“Finding Employees or Becoming Unemployed”
The Business of Furniture - 8/24/16 Edition
Stephen Says Column




Dear Stephen,

I enjoy your advice column, and I love your answers to people's different problems at work. You are the first thing I read in BOF! I am writing, however, with a different type of problem — I have a job, but maybe not for long. I am a hiring manager with a hiring problem that has been going on for months. I can't seem to close the deal on a good candidate. Even after spending months finding and courting them, I can't seem to get them to take the job. I work for a great company, and it's not just my opinion. Fortune magazine rates the company where I work as one of the best places to work in the furniture industry. Our Glassdoor.com reviews are 80 percent positive and better than most of our competitors. Now my own job is being affected because I can't seem to close a hire.

My boss is pressuring me to get these positions filled and blaming me for how long it's taking. I also still have a large sales team to manage. Short staffed, I may now miss my team's sales goal and then my region will not get our bonus (we pool sales). Our corporate process goes like this: HR screens and interviews people, we test them and then I interview them. My boss then meets them, signs off, and the deal should be done. We use a headhunter (not your company, sorry) who has sent us quality people, and we have internal recruiters, too. We ask for a three-year salary history and tend to bump bases up 20 percent in our offers. What in the world is going on out there with hiring today? How can I get candidates to yes?

-Get to Yes or My Boss Says Go
 

Dear Get to Yes:

I have addressed this question before but in a more general sense when I wrote about over-recruiting and gave some tricks of the trade that should help with finding candidates. I'll reiterate some of that below because we can never hear it enough, but that does not quite sound like your problem. Your problem — getting good candidates to accept offers — is a question I hear over and over from hiring clients today.

Hiring managers, HR, sales and productivity are all down when you are shorthanded, so the problem compounds itself. There is no surefire solution to this growing problem, but a good place to start is realizing when hiring takes too long, everyone gets in trouble. There are a number of factors that contribute to the lag and some solutions. First, it is rare to find a perfect hire. Managers need to be willing to hire based on intuition and see potential in people and invest in them. The fruitless search not just for someone better, but for someone "perfect" holds up a lot of hires because hiring managers claim they do not have the time to train someone. In my office, when clients tell us that, we consider it code for "I am a lazy manager!" We decline the client. Wake up, there is no such thing as someone who can just walk into the job and start performing immediately anymore. You should be fired if you think that, and then your company will have yet another opening. The point is, while you are out looking for the perfect candidate, a good candidate who will one day be a perfect employee is accepting another offer. Then, when you give up on finding Ms. or Mr. Perfect and go crawling back to the good candidate, you have already missed your opportunity.

Another stumbling block is many companies' unwillingness to raise people's base salaries, that is, raise it more than the normal 20 percent you are offering. In sales, an increased base salary, not the incentives or commission, will often be what closes the deal. HR departments with the best of intentions want these W2s, and I get it, but good candidates do not care your salaries are calculated with a certain formula. And, for what it's worth, the formula is no longer working in 2016; it's broken. Rules don't talk, money does. Maybe it is time to raise your prices on the products you make and sell, so you can raise your salaries.

With all this in mind, here are some Viscusi deal closers that seem to work.

Deal closer #1: Better medical and dental. Bite the bullet and pay 100 percent.

Deal closer #2: Signing bonus. Put your money where your mouth is. Signing bonuses are cheaper than big salaries in the long term, but put the sort of money on the table that candidates need to see. Then wow them. I have seen $50K bonuses, but I am talking more in the range of $10K. Be smart about the signing bonus and pay it in more than one installment to be sure someone stays at least a year. In other words, pay it out at the end of the first year. It really does work, and it is especially effective if a candidate is considering a counter offer.

Deal closer #3: Stop sounding like a PR machine for your company. We know the gimmick of getting on that Fortune list and that doesn't work for all candidates. Instead, be the kind of manager someone wants to leave their job to come to work for, because you are a great leader, a mentor, generous with your time and support, and can clearly define a future career path for your employees. The best and easiest hires are when the employees tell me they want to work for that manager. Be that manager, and let the candidate know you want to work with them, specifically. Make it personal. You, as a manager, are building your own brand. Do not sound like you drank the Kool-Aid — sound cool. Everyone wants to work for and work with Mark Cuban, so be like him. Tell your own story and make the candidate a part of it. A nice boss closes the deal every time. Make them say to themselves, it's not just about the money, even if it usually is.

Stephen
 

You can send your workplace questions to Stephen at: StephenSays@bellow.press
Questions selected to be answered, will appear in this column. Please use the Subject: Stephen Says for all emails.
Stephen Viscusi is a bestselling author, television personality, and CEO of The Viscusi Group,
global executive recruiters located in New York.
Follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenviscusi, Like Stephen on Facebook; and follow him on LinkedIn.