Hiring Post Tax Season

Summary

• Get Your Team Involved
• Build Out Your Hiring Process
• Distributing Your Posting
• Refining Your Posting
• Saving Time and Finding Top Talent
• Conducting Productive Interviews
• Want More Guidance Throughout Your Hiring Process?

The Talent Crunch, also known as The Great Resignation, is affecting nearly everyone in the industry. 

The CEO and founder of Jetpack Workflow, David Cristello is addressing the problem in this podcast. He’ll cover solutions for finding, attracting, and retaining a great team. David believes with the right approach, your firm can find success in this area. 

Get Your Team Involved

David’s first, and potentially most important bit of advice is to get your team involved. 

If you’ve had a recent exit, don’t get caught up in who you’ve lost, instead, focus on the team you still have. You can do this by setting up one-on-ones or “stay interviews”. Explain that you recognize team members are leaving and you want their input as you try to correct the problem and improve team culture. 

As you collect their feedback, identify what could be a reason for team members to leave and work to correct these issues. Try to improve one area each quarter. 

Some of the areas you may want to look into include: 

• Work-life balance
• Compensation
• Tooling
• Admin work
• Career growth

As you do this, start having conversations with the team. This shows them your intentions and gives them the opportunity to be a part of the journey. 

Build Out Your Hiring Process

Similar to a marketing funnel, creating a hiring funnel is a great way to help you nail down the process of adding new team members. 

It can be broken down into simple stages: 

• Gaining traffic or visitors to your job posting  
• The number of visitors that applied to the job posting
• The number of qualified candidates
• The number of candidates that make it to interviews 
• The people who pass the due diligence and accept the final offer 

Breaking down the stages gives you a clear picture of your hiring process. Whether you use a spreadsheet or a tool, it lets you track what’s going on and pinpoint areas you need to improve. 

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One of the common issues firms are facing is getting enough visitors to their posting. If this is you, you’re likely facing a distribution challenge. 

Try sharing your posting on your social media platforms – really rely on your network and ask your team to do the same. You can also send the posting to local networks, universities, or people who focus on job placement. LinkedIn paid promotion and Zip Recruiter are also great options for getting more traffic. 

Refining Your Posting

If traffic isn’t a problem, but actually converting them to apply is, it’s time to look at the job title/description. You want to make sure it is appealing to interested applicants. 

Use this opportunity to highlight your firm’s unique advantages. This is another place for stay interviews to come into play. 

Sometimes you may be too close to the situation to truthfully identify the strengths and appeals of working for your firm. Your team, however, may be able to help. Ask them what they see in your firm so you can properly position your job posting. 

Saving Time and Finding Top Talent

If you are getting a lot of applicants but they aren’t of quality or it’s too time-consuming for you to get through them all, offer a way to narrow your pool. 

You can try: 

• Planting a requirement in the job description that has candidates include a specific word or title in the subject line of the email. 
  • This shows they are serious, thorough, and follow directions. 
• Including 1-2 questions for them to answer. 
  • This gives you a jump on the interview process and, again, shows they are serious about applying. 
• Requesting a video submission. 
  • This ensures the quality of the candidate. 
• Sending a quick quiz to test their technical knowledge. 
  • This eliminates this step from the in-person interviews, that way you can focus more on character traits and work ethic. 
• Outsourcing these screenings. 
  • This saves you time and ensures you are only meeting with qualified candidates. 
• Implementing a referral program. 
  • Your trusted employees will be incentivized to bring you qualified candidates for the job. 

Conducting Productive Interviews 

Your one-on-one interviews should be a productive and digestible process. 

Ask questions that prompt the candidate to submit an example rather than a hypothetical. For example, lead with “Tell me a time when……” rather than “What would you do if…..”. This requires them to explain their previous experiences, not how they think they should react. 

To stick with a mathematical approach, create a rating scale for their responses. That way, whoever is in the interview can rate them based on the scale rather than having to recall how they felt about the candidate. 

Additionally, a good candidate will ask you questions about your firm and the position. Answer these questions well and keep in mind this is your opportunity to sell them on your firm. The key is to keep them engaged and interested.

Want More Guidance Throughout Your Hiring Process?

With the right process in place, hiring doesn’t have to be difficult. You can combat the talent crunch and come out on top when you work through your strategy and stick to the plan. 
If you need help building out this process, or have questions, check out the Jetpack Workflow Hiring Guide or listen to David’s full podcast above!