Over the last several weeks, I’ve heard from a number of people who are less than six months into working at a new company and think they may have made the wrong decision. Surprisingly, the majority of these were Talent/Recruiting leaders. This seems counterintuitive—you would think we would be better at evaluating new opportunities as subject matter experts in all things hiring! Let’s talk about why this happens, and what you can do about it.
We’ve all noticed it. It feels as though every company who grew like wildfire over the last 5-10 years has reduced their talent function in recent months. This downsizing has left recruiting teams struggling to keep up - from systemic issues impacting their ATS and recruiting workflows to their capacity to source on top of handling all of the new headcount and backfills. Even the recruiting teams at companies who are lucky enough to be going through hyper growth are feeling stretched thin and seeking additional, flexible support.
As we mentioned last month, one of the natural evolutions of maturing recruiting teams is to build out an internal leadership/exec recruiting function. In fact, as we have noted before, it has been a growing trend for companies to invest in this function on a continually earlier basis. At Growth by Design Talent, we have the POV that building this internal muscle is a key differentiating factor in the success of growing companies. As a trusted advisor, you can position yourself to be anticipating these needs by being close to the business and talent strategy.
If you received an email today announcing that your company has filed its S-1, would your recruiting team know what to do? Do you know what an S-1 is? From our experience, that email has been followed by, “YAY, we’re finally going public!”, immediately followed by panic inducing questions like, “what are we allowed to say to candidates?” or “how do we pitch a job opportunity if you can’t talk about the value of an offer?”
While AI took center stage, conversations among TA leaders were heavy on team engagement, recruitment ROI, and innovative approaches to getting the work done. A sense of cautious optimism around hiring growth in 2024 spurred engaging discussions on how TA teams are meeting the reality of achieving business needs with limited resources. Specifically and not surprisingly, many leaders shared that their priorities are focused on enhancing the effectiveness of their teams without the option of growing team size. This continued focus on doing more with the same team or even fewer resources has put a renewed spotlight on recruiting operations and understanding what changes will actually have an impact.
“How do I make this process repeatable, and less time consuming for me?” This is the question recently asked by a leader at one of the early stage companies we’re working with. Through our Fractional Talent Partner offering, we partner with a VC firm to give extra support to their portfolio companies and that’s how we met this leader.
Happy New Year! As we think about what’s ahead in 2024, we’re reminded that hiring is a product of business performance and business performance is a product of market conditions and financial health.
