How to Hire Your Best Employees

Kathy (host):
Well, hello there, and welcome back to another episode of Help! My Business is Growing, a podcast where we explore how to grow and build a business that is healthy and sustainable. I’m your host, Kathy Svetina, a fractional CFO and a founder of NewCastle Finance, a company where we believe that everything that you do in your business will eventually end up in your finances. And to get to healthy finances is to have a healthy business. Well, that’s more easily said than done. The question is, how in the world do you get there? Well, this is where this podcast comes in. To help to be successful in your business, you need to have the right team in place. But the reality of that is that finding the right candidates sometimes can be really challenging, and this is where the recruiting strategy comes in, because without the recruiting strategies, your business may deal with high turnover rates, you can have lower productivities, you will have difficulty meeting goals, and this struggle will lead to operational hiccups and missed opportunities to expand, which, again, will end up in your finances. Your finances will suffer for it. So how do you deal with this recruiting challenge? Well, one solution is to have a professional HR recruiter come in and help simplify your hiring efforts. But the question is, if you have never done this before, how do you actually work with a recruiting person? How is the process like? And how long does it take for them to find the candidate that’s the right fit? And what can you do to help them so that your recruiters can actually give you the best possible results to find you that person? So this is what this episode is going to be about. We’re going to be talking about how you can maximize your recruiting efforts and how you can work with your recruiters to make sure that you getting the right candidates that you need. You can find all the links and the detailed topics in this episode’s show notes. My guest today is Kristie Holmes, the dynamic force behind the HR Department with over 15 years of profound experience in recruiting and human resources across a spectrum of industries. Kristie embodies a spirit of innovation and dedication. Her mission to provide tailored HR services ensure that small businesses not only survive but thrive in today’s competitive landscape. Join us.

Kathy (host):
Hey, welcome to the show.

Kristie (guest):
Hi, Kathy, thanks for having me.

Kathy (host):
Thanks so much for being here. We’re going to be talking about how recruiting works and what you can do to prepare for effective hiring and staffing if you’re going through a recruiter. So I do want to ask because I am seeing this a lot with the businesses that I work with, they have challenges finding the right people, and usually means that they’re short staffed. So let’s start here. Why do you think that it’s so hard for smaller businesses to find the right people for their job postings?

Kristie (guest):
Well, there’s really probably two big main things that are contributing to that right now. The first is the recruiting climate. Right now, it’s more challenging than it has probably ever been. A few years ago, pre-COVID, even early days of COVID, there were tons of people looking for work and not quite as many jobs, and it has now completely flipped. And there are tons of employers looking for good quality hires, but there are just not as many job seekers out there as there used to be. So it used to be two qualified applicants for every open position. It’s now flipped that it is two open positions for every qualified applicant.

Kathy (host):
Wow. And I do want to ask, is that because the employers are having high expectations from certain jobs, and maybe that’s the issue, or maybe, is it the compensation issue, or is this just not enough people on the market?

Kristie (guest):
It is probably all of that. Okay, it’s a combination of things. COVID really was just such a game changer in so many ways, of course, that we’re still figuring out. I think remote work has definitely impacted the landscape. A lot of people went remote during COVID, and then as COVID started to become kind of a past thought, you know, everybody’s recalled their workers to the office. Well, not everybody wants to go back to the office. Some people have gotten that taste of working from home. And so you’re seeing a lot of people go more to, you know, the gig work, going into business for themselves, like I’ve done, and then you do have compensation. It’s a big part of that. Cost of living has gone up tremendously, but people aren’t seeing salary increases or, you know, even bonuses to help offset some of those costs. But I do think there’s probably some employers that are looking for maybe a unicorn of an applicant that might be really hard to find. I’m not saying that person’s not out there, but it is, you know, an interesting discussion. You hear quite a bit about experience versus coachability versus trainability and so, and that is true, there are a lot of positions that you could look for somebody that has a transferable skill set and has the willingness and the desire to grow and learn and do something different. But yeah, it’s why it’s so challenging right now, there are so many different things to look at.

Kathy (host):
And as a point of reference, we’re recording this in almost May of 2023, so if you’re listening to this and it’s not in 2023, we are talking about the 2023 state of employment. So let’s talk about, you specialize in recruiting, and this is a little bit like mystery in the smaller businesses. Let’s talk about, how does the recruiting process work, and how does a good recruiting process work?

Kristie (guest):
I’m glad you clarified that with a good recruiting process, because, yeah, not all are created equal. A good recruiting process, it starts with a really good job description. That is one of the other reasons people aren’t seeing as many qualified applicants as they would like to see – their job description may not be as great as they think it is. I know one thing a lot of people miss is the job title needs to be in the job description at least six or seven times. That’s because 70% of job searches actually start on Google, just going into your Google search and typing in “HR jobs near me,” and it pops up a little box. And so Google scrubs the internet. And so if you have your job description formatted correctly, if you have keywords in there, and then the job title, six to seven times, Google is going to pick that up when somebody searches for that job near them. And so a lot of times, you know, you might see the job title in there once or twice. Sometimes they put way too much information, like, that’s why it’s images, because people don’t even want to read anymore. It’s the images that capture attention on social media. So it’s the same thing with your job description, not necessarily images, but keep it short enough that you’re not going to lose their attention. If they’re halfway through the job description and you still haven’t even gotten to the point of what the role is, they’re just going to bounce back out and go to the next job on the list. But at the same time, you don’t want it to be too short, so it’s almost like the Goldilocks, and-

Kathy (host):
Is there, like a sweet spot of a number of words that a good job description should have, that it’s this, below this, like below 200 is too short, and above 1500 is too much.

Kristie (guest):
There’s not, unfortunately, because you’ve got some jobs that are- it’s easy for a general laborer for a construction company, you just need to put a few key things in there. But if you were looking at like a project manager for a construction company, the responsibility list is just going to be longer, just by the sheer nature of being different roles. So I don’t know that you could say there’s an exact word count that this is a good range for, like you would for a blog or a social media post.

Kathy (host):
I’ve seen some job descriptions that when you put them into a Google Doc or Word document, there were actually three pages. So I’m assuming that might be a little bit too much.

Kristie (guest):
Of course, I use Microsoft Word, and if it’s more than a page, it’s definitely too long.

Kathy (host):
So that’s good to know. So at least people now know that if it’s more than a page, yeah, you’ve got to shorten it up a little bit.

Kristie (guest):
And you may have a job description for a role that’s- I do have a client that his job descriptions tend to be three, four pages long. So what I do is I try to consolidate, like, similar responsibilities together and just really the high level ones. And then during the interview process, we actually give them the full three or four page job description. So we do the phone interview, and then if that goes well and we’re moving them to our client, we also email them that full job description and say, “Okay, as we discussed, please review this full job description prior to your meeting with the boss.”

Kathy (host):
That makes sense. So now you start the good recruiting process with a great job description. So what is the next step?

Kristie (guest):
So then it’s, of course, knowing where to post it. Indeed is usually a pretty good option. Like I said, as long as you have it formatted correctly and you’ve got all those keywords in there, you should be okay, because it’s going to get picked up by the Google search no matter what platform you have it posted on. We do have a service that we use that they take the keywords from the job descriptions and then they say, “Okay, those keywords are being searched on job boards, X, Y and Z. So that’s where we’re going to spend your money to try to make sure we’re getting in front of the right people.” But you want to make it easy to apply, again with Indeed, they have the easy apply option. A lot of job boards do offer that now, but really you just want to get their resume in. That’s the first thing – just get their information so you can pre-qualify them. Do they have the experience we’re looking for, education, skill set, whatever your requirements are. And then what we do is a brief, 15 to 20 minute phone interview, just kind of going through the basics, still making sure they’re qualified. If that goes well, then we check professional references. And I have a rule of three – if you cannot provide me three professional references, that’s a big red flag. And so then they usually do two more interviews, one with the owner of the company, and then whoever the third interview with, of course, varies from client to client, but I do recommend three total interviews – the phone interview, and then two in person or Zoom interviews if it’s a potential applicant moving from somewhere else. Because, you know, not only do you get different people’s perspectives of the applicant, but I like it because it lets me look for consistency in their answers through each of the interviews. Does anything change? Is somebody picking up something somebody else didn’t? But generally, if you have three different people in the company interview and say, “Yeah, like this person, let’s hire them,” then I would feel pretty solid about that. It works. And-

Kathy (host):
I want to go back into the easy apply button, because I feel like it could be sometimes a double-edged sword, because if you put the easy apply button in there, it makes it obviously easier for the applicants to apply, but because it’s easier for the applicants to apply, you will pretty much get people just spraying and praying whatever job they can get, and a lot of them are not going to be qualified. So you have a lot of stuff to weed through to get to the people that you really do want to interview.

Kristie (guest):
And that is a great point. But again, that’s where, if you have your keywords, that will help tremendously. Because, you know, Indeed, if somebody goes in and searches for, say, an HR job, there are certainly some things that, you know, skill set between a bookkeeper and an HR person could have in common. But for HR, if you have things like recruiting, talent acquisition, things that are specific to HR, whereas for a bookkeeper, you might have things like end of year tax records, tax filings, things like that, but that word payroll could come up on either one, and so that can kind of mess up the system a little bit sometimes. But if you’ve got a clear job title that says, you know, right now, I’m looking for an architectural project manager, seems pretty clear to me, but I’m still getting people apply that are project managers in the IT field. So unfortunately, that’s going to happen. But better to have too many applications than not very many at all, because even if you have a bunch that are not qualified, you don’t have to reach out to every person that applies. So if they apply and they’re just immediately not qualified, we just archive their file.

Kathy (host):
And are you using any of the AI tools that are scanning the job description and scanning their resume and matching how well of a match that is?

Kristie (guest):
Yeah, a service I pay for monthly – the keywords I was telling you about. That’s what it does, is it takes all of the keywords from my job description, and it’s got its own little AI data set that it goes and it says, “Okay, last week, those keywords were being searched on these job boards.” There’s a lot of great technology out there to leverage in recruiting, and I strongly encourage people take a look at it and take advantage of whatever is in their budget and meets their needs.

Kathy (host):
And how long does the process generally take from the time that you would engage a recruiter to the time that you would actually have interviews with people – and I’m saying interviews with qualified applicants, because obviously, then you’re interviewing them, and you might take a couple of sometimes even a couple months to make a decision. I’ve seen that happen. From the start that you actually engage a recruiter, to the time when you’re getting good people on your plate that you can actually interview. That, again-

Kristie (guest):
Is because every market is different. You know, I’ve looked for a bookkeeper in Colorado, and I’ve looked for a bookkeeper in North Carolina. We found the bookkeeper in Colorado in just about record time, whereas the bookkeeper in North Carolina took more like three months. So it really just depends. I would say, usually we have qualified applicants for our clients to interview within the first two weeks, usually.

Kathy (host):
That’s great that you were able to get them in such a short amount of time. So you said you had a record time. But when was the longest time?

Kristie (guest):
I have a client that we adore in northeast US, and they are in the agricultural industry, and we were looking for an agronomist for them, which is somebody that understands how the crops grow and all of the science of that, but that also has the sales acumen to go to potential businesses and say, “Here’s why you should use our fertilizer.” It took us about a year to find that position.

Kathy (host):
Was it because the applicants that were applying there were just not the right fit, or is it because there weren’t as many people applying? Because this seems like a very specialized.

Kristie (guest):
It’s a very niche position, and it was, it was just trying to find somebody that actually had business applying for it. We had a few, but I think several of them were just literally about to graduate college. And so it’s also not just somebody that understands that, but somebody that’s got a science mind, but a sales attitude. That’s a very special person to find, but we did, and they’re happy with him. So I’m happy.

Kathy (host):
That’s awesome. I’m glad. A year though is a long, long time to be without-

Kristie (guest):
Certainly many calls about, do we need to, you know, and sometimes that’s part of recruiting too, is, do we need to look at the salary? Is it not high enough? I actually do that every position we post. I have another service I use for that, and I run a salary report and make sure that our pay range is competitive. Because if your pay range is too low, it’s just not going to happen. So when you’re-

Kathy (host):
Looking at the pay ranges, and this is something that I see with the businesses, because the business owner has a certain idea of “this is what this position is actually worth to them and this is how much they’re willing to pay for it.” But the market rate, especially when it gets more competitive, is saying something completely different. How do you bridge that gap to bring them closer to reality?

Kristie (guest):
The tool that I use, it’s updated, I believe, quarterly. So this particular tool, it’s CompAnalyst, is the name of it. And they pull data from HR professionals and companies nationwide. I forget how many thousands and thousands of submissions, so it’s a pretty accurate view. So I just run the report and I send it to them and I explain to them, you know, this is- because I also kind of look and see where the other job postings are at. And so I, you know, I put it out there and let them know this is what the competitive range is. I think this would get us the applicants that we’re looking for. And typically, you know, they say, “Yeah, we’re fine with that.” Or sometimes we maybe have to meet in the middle, but it’s just, it’s a show and tell, because once we make that change and the applicants start coming in, or if they don’t want to make that change, and we continue to see the same, then we eventually do make that change in the salary, and all of a sudden, the applicants start coming in. So I’m thankful to my clients that trust my opinion and let me guide them on that, because that’s really the only way. Is just to need you to trust me and let me show you.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, that’s a tricky situation to have, especially in a small business where they have a limited budget. Another thing that you were telling me – do you ever look at a part of compensation in a non-monetary way? For example, they can work from home, they have more vacation time, they have better sick leave. Is that a good way to compensate people, but not in a monetary.

Kristie (guest):
100%. I really think, just from interviewing people, because we interview people all over the country, all different kinds of positions. But the one thing I think we hear more than anything else from job seekers is what they are looking for is work-life balance. And so I have seen people leave $100,000 a year jobs, to take $50-$60,000 a year jobs, because they are sick of being burnt at both ends of the candle. They want to be able to spend time with their family. You know, it’s like “I’m not killing myself to make all this money to never get to see my kid’s basketball games” or whatever it is that they’re missing. Flexibility with scheduling, so that, especially like parents that have kids that are in activities to give them flexible schedules, to be able to go to, you know, the little recital that afternoon, or the soccer game or whatever the child has going on that the parent’s been missing. Yeah, those are absolutely things that, you know, like to put in the job description, that under the benefits, you’ve got compensation benefits, and so you’ve got the pay rate, and then the traditional benefits, right, of medical, dental, 401k. But then I always ask them about that too. What else do we have? Are there any flexible working conditions? Any continuing education opportunities? That’s something else job seekers are looking for too are training and development opportunities. So I’ll make sure and include that as a benefit. So yeah, I call them the non-traditional benefits, but they’re just as important as the actual thing.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, that’s true, and I’ve seen a lot of the smaller businesses that might not be able to pay what obviously the big companies can, but you can compensate in other ways. It’s like, “Hey, you’re not going to be working past five o’clock ever. And you’re gonna have a lot more vacation.” So and it-

Kristie (guest):
Oh my gosh. Even you know, does your company- I have one client, the one we’re trying to find an architectural PM for right now, his company loves to bowl, and so it’s in the job description – “You must love bowling.” You know, it makes you chuckle, but it’s something people are looking for. Somebody’s not actively out there thinking, “Gosh, I hope I can find a company that has bowling,” but somebody that loves bowling, that has the skill set that we’re looking for is going to see that ad and go, “Oh my gosh, this job is perfect for me,” and that’s the person I want to find.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, and we’ve had a lot of conversation on this podcast about company culture, because that is such an important part when you’re recruiting, because that is going to dictate how your job description is going to look. What are you going to be actually including in there? When you have your values and your mission and your culture, that is all going to reflect what type of people you’re attracting, yeah, and what type of people you’re repelling. Well, if you’ve-

Kristie (guest):
Got a good office culture, if you really do believe you have a healthy culture, there are other things that you can do to get that out there, so that when people are looking for jobs, there’s a website called Glassdoor.com. Glassdoor is great for building your employer brand. So it’s free. You go in, you set up, you know, your account, and put your company information in, and then you can send a link, an email or text a link to your employees and say, “Hey, please take a minute to go to Glassdoor and, you know, talk about how much you love working here,” but then sharing those fun things that you do, if you have those bowling nights or, you know, if you did an end of year holiday party. I saw one of my clients posted he just had a quarterly team meeting, but it looked like it was a big, huge cookout. So put those things on your social media. Put those things on your website, because then if somebody sees your job, and then they go, “Okay, well, let me check this company out real quick.” If Glassdoor has really good reviews and then some social media posts of your team having a great time, they’re going to go, “Oh yeah, I want to apply and work. I want to work with these people.”

Kathy (host):
Yep, exactly. And, you know, when I was before I had my own company, I would always, always, always look on Indeed, I would always look at Glassdoor. I wanted to know what people feel about the company that they’re working at. And a lot of times, you know, because I was in the professional world, I would go on LinkedIn, and I would talk to the current and the previous employees to figure out, is it a good place, or maybe that’s a-

Kristie (guest):
Good idea. I never thought to do that. Kathy, not that I’ll be looking for a job anytime soon, but that’s a great idea to put out there for job seekers.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, I am all about research. I will do research up to Yeah, it was very valuable, and that’s a good point when a company is asking people to put stuff on Glassdoor and they’re tracking it. A lot of the times, what happens is that employees are not willing to talk about the challenges and the bad sides of the business, because they feel fear of retaliation, which obviously is illegal, but still right. So if I see constant like, four and a half, five stars, or whatever it is, at this point, that’s interesting. I would go to LinkedIn, check out a couple of previous employees and ask them, like, how, you know, just- Hey friendly, you know? Well, it’s-

Kristie (guest):
One thing I like about Glassdoor, is you have to answer both pros and cons of working for the company. So even if you absolutely love it and it’s five stars, you have to type something in. So I do think generally, people will put, you know, “I love my job, but I wish I didn’t have to work till seven o’clock on Friday night,” and that’s a fair thing. And so somebody might see that, and that’s just a deal breaker. That’s family night, so he can’t be working till seven because he knows that’s not going to work, whereas somebody else might see it and go, “Yeah, I don’t care how late I have to work, I just want the money.” So it’s actually really- I think it’s helpful, I think, for both the employers and the job seekers, because you don’t want to hire somebody that thinks they’re going to be done at five every Friday, and couple of Fridays in realizes, “No, I’m going to be working till seven, eight o’clock on Fridays,” and then he quits, and then you’re back to square one.

Kathy (host):
Yeah, you want to be upfront about that. If you have those type of expectations, you do want to be upfront about it, because if people want work-life balance, and that’s what they’re valuing-

Kristie (guest):
Yeah, don’t tell them you value it too if you don’t.

Kathy (host):
Exactly. So let’s talk about what is the difference between hiring someone to do recruiting for you and actually trying to do it yourself. I mean, what are the pros and cons? Can we talk about that?

Kristie (guest):
Sure. Well, I mean, the big pros are, you know, we take an awful lot of time off your plate, because it does- It’s very time involved to do the recruiting. So of course, unless you’ve got a, you know, background in HR and recruiting, probably not very familiar with what your job description needs to say. That’s why we see a lot of just really basic, “Hey, we’re looking for a bookkeeper,” but you know, we know where to post it. So I think for our clients, it’s that, not only do we take all of that time that they no longer have to put into trying to source and sort through these resumes, and then they’ve only got three, four or five people they have to meet with to make their hire. So it’s obviously saved them a whole bunch of time. They’ve gotten a really good hire out of it. But the con is, obviously it costs money, but you know, you also have to look at, if you’re going in on your own, you say, “Okay, well, I can’t afford the expense right now of hiring somebody to do it for me.” But how long are you going to continue down this path of you’re trying to do the interviews, you’re trying to find the applicants. Meanwhile, this role is also being done by somebody. I don’t know if you’re trying to do that one too, or, you know, if you’ve got somebody on the team that’s taking care of it, but you know, all of that is a cost as well. And so if that continues on, whereas you can hire somebody to do your recruiting for you, and they find you a person in a month, is it worth spending $3-5,000 to get somebody hired six months quicker than you could have done on your, you know, on your own?

Kathy (host):
I’ve always said you’re better off hiring a professional, because even though you’re paying for it, it’s going to be done a lot quicker. Because it’s not just about money, it’s about time, it’s about energy, it’s about the lost opportunity cost, lost business, because now you don’t have enough people to serve that business and things can go wrong, and obviously your sanity is worth the most, right?

Kristie (guest):
Yes.

Kathy (host):
So let’s talk about cost. Do recruiters work on a percentage? Do you take, like, a flat fee? How does that work?

Kristie (guest):
You know, I think most staffing companies are percentage based. So I know I kind of see the rate- it really, I’ve seen a wide range, but I think 20 to 25%. So that would be, let’s say they’ve hired a Director of Marketing, something like that, $100,000 salary. So if it’s a 20% commission, then you pay the staffing company $20,000 to hire that person. We do not do it that way. We actually just charge an hourly rate. We just log or, you know, whatever leg work it takes us. If it takes me 10 hours of work to hire you somebody, then you get an invoice for 10 hours. If it takes me 30 hours, you’re going to get an invoice for 30 hours. So we do believe it’s more cost efficient that way. So the architect I keep mentioning, he’s just a good example. He has spent $21,000 with me total lifetime, and we’ve hired two architects for him.

Kathy (host):
Interesting. Okay, so one architect would have cost him probably $20-25,000 at least.

Kristie (guest):
Makes sense.

Kathy (host):
So Kristie, we’ve talked a lot about the recruiting process, and how does it actually look like? What does a good recruiting process look like? And if someone is at a point where, “Okay, I need to get more people in my company, because I’m really short staffed, and I am challenged, very much, challenged with finding the right people. And I’ve had some recruiting companies help me with before,” and now they’re like, “I don’t know what to do.” What would your advice be to them?

Kristie (guest):
You know, I think the easiest first step for everybody is, if they go to my website, I do have some templates, and there’s a job description template. So I would say, first things first, download that job description template and use it to format your job description. You can create a free Indeed account. It doesn’t cost you anything. You can post it on there for free, and if you use my template- Click, you post it on Indeed. It’s also going to show up in the Google search feeds. So if you know, if problem one is just not getting the right applicants in, that’s where I would start, is looking at your job description and getting it on Indeed.

Kathy (host):
Thank you for that resource. So we’re going to put all of that in the show notes, so you can, if you’re interested, go see that link in the show notes and on the blog site, because every single episode has its own blog post. So go ahead and look at it. Kristie, this has been an absolutely fabulous conversation. Where can people find you?

Kristie (guest):
Just about anywhere – the HR Department website, but we’re also on Facebook. The HR Department is on LinkedIn. I’m personally on LinkedIn. I welcome any connections. Love connecting with people. And I do a free 30 minute call. You can find that again just about anywhere I am – LinkedIn, website, Facebook, there’s a link. But I do offer a free 30 minute consultation, if somebody just wants to know how I work and see if I’m able to help. May not be able to, but I’ll be honest with them and tell them, “Here’s how I can help” or direct them to somebody that would be a better fit for them.

Kathy (host):
Awesome. So we’re going to put all those links in the show notes too, and it’s going to be in the blog post. So if you’re interested, go ahead. Work with Kristie. She is fabulous. Thank you so much.

Kristie (guest):
Thanks, Kathy.