Have you tried everything you can think of to get more interested applicants for your openings, but not only are you getting very few applicants, the ones you’re getting feel sort of underwhelming. You’re not alone.

The pandemic in hand with the Great Resignation and increased cost of employees has created a frustrating cycle of scarcity, settling, and setbacks. I call this the 3S Cycle and it has to be broken for you to build the high performing team you want.

The 3S Cycle goes like this:

Scarcity

You decide to hire, you post the job and wait for the applicants to roll in. Unfortunately, very few roll in, and very few of those are people you can see hitting the ground and running in the role. This is the first S -Scarcity.

Settling

Now, although we’d all like to make a perfect hire everytime, we’re realistic and sometimes you need to make do. So, we settle for the “best that applied” – even when we “know” that they’re going to need a lot of training and management to get up to average.

Setbacks

We’ve got our new hire, they are 3 or 30 days in before you start to realize it may be more work than you realized to get them up to speed. Suddenly you (or their manager) is spending a LOT more time training and managing this new hire than anyone expected. So, not only do you have a hire that is not performing at the level you’d expect – they’re also taking more time and energy from their manager than planned for. Not surprisingly, this can lead to frustration.
Sound familiar?

So, how can you break this cycle?

Here’s the hard truth. You’re going to need to do something different than you’ve been doing. You can’t make great hires from mediocre applicants.

Here is 4 ways you break the 3S Cycle Today:

• Do a Recruiting Audit: Are you using best practices or best guessing?
• Think outside of the box: can you do a better job selling the opportunity or getting clear on who it is that you’re looking for and where you’re likely to find them?
• Increase your investments in internal tools and resources and training for your team.
• Consider working with a consultant. Take the guesswork out and work with a professional to figure out what you need to do to change your results.