- Contact local junior colleges and high schools. Ask the school’s guidance counselors or placement coordinators for the opportunity to address a group of their students.
- Contact the business department of a local college or university. Request to be involved with the college or university’s entrepreneurial or small business class. This will introduce you to potential future talented employees and meet students that may be interested in short term part time work.
- Contact the unemployment office in all local towns. Leave a job description of the full and part time positions that are available. Check back regularly.
- Start a local referral program with your employees. Offer an incentive for any employee that finds another great employee. Incentives may include cash, time off, mentoring role, etc. Be sure to ask employees to help in the search for full and part time help for the business.
- Contact a local short-term (temporary) placement service – negotiate a special rate if you use the service to find all your planned seasonal help.
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Prepare a list of unusual talent-based questions when interviewing. Many people are extremely proficient in answering the standard interview questions. This does not give you a fair review of the applicant’s ability to think on their feet. Good unusual questions include: Who has had a profound effect on your life and why? Identify the most difficult work situation you have been in and what did you do to create a favorable outcome. Identify a time when you did not do something well, what happened and why? If you won the lottery, how would you spend the award? If I met your previous boss at a cocktail party and spoke to him for just two minutes, what would he say about you?
- Complete the profile that comes with the book Strengthfinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. This will give you an indication of each employee’s top 5 natural abilities (talents) and a full review of the most prevalent 34 talents.
- Invite your new employees to your weekly or monthly team meeting. Give them an immediate responsibility at the meeting so that they feel part of the team. Be sure to encourage their participation in the meeting agenda.
- Contact all local colleges, high schools and trade schools to get details to attend any job fair or employment event that each might have. Be sure to bring a large number of business cards and some item to attract attention to the company (hats, hot sauce, mugs, etc). Require any student to talk to you about opportunities (part time or full time) before they get the “freebie.”
- Instruct one new topic or concept at every branch or staff meeting.
- Have all employees participate in annual plan of creating both short term (1 year) and long term (3 years) career objectives. This allows managers to help employees understand where employees want to go in their careers, what talents will be necessary to help them be great and what skills will be necessary to be successful. Once written, host quarterly reviews on progress to help employees stay on track and drive their careers. Contact Humanetrics, LLC for their Development Process worksheets.
- When allocating topics to your staff, give them a topic in which they are not the expert. This requires greater learning for them to become the expert so that they can teach others.
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Provide local newspapers, trade journals, etc in your employee break area so that all employees have continual access to important, meaningful information and encourage their use.
- Actively publish and support a tuition reimbursement program. This helps all employees continue learning – this is critical in this intellectual/information age economy.
- Provide incentives for your employees to grow and learn. Tangible rewards will help your employees see the importance and need of focusing on learning and growing.
- Include your customers in your knowledge sharing – invite a customer to a presentation by an employee if it is a subject that the customer could benefit from.
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Host customer education days when time allows – focus on product knowledge, business or communication, motivation or leadership skills.
- Challenge employees to develop their personal potential. Raise your expectations of them. Encourage them to develop personal and professional objectives to advance their knowledge in many areas.
Involve your employees in goal setting and creating business objectives. Be sure to challenge employee performance and knowledge by tying their growth to branch objectives.
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Try cross training or job sharing to see what other skills your employees may have or may want to have. This creates improved customer service because all employees have experience with all business functions and it encourages greater employee and business performance since all aspects of the business are constantly subject to review and improvement.
