Plan for 2017 - Action Steps For Your Recruitment Team
There’s a running joke in my household: I’ve mentally lived this week about three weeks ago. As a headhunter, you can’t live for the day; otherwise, you’re setting yourself up for an uphill battle. Similarly, all high growth companies should have begun their 2017 hiring plan in November. But if you’re just now starting that conversation internally, no worries. I have an action item list for you to work on leading up to Q1 of next year.
1) Start meeting with C-level executives to discuss business goals, financial plans, and the headcount needed to achieve those goals.
There’s a reason C-level executives get to their level; they’re great at pushing their objectives forward and creating an environment that will help them achieve career success. This means it may take several meetings to finalize the hiring plan. So, if you don’t work on it today, you won’t have a plan until next year.
2) Present even the most tentative hiring plan to your recruitment team sooner, rather than later, preferably today.
It takes time to build a recruitment pipeline, especially if you only have a tentative hiring plan and no job description. Your recruitment team is relying on proactively sourcing passive job seekers. Experience tells me that it takes at least one week of dedicated sourcing to produce light results, especially this time of year. So, prepare your team for success and have them work on those requisitions now.
3) Prepare for backfills.
Many professionals are now thinking about what they’ve done in 2016 and what they should do in 2017. People managers and leaders in your organization should have already met with their subordinates. Depending on how the conversations have gone, you should expect at least a 1% attrition rate in your company.
Hopefully your organization has a robust performance review process, and all your leaders have a good pulse on the health of the people they lead. If not, have your recruiters start passively searching for talent in each department. This doesn’t mean they need to reach out to them, but they should be ready when the time is ripe.
If you have other action items to recommend, please email me at helen@ascenditurrecruiting.com.
