You can’t get discouraged when trying to recruit new employees.
By Alexandra Walsh
Finding qualified employees in 2023 is brutal for nearly every industry. But the professions that are labor intensive—like water well drilling—are struggling when it comes to recruitment and retainment more than most.
So, how do you stay optimistic when staffing your company is so difficult?
Maybe the answer is to look to professional recruiters. How do they stay upbeat when rejection and disappointment are a part of their daily diet too?
Recruiters are undoubtedly some of the most resilient and motivated people in the working world. In simple terms, their job is to help companies source and hire the most qualified candidates—a delicate process that engenders an abundance of wins, losses, and setbacks.
Professional recruiters must stay positive when the labor market is tight. Many of the successful recruiters practice mental exercises to stay positive while brushing off the negatives.
This is what you can truly learn from a recruiter—how to be optimistic even in difficult situations.
Remain Optimistic
Finding good help can certainly be a challenge, but a poor attitude during the recruiting process can definitely make it even more difficult.
While candidates may be trying their best to land a position, they’re also likely playing the field to see what’s out there. Perhaps they have accumulated a handful of potential opportunities and are taking interviews to see which one is the best fit in their eyes.
Given this fact, your company is not just doing the interviewing, but is also being interviewed itself. Having a positive attitude can help you highlight all the great things your company has to offer.
When you’ve got a solid candidate who would make a valuable asset to your company, you certainly don’t want to sabotage the opportunity to bring them on board.
Keep a Folder of ‘Wins’
Create your own personal portfolio of past recruiting and retaining successes that you continue to update throughout your career. Refer to it whenever you want an energy or confidence boost—you’ve accomplished more successful hires than you often remember.
This folder is your proof that you are completely capable of success; you wouldn’t be where you are today if you weren’t.
Keep the momentum going with a look back from time to time.
Embrace Being a Company Builder
The biggest motivator in recruiting can be the acknowledgment that you are helping build your business.
It’s important to walk through your building and look at everyone that you personally were involved in hiring. If that person is thriving since you hired them, you had something to do with that success.
So continue to use that as confident motivation to add new members to your company.
Learn How to Say ‘No’
Professional recruiters aim to set and manage expectations with company staff the new hire will be joining—so they don’t always feel as if they have to deliver on everything requested.
Learn then how to set limits on the expectations of others within the company who each might have a laundry list of skills they are looking for in a candidate.
Too many unrealistic expectations are not helpful. Every requirement narrows the pool of qualified candidates just a little bit.
Share the Joy
Recruiters regularly offer people career and life changes that are huge milestones of joy for them.
When a candidate accepts your offer, take a moment and share their joy and celebrate your success together with them. After the transaction of the offer is completed, pause and engage with the candidate more personally. Ask them what the reasons were they chose to accept your offer and what this career change will mean for them.
Just understanding a new hire’s joy and celebrating with them will make it real for you too. The moment is much more than just a transaction.
Celebrate Every Win
Recruiters take a moment to practice a little self-celebration after closing on a candidate or hitting hiring goals.
Too often we forget our wins in a sea of losses. In many sales organizations, search firms, and recruiting agencies, they do a far better job of celebrating wins than do the companies. Make an announcement shared with everyone at the company, write on a centralized whiteboard, or send an all-staff email.
By whatever means, let everyone at the company know when a new hire is brought on or successfully onboarded.
Take Advantage of the Times
Recruitment and retainment of talent go through cycles of boom and bust. That’s why professional recruiters suggest always making the most of the current environment and not waiting for a better opportunity.
Times might get even more lean.
Conscious Curiosity
Acquiring talent for a company requires professional recruiters to understand the many different parts of a variety of businesses and organizations.
Recruiters often must be a chameleon weaving in and out of different teams, serving different departments and divisions, and they need to understand what makes them all successful.
The best recruiters have learned that the only way to be successful is to be consciously curious. This means even if you own the company you’re recruiting for, motivate yourself to learn more deeply how yours and other businesses and organizations actually work and thrive.
Those recruiting professionals who have innovative, consultative, and strategic skills are the most highly valued of all. If you are the chief recruiter at your company, you have a highly in-demand skill set that is vital to the health and longevity of your company.
Remember to keep all that in mind.
Alexandra Walsh is the vice president of Association Vision, a Washington, D.C.–area communications company. She has extensive experience in management positions with a range of organizations.