Hiring a Stellar Staff
Talent is more than just a skill set – it's the key to productivity and smooth-running office systems.
Recruitment and retention are perhaps the most important ingredients in a successful workplace. If you don’t hire the right people, workplace systems and productivity will unravel quickly. One of the biggest challenges is finding the talent that will suit a company’s needs during periods of steady growth and evolution.
“Talent systems have always been one of the areas of challenge with the Best Companies,” says Helen Schneiderman, principal consultant with Vancouver human-resources consulting firm Engage Consulting Solutions. “It’s consistent, regardless of the company or the industry sector. It’s always a challenge, even for the top-ranked companies.”
Whether a company is small or large, Schneiderman says, it’s essential to have methods in place that will ensure new staff fit the culture of the company and that the right people enter management roles. While small companies won’t have – or need – the same talent-management systems as larger companies, it’s still important for them to know how to get the right people.
“Do you have the right recruitment process that chooses individuals that will fit the culture of the organization, that can hit the ground running?” she asks.
Strangeloop Networks finds the best fit
It’s clear that Strangeloop Networks Inc. does. The four-year-old Vancouver company started when competition for employees in the technology field was high and initially used referral incentives to secure new staff. Referrals meant that candidates were generally a good fit with current employees. In addition, as the company added staff (it now has 38 employees), existing employees would join with executives to interview candidates.
“We very much listen to the people who already work for us who obviously know our company the best,” says Birgit Troy, director of finance and administration for Strangeloop. “People, I think, really appreciate the fact that we go to great lengths in our recruiting process to find the right people.”
Jarrod Connolly, a software developer who joined Strangeloop three years ago, agrees. He was a referral to the company and has participated in hiring new staff. “It is a good feeling to be involved in the hiring process and to see the new talent that is around and the people who might be coming on board,” he says, adding that he also finds it personally affirming because it confirms the quality of existing staff. “It gives you a good feeling of how senior our team really is.”
Interviewing at Chemistry Consulting Group
A right fit is also important at Chemistry Consulting Group Inc., where chief operating officer Christine Stoneman says candidates go through two rounds of interviews, one to assess their professional skills and the other to gauge their creativity.
Chemistry has grown to 85 staff in 15 offices across B.C., and Stoneman says she tries to assess the “chemistry” between a potential employee and the hiring company’s culture. Questions designed to assess creativity assist with this. Earlier this year, Stoneman hired someone based on their answer to the question, If you could trade places with someone, living or from history, fictional or real, for one week, who would that be and why? The answer made Stoneman think, “This is the kind of person I want to have working here.”
The approach isn’t what Chemistry employee Amanda Exner-Johnson encountered when hired for her previous job with the provincial government. “When you’re going into the government, you write the test and then you go in for a very straightforward interview,” she says. “[Here] you can express yourself a lot more, so they can get to see who you are in the first interview and how you answer all the technical questions. But then [in the second interview] you can show your creative side with one of the partners.”
Retaining staff
Wise management of employee performance and skills is key for retaining staff. “You can have the best system in the world with online forms and all the fancy bells and whistles, but if the manager doesn’t have the people skills to sit down and discuss performance with their employees, the system’s not going to work,” Schneiderman says. But many companies fail to give supervisors the skills needed to manage staff, she adds: “They’ve got really skilled managers who are in those roles because of the technical skills, but organizations fail to equip them or enable them with the people skills that they need to do their jobs as managers.”
This is where leadership must set the pace, creating a culture where all staff receive encouragement, from the top down. “It’s a cascading effect,” Schneiderman explains.
This is the case at Strangeloop, where input from existing employees during hiring and promotion of staff ensures continuity of the company’s culture. “We’re all part of that,” Connolly says. “I think I feel about the culture the same way the CEO of the company does. It will grow the same way everyone here feels and wants it to.”
Are You One of the Best?
See how you stack up against your peers by registering for the 2011 Best Companies competition at www.bestcompanies.ca. There’s no cost to participate. You will be asked to provide details of your company’s HR practices and to administer a survey soliciting feedback from your employees. In addition to seeing how your workplace ranks alongside those of your peers, you will receive a report from our partners at MindField Group, who will crunch the numbers to summarize the results of your employee survey.
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