Can you delegate recruitment?

Have you heard this before: “delegate to grow”? It’s a common cry that I hear all too often. 

If you’re a growing business, you may have taken that quite literally and considered delegating your recruitment to grow your team. 

I can see why this is appealing – you’re growing fast, you need more support (congratulations by the way!) and you don’t have much time on your hands. Plus, it’s probably not something you feel particularly skilled or passionate about.

Delegating sounds good then, right?! But can you…? Should you…?

Unfortunately, my answer is a big N.O. No.

Sorry, bit overly emphatic there. And that’s probably not what you wanted to hear, but #sorrynotsorry. Let me tell you why I”m giving you this sound piece of advice.

Your recruitment process and hiring outcomes are THE MOST IMPORTANT thing you need to get right when growing your business.

How well you recruit is a key determinant of whether your business will reach the heights you envision. If you don’t surround yourself with A-Players – people with great implementation strengths, great skills, and the ability to act and get results – well, if you don’t get those people around you, you won’t continue to grow. 

It’s as simple as that.

No one ever built the business of their dreams on their own. Am I right?

The recruiting process and the conversations that are had throughout this process are SO important and directly linked to the establishment of your business culture and norms. 

What do I mean by that and why is it important? I’m so glad you asked! 

I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses to help them grow through establishing an awesome team. My coaching model works around a 6 Pillar Success Framework (to building Effective Teams) and one of the pillars is exactly that – evolving BUSINESS CULTURE AND NORMS. You’ll know you’ve reached this pillar of success when you hear people in your team say things like “this is the way we do things here” in relation to systems, processes and the repeatable tasks.

That may not sound exciting to you yet but it really is a sweet spot to be in. It’s at this stage that a tipping point is reached. Things stop feeling new, hard and like another mountain to climb all the time. It’s when you and your team start to think ‘hang on, I recognise that bump up ahead, that’s a little mountain we need to climb and at the peak, we’ll cruise down the other side! Yippee! And the most efficient way to get up this side is to do X and Y.’

So when it comes to recruiting, the recruitment process, including the conversations you’ll have and the decisions you’ll make throughout that process, is a golden opportunity to set great expectations of your team and the future direction for your business.

You’ll talk to your new team members about their working environment, the way you do things, the business’s future, what you expect from them and what they can expect from you. 

When you are a small, growing business it is super essential that the RIGHT expectations are being set from the get-go. Why? Because it’ll save you time, money and a whole bunch of heartache down the track.

In the early days of growing a business, your business culture and norms (the way we do things here) will determine how efficient and therefore how profitable your business will be. Let’s face it, margins will probably be tight, and the more efficient you can be the more likely you are to preserve those precious margins while you invest in more people and turn that investment into a good return. 

How and who you recruit in these early days will determine how systemised your business becomes. If you hire the right type of people and set the right expectations, you won’t have to re-build processes down the track. 

Plus, when you are in that business building phase, maybe growing fast or getting ready to grow again, those roles won’t be easy to define with an obvious title. They’ll probably be generic, you’ll have broad expectations (or hopes!) that the person can do heaps! And that those people need to be flexible, multi-taskers and be willing to do what it takes…and to be honest – it’s really hard to articulate all of that to a recruiter, so it’s important that you are the one having those conversations.

My 15+ years of experience recruiting for big and small businesses has taught me something huge:

Recruiting Success Starts With You.  

The Business Owner. 

The new team member’s Leader. 

It doesn’t have to be complicated. But it does have to be structured, objective and well thought out.

If this is freaking you out, don’t worry! It’s actually quite straight forward when you follow a step by step process. A great process allows you to take the stress and emotion out of hiring and puts you in the driver’s seat to build a team that will grow your business and get you where you want to go.

Keen to learn more? Check out my Online Courses or how we can work 1:1 together.