a onboarding ramp around culture, but it was worth trying out as we were already spending all of our time keeping the house running.
4. Invest in Support - Sometimes this is all too much to do on your own, and it can feel intimidating to spend money if you don't have a lot of disposable income. This is a case where it's more than worthwhile to invest in a person or tool to take some of the pressure off. In our case, I decided to try out Zip Recruiter*. After posting our job description and looking for candidates with property management experience, we were flooded with candidates. Now, this still took time- many folks were not qualified for this position, and I had to reach out to many more candidates than even responded to me, but very quickly I had many candidates to interview. We ended up paying around $250 as we used it for a very short amount of time, and it was more than worth the cost. I highly recommend if you use a tool like Zip Recruiter you work closely with one of their account managers to ensure you are using their software to its full potential- this made all the difference for us. You may be in a different position where sourcing candidates is no problem, but it's been hard for you to interview and decide whether to make an offer to someone - this is a case where you may want to work with someone like me to identify the right person. Or, you may want to revamp your entire hiring process altogether. Asking for and investing in the right person or tool to help will result in a huge return on investment.
If this is where you are right now, keep moving forward! While this process was very stressful, because of all of my past experience, I knew we would find someone in time. You shouldn’t have to do this alone - please don't hesitate to reach out if you think Hire Possibilities might be able to help you with your search.
*We are not affiliated with Zip Recruiter in any way - just sharing a potentially helpful tool!