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The number one pain point I hear from clients is: “I can’t find good people!!” When I look into what they are doing to find people, the issues are all over the board. One of the biggest is they do not know where to look. They are doing what they know to do and are not being successful in meeting their desired goal.

I have heard a story about a kid who was playing soccer. He was young and just learning the game. During a game one of his teammates scored a goal. All the parents got all excited and were telling the other kid how good he was. The first kid then said to himself: “Oh, is that what they want me to do? Kick the ball into the opposite goal?” The rest became legend as he quickly became very well known as a goal scoring machine.

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime”

- Chinese Proverb

A constant complaint I hear from business owners is they cannot afford recruiters and/or temporary agencies. Given what most recruiters and temporary agencies charge, I agree with my business owners. Would it not make more sense to find someone who can teach you how to find employees?

When you go fishing, there are certain things that are very important.

What kind of fish are you trying to catch?
Where are you going to be able to catch your type of fish?
What are the proper weather conditions and time of day?
What is the appropriate bait to catch your fish?

Let’s use the above and relate it to recruiting of employees. What I have found over the years, organizations do not know in detail what they are looking for. What skills, values and personality are the best fit for your particular job? Back to our analogy, many organizations decide any fish they can catch will do.

The question of which came first the chicken or the egg has been around for a long time. There is a variation of this question in the area of employee turnover. Which comes first, do you focus on hiring better candidates? Or do you work on the organization by identifying and fixing the root causes of your turnover? In my experience, I see most organizations with high employee turnover trying to recruit their way out of the problem.