Best hiring practices — the rules have changed

There was a time when all an employer had to do was to hang a "help wanted" sign in the window to attract job seekers.

That's no longer the case.

Throughout Missouri — and across the nation for that matter — employers are dealing with a labor shortage that's forcing many businesses to limit services or hours. Others are simply leaving vacant positions unfilled.

According to labor statisticians, the situation in Missouri is particularly in the youth labor force — ages 16 to 19 — which is 15% smaller than it was a decade ago. That's having a significant impact on the food service, hospitality and retail industries, which tend to higher younger workers.

"It's an employees' market and we (as employers) are going to have to pursue them," said Brian Gerau, president and CEO of the Jackson Area Chamber of Commerce.

Gerau recently led a workshop attended by a cross section of area employers to discuss about a dozen "best practices" they might consider when recruiting employees — as well as techniques they should avoid.

Here are some of the main points he covered in his presentation:

• Make Them (job applicants) Excited About Coming to Work With You.

"You've got to go past 'We work 8 to 4 for $15 an hour'," Gerau said. "OK, that's a good start, but it's just the first rung on the ladder."

Job seekers, he said, need to hear from people in the company about why they like working there and why it would be a good fit for them as well. "You've got to make them excited about the opportunity to work with you," he said.

• Check Your Welcome Wagon.

"When you have somebody come on site for an interview, who's the first person to greet them at the door?" Gerau asked the group. "Is it your HR person? Is it your office manager? Is it your CEO? Because if it's the most boring person (on your staff), the chances of landing that person are slim to none."

• Show the Path to Advancement.

"When you sit down with an applicant, let them know how they can advance in the company," Gerau explained, adding "hope is not a strategy" for career advancement (as in "I hope they promote me" or "I hope if I work my rear off I get a dollar more an hour").

"Give them a goal and fire them up," he continued. "And that's a key to employee retainment, too."

• Make the Application Process Simple.

Applicants, Gerau said, want a simple application process. "If it takes more than 10 or 15 minutes to fill out an application, guess what? They're probably not going to fill it out and you lose the opportunity for an employee," he said. "You have to make the process simple. Streamline your application. Can you reduce 25 questions to 10? Is it possible? I don't know, but you have to look at it."

• Track to See What's Most Effective.

"When somebody comes in for an interview, ask what brought them in," Gerau said. "They might say, 'I heard it on the radio' or 'I saw it in the Missourian.' Keep track of it, because if you're throwing your money at something and you're not getting an ROI, maybe it's time to shift a little bit, maybe to social media. Track what is working, track what is not working and move forward from that."

• Find Out Why They Chose You.

"Was it the streamlined application? Was it the people they met with? Was it the pay or other incentives? Find out what it was and then you've got to apply that again and again and again," Gerau said. "Don't change what's successful."

• Use Your Team to Help Promote.

A company's employees can be positive promoters for an employer. "Your current staff can be a great referral network," Gerau told the group. "Find out if they have any friends who are looking for jobs and use your employees to help recruit and promote your business."

• Send Your Job Announcements to Educational Facilities.

"Whether it's the high school, the CTC (Cape Girardeau Career & Technology Center), Southeast Missouri State or others, they know who's going to be in the job market," Gerau said. "They know who's going to college, who's going to tech school and who's not going anywhere, so they could potentially send you the people you're looking for."

• Host Your Own Job Fairs.

"Job fairs may be 'old school' and sometimes it's hard to get people to come to them, but when do we see most job fairs? We see them in the middle of the day. What are most people doing in the middle of the day? Working. So have a job fair at night. Have a job fair happy hour. Have a job fair off site," Gerau suggested.

In addition, he said prospective employers should consider having a job fair at their places of business where prospective employees can see where they could be working. "That's better than going to a job fair where you have 100 businesses lined up," he said. "I just don't think those work anymore."

• Pursue the Applicant.

"The days of employers dictating the hiring process has shifted," Gerau noted. "You have to make them (job seekers) feel wanted, because if your competition is making them feel wanted, that's where they're headed."

Many of the ideas presented during the program, Gerau said, are common-sense approaches to hiring challenges.

"I'm not an expert on this," he admitted, "but this is information we've gotten from marketing organizations that recruit people for a living. They've put hundreds of thousands of dollars into research to come up with best practices and we're passing them along to you. Some of them will work, some may not, but they're good, general ideas."

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