New Year, New Hires: Master the Art of Executive Recruiting in 2024!
With a new year around the bend, what’s your hiring strategy? December can be a chaotic and distracting month, but the sooner you make a solid plan for HR, the better your outcomes.
In this month’s newsletter, realistic goals for hiring in the new year, why you need to prioritize your new hires once you have them, and why it’s getting harder to hire in the first place.
Realistic goals for the new year of hiring
January is an important month for hiring managers — a time to set goals for the year, review your strategy and make a plan for sourcing candidates. January is also a time when many organizations approve their annual hiring budgets.
As you head into a new season of hiring, a few things to think about:
Set realistic goals. That includes pacing your hiring and prioritizing on finding key employees first — those whose hiring will have the biggest impact on your company and teams.
Start sourcing early. The earlier you start looking for candidates, the earlier you start interviewing, and the sooner you get to the hire. Reach out to an executive recruiter like those of us at KIP Search for support.
Be prepared to close deals quickly. January is Go Time for candidates, too, and they’re ready to meet their own goals by finding new jobs as fast as they can.
By following these tips, you can make January your most successful executive recruiting month yet and start the new year off right.
Prioritize your new hires or lose them
Happy to have done so much hiring this year? Not so fast! A new report out by Qualtrics found that 39% of employees who have been hired within the last 6 months plan to leave within the next year. Ouch.
“Kip, that’s probably just an anomaly. How many people could they possibly have asked?”
I thought that, too, but it turns out that Qualtrics asked almost 37K people. This trend is a change from the past, and fewer new hires in particular show engagement and well-being in their jobs. Since SHRM says it costs nearly $5,000 to hire and onboard a new employee, new-hire unhappiness is not great news.
Also not good news, and related: Fewer than half of leaders (41%) actually prioritize the onboarding of new employees. You can see the problem.
Prioritize your new hires and focus on their wellbeing, and they’re far more apt to stick around.
Recommended reading:
On Worklife.com: A six-figure salary was once celebrated, now it’s expected
On Hireology: Common Illegal Interview Questions
It’s getting harder to hire
According to Gartner, a little more than half of new hires are turning down jobs right now — even if they’ve already signed a job offer. Some are changing their mind; others are ghosting employers before they even begin
What gives?
The number of people walking away from jobs they’ve already accepted has been steadily rising over the last few years, and a tight labor market is not helping. Candidates have a lot of options.
Working with an executive recruiter like me is a good way to ensure that the person you decide to hire actually follows through on their word. Executive recruiters like those of us at KIP Search put a lot of effort into cultivating relationships with both job seekers and hiring managers.