Rebuilding your HR department after the Fall: A Golden Opportunity

Let’s face it; the recession has been a mess.  It seems like overnight we went from slurping up caviar at the Ritz to scavenging cigarette butts on the sidewalk.  And while it helps to face things with a sense of humor, all kidding aside, times have been tough.  Across the country companies have been forced into a reactionary hack job of corporate restructuring.  The smiling consultants might call it “right sizing”, but the majority of us call it a pink slip.  Watching the familiar hardworking faces pack up their desks and head out the door for the final time has been a sobering experience.  In many companies, the human resources department was the hardest hit when the layoffs came.  HR managers may have ridden out the storm, but corporate recruiters had no chance.  With the economic dust finally clearing and business starting to make the climb back up the mountain, today is a great opportunity for organizations to create a smaller more efficient hiring program.

Hedge your Bets

Nobody knows how long the recovery is going to take.  Successfully rebuilding your hiring operations depends on bringing on internal recruiters when you need them most.  Unfortunately, you usually won’t know you need a recruiter until a few months after you should have hired them.  How can companies prepare themselves for a hiring cycle without stretching their limited resources?  Before you rebuild your internal hiring capabilities think about outsourcing.  A number of recruiting services have retooled their business models to match the needs of post-recession businesses.  Some technical recruiting firms have switched to hourly pricing models.  These outsourced options leverage the experience of a dedicated technical recruitment service, while providing the cost efficiencies of only paying for the hours actually worked on each job opening.  Imagine all the money you could save if your internal employees had to clock out every time they checked their Facebook account.

Hire like a Startup

When it does come time to start rebuilding an internal recruiting staff, hire like a startup.  In Silicon Valley startups target resourceful multi-taskers, who can handle heavy workloads.  These same qualities are critical for the first internal recruiter your organization brings on when they reload the hiring department.  Better to keep the department lean and agile than to spread a potentially limited workload over too many people.  One competent recruiter should be able to handle any unforeseen upswings in hiring until the organization has time to beef up the recruiting department.

Make the most of Technology

Horse travel went out the window when the train came along.  The same principle applies to hiring.  Spreadsheets and email will only get you so far.  Just think about how many times you’ve seen an email buried and a spreadsheet misplaced.  The fallbacks associates with these standard recruiting tools end up costing the organization in long-term inefficiencies.  Fortunately some innovative software companies have specifically targeting the hiring industry to help bring together recruiters, hiring managers and decision makes.  With straight-forward collaboration tools, from candidate tracking to review notes, new recruiting software systems offer the advantages of web-based software with the simplicity of web 2.0 design.  This new approach to hiring can help you maintain a lean internal hiring department capable of outpacing and outperforming your organization before the recession hit.

Anyway you cut the mustard, it is hard to look at the recent economic disaster as an opportunity.  The same could be said for post-war Europe.  When the smoke clears we can only move forward.  As the shoots of growth break through the economic landscape, look to your hiring department with the mentality of the Marshal Plan.  If you set a sturdier foundation today you can prepare yourself for the success of tomorrow.