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When I first meet my clients, they have been trying to push the rock over the top of the hill for some time. Let’s define “pushing the rock over the top of the hill”. This means to obtain a satisfactory and sustained level of employee turnover, chronically open positions and skills gap. Consistently, they will have short periods of time where they make progress. Only to see the rock roll back on top of them again. Their progress is due to them trying something which they read about or one of their competitors did. It may or may not work out.

We hit a major milestone in the fight against COVID-19 this week. Schools all over the country reopened from Kindergarten to the University level. The reopenings were different for each school. Some are close to reopening as in the past with relatively minor restrictions. Others are reopening in a fully virtual basis. This will have a major impact on the lives of the parents. Therefore, there will also be a major impact on the employers.

Something happened years ago, which I will always remember. A couple was building a house and they went out one weekend to take a look at the progress. The woman was disappointed because when they arrived at the site, the slab had not even been poured yet. There was PVC pipe sticking up and running around where the slab was going to be poured. The man told his wife they were going to pour the slab later the coming week. The wife’s response was: “When are they installing the kitchen cabinets?” The husband said it was going to be a while.

"It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.”

Your organization has an employer reputation. Your employer reputation is not what you think it is. Your reputation is what THEY think it is. They may be wrong. It may be easily proven to be wrong. But until you start getting the facts out there and effectively communicate, it will not change.

Recruiting is hard even in the best of circumstances. Unfortunately, most organizations are not in the best of circumstances. They also don’t know what it is which attracts and keeps great people. So let’s start at the beginning and discuss eight issues which I hear the most from the candidates’ point of view.