The One Role Every Leader Must Hire For In A Growing Company

I’ve wasted hundreds of hours on job listing sites.

The first time I posted a job ad on Monster, about fifteen years ago, I received hundreds of applications. Most of them were junk.

Hiring the right people is one of the most important priorities for a leader, but hiring takes time.

Most of the early tasks to recruit the right team members shouldn’t be done by the company leader.

But in a small business, you don’t have the luxury of having an HR department that handles damn near every aspect of hiring, which means…

The sooner you hire a recruiter, the better.

A recruiter is responsible for finding you high-quality candidates based on the detailed role information you’ve given them.

They take most of the early interview work off you, so you only speak to highly vetted candidates, which is an excellent use of your time.

Hiring a recruiter doesn’t mean you need to spend thousands of dollars with an agency. I’ve never found an agency worth their fee.

Instead, I’ve hired an hourly contractor who works for a recruiting agency as her full-time job.

She spends roughly five hours a week recruiting for my company. She has been instrumental in helping us build our teams.

If you have an assistant, you can use them instead, but a recruiter typically has more knowledge, resources, and recruiting tools beneficial for hiring.

A couple of caveats:

What a recruiter should do for you.

A recruiter should post the job ad, contact their network, cold call, screen applicants, schedule phone interviews, and even conduct the initial interviews.

They help you get from I need to fill this position to bringing in quality candidates.

What a recruiter shouldn’t do for you.

The recruiter isn’t going to write the job documents. They’re not going to make hiring decisions.

Their job is to help you with the messy middle of recruiting.

Creating job documents, the candidate profile, and conducting later stage interviews are all on you.