Top 5 Recruitment Strategies To Build High Performing Team

Recruitment will play a vital role in building a high performing team. Without a proper strategy on recruitment, managers will fail to seize the opportunity of success.

There is high pressure on managers and leaders related to recruitment in India. Why? Every person who is looking for a new job has so many options and ask for higher salaries as they get through interview rounds with two or more organisations. Due to lack of control on longer notice periods, majority of them tend to search for multiple job offers. If you cannot match competitive salaries, then you will lose that hire.

Questions to be answered are, 1. how will you hire the right person for the job within a given window to make sure that person delivers? and 2. how do you make sure the cost of hiring is controlled?

Here are the strategies.

Strategy 1: Consider those who have skills in problem solving rather than in-depth understanding of tools that you use.

The benefit of this strategy is that the person can deliver value quickly. The effort for onboarding will be relatively lesser. Since the person knows how to approach and solve problems / challenges, the on boarding sessions can only be narrowed down to tools, context and processes. Once, this is done, you can start assigning small work. This reduces the time-to-readiness from a resource.

Strategy 2: Hire Full stack developers rather than specific area of expertise.

The number of full stack developers that are available are relatively less in the market. But it is a good choice. Instead of hiring many specific area based role, hire full stack developer; as full stack resource can cover width and breadth of the project — from backend to API / UI.

If you end up hiring specific area, then expansion of that team will need lot more budget. Keeping the specific area based resources to a minimum, will help to balance the overall team skill.

Look at UpGrad’s ad on full stack course.

Strategy 3: Split senior roles into lower level roles.

Sometimes, managers and leaders have to balance between number of resources vs cost of hiring. If you have to hire senior roles always, then the cost will increase. To ease this, it is better to split few senior roles into junior roles. This will help in adding more resource into the team.

Say, there is a budget to hire 5 senior developers. But 5 resources is not sufficient, then instead of increasing the budget, it can be split into 3 senior developers + 4 junior developers (assuming 1 senior role budget can get you 2 junior developers). If this works out then you will be hiring 7 resources instead.

This strategy will help you get extra resources within the budget limits.

Don’t always use this strategy. Because many junior resources, will not help to deliver quality and you will end up in spending more time in training them.

Strategy 4: Establish a connect with the candidate from the time they accept the offer.

Many leaders and managers have a tendency of not talking to a candidate after they provide approval for hiring, until that person joins the team. This approach will not work.

Since the new hire will have nothing to loose, why will that person think of holding on to your offer than others?

If there is a connect between you and the new hire, then chances of looking for another opportunity, will reduce as you have made the new hire feel appreciated and valued, even before joining the team. Who does that?

We are managers who are expected to lead and motivate, so why not do it with a person who is yet to join as well?

You are offering someone, because you see fit to your team. Then why not continue to talk to that person once in a while, establish a connect and make that person valued. This approach will minimise the risk of not joining.

Strategy 5: Have a smart bench!

The concept of bench is to have a pool of resources, unallocated to any project or work. These pool of resources will be assigned work when the need arise.

The use of bench is mostly used in service based organisation, but even product companies should adopt it.

Having a smart bench management will help in reducing the pressure on hiring.

The intent is to build a high performing team. This means that the team should have a focused roadmap and this roadmap cannot deviate because of attrition. So how you achieve it — create a bench with skills that would be necessary and ready go.

If a resource quits, then while you backfill for that resource, the bench will help you to achieve continuity in the roadmap. It could slow down the pace, but it will not stop nor increase the pressure on existing resource.

Final Thoughts

The top 5 recruitment strategies will help managers adjust to the varying needs of recruitment. Without a proper hiring strategy, it would be difficult to get the right team members.

Poor hiring could lead to creating imbalance in the team or the morale may go down due to low performance from the new hires.

So, use the strategies mentioned in the blog as a foundation and build on top of this to create your own hiring strategy.

Happy Management!

Additional Reading

Top 5 Questions Hiring Managers Must Ask

Manage Remote Teams Effectively - A Simple Guide

Basic Principles of Manaagement

Free Udemy Course How New Managers Can Succeed In Management Role.