Well Lisa just announced she was leaving today. She got a job with a promotion, I am happy for her and hope she has a better future there. Unfortunately this comes on the back of our part time CS person also leaving, after she got a job as a manager minutes from her house. I know this is making the crew think about the work they need to complete and the added work load we now have to face. Our order book is good.
I’m figuring this is a good moment to talk about our/my policy of recruiting while there are no empty slots. If I had people ready to go for CS we wouldn’t be training twice, temp first and then the long term CS hire. We wouldn’t be stressed, and also work won’t suffer while we are short staffed. The fact is people always look for self and/or pay improvement, we’re not planning not can we stop that. All we can do is be prepared. As we witnessed last 10 days, it is reality, it happens quickly and unpredictably.
Keeping group interviews going even when there are no vacancies is the only way we can hire in a planned way versus reacting to an empty seat coming up. In the last 2 people leaving we’ve had 1 weeks and 2 weeks notice respectively and I’ve never had more than a 2 week notice. Unless I already have suitable candidates identified in the surrounding areas, it will be a miracle to fill it in 2 weeks with a great person. A team HR plan cannot obviously rely on miracles happening consecutively. And I will not compromise on who gets to work here.
Furthermore, a recruiting system should not focus just on replacements but also on growth. We cannot predict every time when we’ll need a person, and who we’ll need. If there’s someone out there who wants to join my team, and is good, I need to know that person.
So currently we have a system in place where we are recruiting with ads, and identifying with group interviews candidates, we may not see a need for immediately. The non traditional aspects are obviously, how do people already in Homespice feel, and how do people we interview feel ?
What I do wonder is if I can I keep a player on the “sidelines” waiting for position to open up on the field for up to 6 months, even though they would have joined some other team by then? Is it possible ? Any creative ideas ? If you work at Homespice, how do you feel ?
