2 Methods to Help Improve Your Hiring Success as a Small Business

Guest Author: Daava Mills, a Fractional HR Executive

Hiring in today’s market is difficult. 

It’s like being a massive underdog in a sports game; you’re probably not going to win, but you still have to play it. Oof.

In this guest article, we learn from Daava Mills, a Fractional HR executive who has had a penchant for identifying trends and changes in recruiting for the past 25 years. 

Her goal is to help businesses find people practices that work for them, not necessarily best practices. Today, we’ll learn some of her unique methods. 

How Most Business Owners Go About Hiring

First, when hiring a new person, you work and rework the job description.

You diligently write an employment ad, cringe at the daily cost on LinkedIn, and shudder even harder when seeing the cost per click on Indeed. 

Then, you can decide whether or not to do a skills or personality test before ever meeting a person to scale down the decision process. 

If you have an onsite Applicant Tracking System (ATS), you schedule daily time to. 

Read. Every. Single. Resume. 

You select five or six people to call and schedule a short Zoom session with each. Only one makes the cut, so you go back to the resume well and find another three people. Okay, great. Two of them were decent. 

The three are brought in to meet the team. You ask a ton of skill questions. You might even check their references. 

You’ve spent at least 20 to 40 hours over the past month or two trying to get our team the help they need. 

Finally! There is a top candidate, and they accept the offer. 

A couple of months later, you realize you didn’t hire a star; you hired a shooting star. 

After a short time, they’ve flamed out, they no longer glitter, and you’re left feeling like you are expending energy into the black hole sitting at the desk across you. And the team is frustrated. 

The person leaves or gets fired because everyone knows it’s not working. 

Now what?!

METHOD 1: Conduct a Post Mortem Hiring Analysis

When you are struggling to hire or retain good employees, you should employ a tool I call a post-mortem. 

It's a bit of a morbid name, I know, but it’s how I figure out how to improve my hiring process. 

Now, for this to work, you must put your ego away, sit in your integrity, and not be afraid to admit where your assumptions errantly led the way. 

The most effective way to do this is to use a simple tool called FSTOPS, which I was given over twenty years ago. 

Like a speed shutter on a camera, this tool will take a snapshot of the problem and create a simple path forward. The path will help determine a culture match, a culture expansion, or a culture disaster. I even had the opportunity to talk with the developer of this tool, but I’ve since lost his name, and I can’t find this tool anywhere on the Internet. I figured maybe if I shared it, he would step forward one day. 

How to Implement FSTOPS 

Draw a 2x3 grid on paper (or a 2x6 table in a document). You're going to focus on your past, then future, then present. 

It looks like this:

Feel free to download a copy of the template HERE.

Important: Make Sure to Think Back to Multiple Hires

Take time to reflect. Really dig into the last two or three years of hiring people. Trends change; what used to work no longer works. 

Example: We used to ask about people’s weaknesses and got excited when candidates said they were perfectionists. Then, candidates got hip to that, and all started claiming to be perfectionists. No one asks about weaknesses anymore.

Get clear, really clear, about the backgrounds of the people you spoke with. 

Did you dig into why they left their last two or three jobs? Given that Millennials (the largest segment of our current workforce) will have, on average, 11 jobs between the ages of 18 and 40, we need to figure out what drove the change in the candidate(s) job. 

It’s not a generational thing—everyone does it. 

Millennials will move faster between companies, and there are more of them. 

Section #1: Write Failures & Successes From Your Perspective & Theirs

Document what you think the failures and successes were and figure out why. 

Assume none of it is luck. No bad luck or good luck here, just facts. 

Your failures could be:

• I found out that after I hired them, they were let go for being chronically late at their last place of employment. They told me they were ready for a new opportunity.

• I didn’t ask them to look at an Excel sheet with me to see what functions they knew how to use. It turns out their view of “Excellent” is they can make a nice table with no formulas.

While the successes might be:

• I was able to get everyone through the interview process in two weeks. 

• All the candidates really liked our work environment.

• Everyone showed up to the interview.

These are all hints; pay attention, a theme generally occurs. 

Section #2: Ask Yourself These Questions to Find Threats & Opportunities

Now, look into the future… what is scaring you? These are your perceived “threats.” 

Questions to ask yourself to determine possible threats:

• What would a hiring mistake mean for my clients?

• What will it mean for the team?

• What is the cost of lost time to rinse and repeat?

Now, let’s flip it. What about the possible success of a new person? How does that feel? 

Questions to ask yourself to see opportunities:

• What new projects can I take on due to the added headcount?

• How will the team function?

• What will this do for morale?

Section #3: Be Honest With Yourself About Where You Stand

Finally, bring it to the present. Knowing what happened in the past and what could happen in the future, what is the immediate problem? 

The problem might present differently now that you’ve looked at your failures and threats. 

When you are outlining the solution, ask yourself these questions:

• Did you put what success looks like in your ads? 

• Do you talk about it in your interviews?

• What does communicating success look like?

Again, take time to think. 

Studies show that a mindfulness practice is centered on correcting a habit. I like to take time to “think.”

Using a tool like FSTOPS can be an effective way to make hiring plans. You can even have your team members do their version this way! 

Who knows, you might find some commonalities. 😉

METHOD 2: Build a Fractional Workforce

Sometimes, the best use of resources is to hire someone temporarily to take on what you struggle with. 

Great fractional leaders exist in all industries and professions and are happy to take on this challenge for you! 

Many are willing to share their wisdom and guide you into the unknown lands they geek out about. 

One of my favorite things is teaching business owners and watching them refine what they learn to fit their environment. 

Hiring is Always Changing 

Just like everything else, how you build your team will change over time; new thoughts and tools are the only constant. 

Be flexible, take time to reflect, and make changes as needed. Integrity and vulnerability will strengthen your team and your future team. 

If you’d like some guidance, feel free to get in touch with me at Hello@Daava.me or on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/DaavaMills.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daava Mills was baptized by fire in the world of smile-and-dial recruiting before the age of email. She has a penchant for identifying trends and changes in recruiting for the past 25 years. Her goal is to help businesses find people practices that work for them, not necessarily best practices. When not solving retention problems, she’s a dance mom, wanna-be-songwriter, and slowly fixing up her 1930’s farmhouse. 

You can get in touch with her at Hello@Daava.me or on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/DaavaMills