Dear Kristy: Prioritizing Hiring Needs

Dear Kristy,

I have never used a recruiter before, but have now found myself in a position where I need to hire a lot of people as our company has grown significantly in the last year, and our internal team cannot keep up with the needs of our different locations and branches. Can I hire you to help fill them all at once? How fast can we get this done?

Thank you,

Samantha T.

Hello Samantha –

Great question. Many of our clients have multiple branches, and we work closely with both main office leadership and HR, as well as individual branch managers and general managers. So the short answer is yes, we can help with your hiring needs. It is not uncommon for Wylander to be recruiting for three or more positions for a company. In fact, some of our clients have ongoing agreements with us and are frequently opening new positions through us. Thanks to well-established relationships, we are able to simply act as an extension of their HR department and alleviate some of the hiring and recruiting stress.

Now here comes the but…

I need to know more about your company before giving a true answer. Can you tell me:

• Where you are located.
• How close your branches are together.
• How cohesive your hiring process is among the locations and subsequent leadership.

Why do I ask these things? First, I have to tell you it is critically important that your leadership team all be on the same page when working with a recruiter. They need to understand the process, and be willing to follow it. When branch managers or others start doing things their own way, we run into snags with miscommunication, different expectations for the position, inconsistent communication between all parties, and more. Let me give you an example. If we send a great candidate to the hiring manager at the main office, and that manager likes the candidate enough for them to move forward with the process, we then need buy-in and involvement from the branch manager or next interviewer in line to keep the process going. If branch managers are off doing their own hiring for a position we were hired by the company to fill, we often end up with unhappy candidates, clients, and recruiters. Again, we all need to work together as a team.

Also, demographics, location, and processes have a big impact on how successful the Wylander team can be recruiting for your restoration, cleaning, or flooring company. For example, if you have five offices located within a few hours of each other surrounding a major metropolitan area, trying to find people for all five of them at once probably will not work. In cases like this, we find too much candidate overlap. We recommend prioritizing your needs, and letting us work on one or two positions at a time. This will lead to great efficiency overall throughout the hiring process, and reduce any confusion about which candidate is for what.