This week, for the 10X Mastermind call, we talked about a very interesting topic that concerns any business owner and human resources. Remember that we meet weekly to discuss business owners’ problems, challenges, concerns, opportunities, just about anything business-related.
My experience this week
I had a conversation with a client this morning and it’s like the difficulty of finding talent right now is incredible. So I gave another client a strategy a week and a half ago, and it turned out to be an incredible success. And I just let you know where the market is right now. And the changes that are in the market, the people you probably want to hire are probably not unemployed. They are probably employed. For this reason, the labor market is tight.
So when labor markets tighten, you need to become attractive enough to attract someone – it’s not even about robbing someone. Because I know this if that person is being cared for in her current job. If they are super happy in that current job. If they are being challenged, there is a great culture, they are being compensated correctly, however, there is no theft, they are not going anywhere. But the ones who apply, the ones who respond, the ones who submit their resume, they’re not going to do that unless they’re open to moving.
And I told my client, this is what I want you to do for the next week, I want you to do two things. Number one, I want you to address each and every one of your employees. I want you to send a survey to each of them. And the first question is, give me the top three reasons why you took the job here and why you wanted to come work here. That is number one.
Question number two. Now that he has been here and worked here, what are the top three benefits that he has received from working here? These are the top three reasons you keep working here.
How to find the talent?
What I have suggested to people to do is (for example): There are a lot of high school students who are getting into the media industry and they want to learn that kind of knowledge or job as they get older. That is why I have always said to look for someone who is willing to learn. Use it as your platform to find talent that has people looking to get into the industry AND that’s why they’re open to that training.
And so teaming up with some of the local high schools, some of the local colleges to see who is interested in learning. And then you can start with a lower salary and a lower hiring scale than you normally would because you don’t have the experience. So that’s where I would start looking.
Many people don’t know about this, but practically anywhere in the country, you can go to any local university. And let’s say you’re looking for a marketing professional, or you’re looking for a business development professional, etc., you want to find someone who specializes in that category at their university.
You go to college and you say, Hey, I’m looking for someone to intern, a paid intern, and they’ll give you candidates, then you put them through an evaluation.
So if you hire an intern from any university in this country, that’s fine, there is a federal program that will allow you to submit documentation for 50% of that employee’s salary, taxes, to be reimbursed.
I have several clients of mine who have done it successfully. One now has 24 employees in the Bay Area. The others at 12. here in Sacramento. The other is that now they just hired their seventh person with this program that saved them a lot of money, they got some great talent. They are attracting people who don’t have bad habits from past companies, and they can groom these people from scratch.
