Managing Expectations

Are you looking for the perfect candidate right now?

Your candidate is looking for you.

When you are hiring it’s easy to focus on your traditional way of doing things. Whether your tradition is “always hiring by word of mouth” or “growing our own” it may not work as well in 2021 as it did before the pandemic.

Work conditions have changed – and it looks like some changes are sticking around – including the request to work from home or a hybrid model of working from home and the office. These changes have been on the periphery for a decade at least and now that it has gone mainstream pushing the WFH option back into pandora’s box isn’t going to work.

How can you, as an employer, ensure that the top candidate chooses you?

Hint: ping-pong tables and free lunch are not the draw that they once were. Today it is about understanding the human capital that makes your organization tick.

Whether you make cardboard boxes, medical supplies, or provide services to communities in need, nothing works without human beings. While once we thought that AI (artificial intelligence) would replace humans, we now know that skilled humans are required to build the AI and ensure it works as expected.

In healthcare, we know that machines are only tools for helping to heal and skilled human beings who bring their ability to discern, to communicate, and to empathize are the actual means to treating patients.

As a hiring authority, look at how you recognize and reward your employees. I’m not sure of the actual genesis of the ubiquitous “people don’t leave companies they leave bad bosses” quip, still, the reason it’s so popular is that it rings true.

Are you and your team regularly exploring what makes your company a better place to work than your competition? Are you also investigating the ways every member of the team defines the parameters of a successful and great employee? Now take the time to look for THAT employee every time.

Hiring is not a one-time event. Smart, successful, and adaptive organizations recognize the value of consistently recruiting. I’ve found that whether it’s an old-school manufacturer or a new-age tech start-up, the most successful companies spend time, care, and money on their recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and employee growth processes.

One person will not make or break an organization, and the more effective you are at understanding what keeps a person growing in your company and what keeps them stuck can help you recruit (and retain) top talent.

Hiring authorities have told me that candidates have unrealistic expectations, don’t have enough experience in a specific nuance of a role, or have too many years of experience in a particular nuance of a role!

By the time TYGES is brought in to help, most companies are at their wit’s end looking for a magical unicorn that they believe will immediately change the direction of their organization.

Our goal is to make a match between the candidate and the hiring authority, and our real job is to manage expectations. Too many recruiters will over-promise and under-deliver and that’s not fair to anyone.

When a recruiter promises a candidate that they can earn much more than their market value because the hiring authority is desperate, the candidate ends up in over their head or trying to manage unrealistic expectations from the employer. Ultimately, they leave the job in an unhappy way. (LESSON: When you have unreasonable salary expectations you can expect unreasonable job expectations.)

When a recruiter promises a hiring authority that they can find their candidate in a week you can expect that quality is being sacrificed for speed.

How do you fix it?

Focus on the right candidate at the right time. The right candidate is the one who can do the job you need them to do right now and is eager to learn and grow in your organization when the time comes. This means your organization must have a great onboarding process and career growth plan in place for new hires, so they continue to grow within your organization and achieve their goals as well as meet yours.

What can a jobseeker do?

Candidates do well to focus on the right job right now as well. Many job hunters have a vision of their dream job and believe that if they hold out long enough that job will appear. However, humans have a delightful imagination and often envision themselves in a role they’re not quite ready to tackle. Does this mean that an ideal job doesn’t exist? Of course not, it means that managing your expectations and defining the ideal job for right now is the key to happiness at work and success in life.  

As a hiring authority, you owe it to your company, your team, and yourself to work through the true measurables that define an ideal new hire, and I know a team of recruiters that are happy to help, right here, right now.

As a job seeker, you owe it to yourself, your family, and your community to clearly define not only your skills and measurables, but the parameters of the ideal job right now to ensure your job hunt is a success. (Again, I know a team of TYGES recruiters who are more than happy to help!)

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