This Common Belief Could Block Your Recruiting Success

 

“Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.”—Bill Moyers, Journalist

A woman on a recent webinar I gave asked, “Where is the best place to recruit on social media?” She explained she’s always had trouble understanding social media and how to use it effectively. “I want there to be a perfect place to recruit for my company but social media doesn’t work for me,” she admitted.

Her statement resonated with me. I thought about why we expect things other people do successfully to produce the same results for us.

There’s a reasonable question virtually everyone asks when they start recruiting for the first time, or even if they’ve been recruiting for a while. We all know I like to ask Insightful Interview™ questions, but if you dedicate too much time to this one, it can be more harmful than helpful.

“What’s the best way to recruit?”

If you’ve ever had to hire someone, you’ve likely asked yourself that question. I certainly did.

And when you’re stepping out of your comfort zone into new, uncharted territory, you want a helpful guide—a step-by-step checklist of how to do it perfectly.

The common belief that could block your creative potential is that you need to learn the “best way” to do something. The desire to learn the best way leads to asking endless questions rather than trying out the activity for yourself.

It’s understandable. You want to avoid making mistakes. But making (and learning from) your own mistakes will help you more than any question you could ask an expert.

In my upcoming book, The YOLO Principle, The Ultimate Hiring Guide for Small Business, I give you the steps to create the foundation necessary for successful recruiting. However, because each situation is unique these steps simply cannot be taken as a cookie cutter approach that works the same way for everyone. They require something more.

Recruiting needs creativity.

When you allow yourself to think creatively, you can open new opportunities you may miss when you focus only on a set of steps. When you stop looking at your recruiting as a series of steps to get the perfect result, you become aware of possibilities that will work best for you.

The importance of being creative and open means you aren’t bothered by the challenges of learning a new way to recruit. I had to overcome the belief that it would be difficult to teach others what I know about recruiting. To do that, I simply figured out techniques to communicate my knowledge in a way that helps others create their own success.

The YOLO Principle™ gives you the basics. Once you’ve learned them, you must give your recruiting your own color and richness, rather than trying to duplicate someone else’s “best way.”

Recruiting is not linear. I view it more like a spider web, creating patterns and lines in new directions to attract the people I need.

The “best way” to do something may not work for you at all.

If you keep searching for the “best way,” you’ll never discover your way.

“Messy” is an understatement for my recruiting process. It’s full of crazy tangents, mistakes, and continuous experiments to find what works.

Sometimes I begin with clear ideas of where to find the best people. Other times, I begin with vague concepts or ideas. Sometimes recruiting is fast and easy; sometimes recruiting takes time and is hard.

The trick is to not get too attached to either experience. If you’re having a difficult time recruiting for a position, remember it won’t always be hard. If you’re having an easy time recruiting, it won’t always be like that either. You recruit (and keep recruiting) either way.

The key is to give yourself the freedom to try different techniques without getting discouraged if one method isn’t right for you. You can cross it off your list and try something else. Decide what you want to do, then do it your way.

Of course, you can always ask for help. If you need some insights to get started, schedule your insight session today, call mesend an email, or text RECRUITER to 44222 to get a free sample of The YOLO Principle™. And, the best part is that it’s FREE!

 

Rebecca Barnes-Hogg, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, is The Small Business Hiring Expert and works with small business owners and entrepreneurs who want to end their struggle to hire the right people. She is the author of the upcoming book, The YOLO Principle: The Ultimate Hiring Guide for Small Business, and a co-author of Rethinking Human Resources. She can be reached at 843-779-YOLO (9656) or rebecca@yoloinsights.com.