What are you doing between your new hire’s offer acceptance and start date?

If you employ staff, engage contractors, or rely on people to help deliver your products or services, then you know that sometimes there’s a gap between the acceptance of an offer and your new hire’s start date.

This is what we in HR call the High-Risk Pre-Start Date Zone.

What exactly is the high-risk pre-start date zone?

It’s the period of time between when you extend an offer of employment and your applicant accepts, and their actual start date.

This period of time will vary from applicant to applicant, and a trend that is growing is applicants taking an extended period of leave, up to six weeks, added to their typical four weeks’ notice period at their current place of employment before they get started with you. While not every applicant will take almost three months to begin work, it does happen.

During this zone of time, typical behaviours can be an email the night before...

The most successful recruitment campaigns rely on you as the business owner or manager being able to choose from a great list of quality talent, a perfectly suited shortlist, who are all skilled for the role you are hiring for – and ultimately are a great fit for your team.

But have you ever found yourself without this stellar shortlist? Instead, you may have found yourself with only one or two applicants, neither of whom are ideal, but you’re desperate, so you’ll probably hire one of them. Or you have a lengthy list of people you’re considering, but none are ideal, they are ok, they have applied, but they are a mish mash of skills, experience and suitability.

The thing is, in order to achieve a high-quality shortlist of applicants to choose from, it’s imperative that your candidate attraction strategies, including any advertising process, social posts or invitations to apply are targeted, aligned to your requirements and engaging to your...

In a competitive market where applicants are in short supply and the struggle to even find one person who might be suitable for your role is real, it’s easy to think that there is no need to screen and assess applicants. Well, there is no one to screen, or so few applicants so what’s the point, right?

Actually, wrong. You see, despite there being far fewer applicants to chose from, the importance of making the right hiring choices hasn’t changed. The reality is you can’t outrun a bad hire. So even if there is only one applicant, hiring the wrong person is guaranteed to cause you more frustration, more stress and cost you more than hiring no one at all.

When we had only a handful of applicants to select from, screening effectively is even more important because in these moments we can lose focus and clarity on what’s really important, out of desperation, overwhelm and stress. We waiver on the previous non negotiables, and start to consider...

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you are second guessing yourself, feeling like you’ve gone crazy because you are certain you are clear on the conversation you had with an employee, yet they seem certain the conversation didn’t happen. Or perhaps the discussion is acknowledged, but the message you were sure you delivered simply seems to have been forgotten, misunderstood or completely misinterpreted?

You find yourself going around in circles and ending up back at square one with any required change or improvement seeming to never be getting any start or momentum.

Here’s the truth, we never think we need notes of those meetings, discussions or incidental ‘chats’ we have had – until we do. We think we will remember them in vivid detail, because they are so clear in our mind in that moment, but we have so much more on our plates as business owners and leaders, that the reality is we won’t remember. Like everything...

Whether you have a tiny shortlist of applicants, or you’ve been absolutely drowning in resumes and are feeling completely overwhelmed, making the right hiring decision is critical to your businesses success.

When we find ourselves with only a limited list to select from, we can often start to flex the boundaries and parameters that we were hiring within. Sure, they don’t have the experience, but it’s better than nothing. Or you have a gut feel that they won’t really be a great fit but you’re so desperate to fill the role you ignore your gut and push forward based on skills and experience.

Conversely, when you are absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer volume of applications you have received for any one role, it can be incredibly hard to get clear about who is really the stand out applicant, and what to focus on when shortlisting, or how to choose when interviewing.

In small to medium sized businesses, when you are growing your...

Understanding how to motivate your team can be one of the biggest challenges business owners, managers and leaders face. Finding the right people for your business is just the first step, once you have the players in place, getting the most out of them, motivating them and pushing for greater productivity and motivation is an ongoing pain point which can often feel like some sort of secret witchcraft.

For many managers, when thinking of ways to motivate staff, our automatic default is to entice them with some form of incentive, or show them recognition with some sort of gift, reward or show of gratitude. Some people even think that the bigger the gesture, the more expensive the gift or reward, the higher the motivation should be. Then, after outlaying the money, expecting a huge return on their investment by achieving high motivation across the team, they are disappointed, frustrated and resentful that their efforts have had no direct impact, and in fact can sometimes appear...

If you’ve tried to recruit new staff in the last 6 months or so, you have probably noticed that applicant numbers re definitely not what they used to be. A role that once you may have received 50 applications for, now you’re lucky to get 5, and the chances of them being high quality options, to be fair, are slim.

You may have found yourself in a situation where you thought you had struck gold and found ‘the one’ only to have them accept another role right under your nose. You’re confused, you had a great connection with them, they showed all the signs of being really interested in your position, so why would they accept another role without at least checking in with you first?

Generally, it comes down to a few possible scenarios. Either the role they were offered was just too amazing to turn down, they were willing to take on almost any job offered, or, and more and more commonly these days they have been offered a cash bonus to accept...

It can be so frustrating can’t it? When you have an employee on your hands who you know is capable of more, who you have seen perform at a far higher level, they used to be proactive, and motivated, but now getting them to do even the simplest tasks from their position description is excruciating, it’s like you’ve just asked them to walk through quicksand with an elephant on their shoulders….

Are you noticing this more than usual right now? With team members who you thought you would never need to worry about possibly, and you’re noticing the tone and vibe of the team is changing at the same time. You might be wondering what on earth has happened – your once happy, proactive and productive team seem to have taken a wrong turn – their motivation is completely missing in action!

If this is you right now, know that you’re not alone, it’s one of the most common challenges companies are facing right now – how to...

With the shortages in the labour market and the difficulty companies everywhere are having in attracting top talent, it’s no wonder many businesses are looking at alternatives to going it alone and considering engaging a professional recruiter to assist with their search.

Like anything in business, getting support to attract, find and secure the right person for any role in your business may from time to time require professional support. Sometimes to save you time, sometimes because it isn’t in your wheelhouse and getting an expert is simply a smarter option, and sometimes out of pure desperation because you think the recruiter has a magic wand and can make a candidate appear out of thin air (or because they promise they can do just that…).

Whatever the reason, if you’re considering engaging a recruitment firm to assist with your current or future campaigns, I’d like to pull back the curtain and share with you some things you may not...

It wasn’t all that long ago that businesses who could offer some sort of ‘workplace flexibility’ to their staff were at a distinct competitive advantage when it came to attracting and retaining top talent. We weren’t talking about total location independence, or complete control of hours either, we were talking things like maybe starting and finishing an hour later than others, or maybe working from home one day per fortnight.

This sort of flexibility driven competitive advantage to win the war on talent was largely played out in the large organisations, corporate world, heavily but not exclusively in the tech sectors. Small businesses were simply not able to envisage how they could possibly offer this kind of flexibility without losing complete control, without having some of their small teams feeling disadvantaged and whilst being able to maintain their consistency, productivity and control over outputs.

And not that long ago you can remember...