Hiring staff – will AI help you do it?
Hiring staff is so difficult. How do we find the right person to help our company grow. How do we find the right skills, the right attitude . Can we wait months for the right person to show up? Can AI really scan all the email applications to find the right person?
The market is changing. There are more applicants than jobs.
Can you read through 100 resumes and say, “no thank you” without the help of an AI tool?
How do you find the best candidates for your job openings?
Sure, you have a job description but is that really what you need. Clearly there are baseline skills that candidates need to have that we need to address. But after those basic skills ( different today than they were 5 years ago) , how do we choose a successful candidate.
This calls for some introspection.
Understanding what kind of supervisor you are will help you hire better employees.
What kind of a supervisor am I?
How many people do I supervise? Is it too many? Do I have bandwidth to supervise more?
Do I need a candidate with experience, or can I train someone?
How much time do I have to train someone?
Am I very dominant or can I tolerate another leader on the team?
How much staff learning curve can I tolerate and still hit the goals that my manager has given to me.
How do I make sure that the new hire’s personality will mesh with me and the rest of the team and be comfortable working for our company?
Hiring a new employee also calls for a very clear job description. You need to set minimum standards of achievement.
Good teamwork and learning attitude can overcome many deficits, but a lack of skills is hard to overcome. You also need to consider the balance of the team. My position is that you need turtles and rabbits. Rabbits to push the success of the team and turtles to make sure that policies are being followed and key information is not being lost or dropped as the rabbits’ rush forward.
Compensation:
Compensation needs to be tied to departmental success. Clearly younger staff (if you have a sales effort in your team) may not have the experience, the knowledge of the marketplace or the personal connections that can help you grow today, and AI cannot replace business relationships that are built over time. But younger staff are less expensive and maybe that’s all that you can afford to hire. So deep screening is a must.
On the other hand, on the sales and marketing side, experienced hires are looking for a commission structure that rewards them for their connections. Many new potential hires may just shopping for the highest compensation and benefits.
Your business model needs to be structured for success:
You also need to have a culture that drives your team’s success. Employees want to believe in the company and that its products are innovative and helpful to the clients.
So how can you use AI?
Automate resume recruiting and screening
Expand candidate sourcing
Standardize interviewing
Video Interview platforms like HireVue can analyze candidate responses and even facial gestures as part of an assessment.
Reduce hiring bias with anonymization
Build and maintain a dynamic talent pipeline
Use Chatbots and messaging tools to automate Scheduling and feedback
Optimize Hiring Metrics
Implement AI driven skills testing
Consider platforms like Vervoe, Codesignal, Hirevue and Peoplbox for customized skills testing.
This may help you increase the speed and quality of your hiring process. But it takes time to set up all of these systems. It will take focus to put them into place and their implementation might be limited to companies larger than 100 employees that have an HR Manager or HR staff. On the other hand smaller companies can work with recruiters and job recruiting software that might already have these tools in place.
Conclusion - Stickiness
It’s your job to create a compensation and business structure that incentivizes the desire for employees to come to work every day and help the company grow. More important is the stickiness of your staff. The average younger employee stays for about three years before they start looking for a new job with higher pay and alternate responsibilities. For every day over three years that an employee works for you, you increase your client’s contentment and satisfaction with your services, and you can increase your revenue by not paying for retraining. Clients don’t appreciate constant employee turnover. In most cases they prefer a human response, even if it’s only a chat, over communicating with a bot. Part of the initial employee screening and onboarding is to make sure they fit into your company culture, and AI might be able to help you screen better to ensure a better employee fit.
Clifford A. Hockley, CPM, CCIM, MBA
Cliff is a Certified Property Manager® (CPM) and a Certified Commercial Investment Member (CCIM). Cliff joined Bluestone and Hockley Real Estate Services 1986 and successfully grew and then merged with Criteria Properties in 2021 to establish Bluestone Real Estate Services.
Cliff is the managing member of a real estate consulting practice. He has successfully coached real estate investors and CEOs located throughout the United States since 2015. He has acted as a sounding board to help untangle knotty issues that need an experienced outside opinion. He guides leaders who find it is “lonely at the top” and need an experienced hand to help set a strategic direction, sort out operational problems and want to talk through challenging business decisions. Cliff Hockley Consulting, LLC. designed to help business owners and managers grow their business and improve their bottom line.
Cliff holds an MBA from Willamette University and a BS in Political Science from Claremont McKenna College. He is a frequent contributor to industry newsletters and served as adjunct professor at Portland State University, where he taught real estate related topics.
Cliff is the author of two books 21 Fables and Successful Real Estate Investing; Invest Wisely Avoid Costly Mistakes and Make Money, books that helps investors navigate the rough shoals of real estate ownership. He can be reached at 503-267-1909, Cliffhockley@outlook.com.
