How can you add to your team rapidly and accelerate your hiring process, when business is booming because of the crisis or uncertainty out there?

Even though a lot of businesses have had to cut back during this crisis, we’ve actually seen a number of companies having to rapidly scale up because the demand for their products and services is growing rapidly.

What do you do when you need to hire a lot of team members quickly to your team? Do you sacrifice all of your hiring standards just to make sure you have enough bodies to get the work done?

The reality is the answer’s probably somewhere in between. You could go to temporary agencies and contract firms because inevitably there will be people who are looking for work. That may be your first avenue to add people fairly quickly to your workforce.

If you’re going to be hiring on your own, though, I do have some suggestions for you. Remember the hiring process and the selection process is just like any other process. There are waiting times, duplicated steps, and things that could be done simultaneously to accelerate the process.

Why not take a look at your hiring process and see how can things be done at the same time, simultaneously, so you can get through your candidates quicker and bring the good ones on board faster?

By combining certain steps, you will have accelerated the process to get those talented people on board to help you out quicker. Inevitably though, by accelerating the process, you may also be increasing your risk of making a bad hiring decision.

How do you mitigate that risk?

You could do it through the temporary agencies or you can put people on shorter term contracts so they are basically on a trial basis with your firm. That allows you to try them out in real time, to see who can pick up the job quickly and keep up with your production requirements.

Reducing your risk by adding people on a contract basis, means you’ll have the flexibility to make those staffing decisions further down the road when the crisis surge abates. Bringing on a whole lot of people quickly will also add to your need to train people on certain job tasks.

We recommend to our customers who need to add a lot of people in a short amount of time, to consider having dedicated trainers. I know that might be difficult when you’re already struggling to keep up with production. Having people who are dedicated to getting those new employees up to speed quickly, can really help boost their productivity and reduce things like errors and wasted effort that might happen as you add new people to your business.

As a leader, when you’re adding a whole lot of people to your organization, realize those people are going to need some of your attention. You need to pay attention to how they’re performing, how quickly they’re coming up to speed with your production requirements but also pay attention to them as human beings. That means welcoming them to the team, letting them know what’s going on around them, keeping them in the loop, as opposed to thinking of them as just a number in your production system.

By doing some of those things; reducing your risk, short circuiting, or trying to streamline your hiring process and making sure you train people effectively and pay attention to them this can help you add people to your team rapidly.