Recruiting for a Fruitful Business
Although I haven’t been with Summit long, the immersion into this culture has many of the company’s phrases rubbing off on me. ”Do you feel stuck in the hourglass, where everything runs through you?” “Is your team thinkers or problem solvers?” “Does your company have the right culture?” However, there is one phrase that permeates everything we do, “The system runs the business, the people run the systems.” I no doubt believe that to be true, but as a recruiter, I’m slightly more biased.
What happens if you don’t have the people to run the systems? The problem of finding quality talent has been around as long as the jobs themselves have. There’s a reason why the phrase “good help is hard to find” remains such a constant in the working world.
The working talent pool today can be best compared to fruit at a grocery store. Searching for that perfect fruit is not always an easy task. Maybe you want a green apple (salesman), a bookkeeper (plum) or a field supervisor (peach). You go over to that fruit talent pool and you survey the scene. Is there fruit there? If there is, is it good fruit or is it bruised? Is it ripe? Is it the right size? Say you do find two pieces that on the surface appear to be identical, how do you know which one to choose? Could they both be rotten on the inside? The fruit available in the stand is the visible, actively looking talent and they make up roughly 21% of the working population. They want to be chosen and are trying to make themselves look as shiny and appetizing as possible. However, everyone knows that the fruit that’s available is available for a reason.
Often times, the available fruit works out well. Sometimes you do find that one gem in the bushel. But what if you don’t? Should you be forced to choose between mediocre talent? Where’s all the good fruit? What most people fail to realize is that if they were to go just one aisle over, you would find three perfect pieces of fruit in another shopper’s basket. This talent is what we call the tiptoers and explorers. They’re currently employed elsewhere, but they’re not totally happy. These people have at least thought about looking elsewhere or would be open to opportunities. These people make up 59% of the working population. 59%!
How do you find this fruit? And once you find it, how do you get it from the other shopper’s basket and into yours? The talent is there. 80% of all workers are open to listening to opportunities. It’s simply a matter of identifying the talent and making them yours.
We’re ramping up our tenacity when it comes to recruiting at Summit Services. We’re not afraid to make the calls that others so often are. Even if the talent does not present itself to us, we know they’re out there. There is top talent out there being under-utilized, working in jobs they dislike, who are just waiting for that one phone call. Summit intends to be that phone call.
All the Best-
Colin Nolan