One of the first questions we ask when meeting with a new client is, “What are your hiring needs?” On the surface, it should have a simple answer. The person on the other end of the phone line or across the desk usually responds by rattling off the positions they need to fill or the problems they’re experiencing with their staffing.
However, your hiring needs go beyond your current open positions or what’s currently causing staffing headaches. They’re a set of priorities that should guide your recruiting strategy and hiring decisions, and they encompass organizational goals, growth plans, company culture, and more.
Rather than only focusing on the immediate problem, we try to look at the big picture to help our clients accurately and thoroughly define their needs and, ultimately, ensure they are met. I’ll share the steps to take so you can do the same.
Why Is Defining Your Hiring Needs Important?
Defining your hiring needs gives HR staff, hiring managers, and third-party recruiters critical guidance on what to look for when hiring. Perhaps it’s more compelling to share a story about what can happen when you don’t define your hiring needs.
One client complained that several of their recent hires weren’t working out. They said their recent hires were a “bad fit” and weren’t achieving what they were supposed to be achieving. However, the client couldn’t give concrete details when we asked for more information about those unmet expectations. Even they couldn’t say exactly what the new hires were missing or what needs were not being met. Before we could help fix this company’s hiring mistakes, we first had to address a much more pressing issue: clearly defining the role and your needs. You have to walk before you can run.
Defining your hiring needs serves several purposes that are essential to a company’s success.
It ensures operational needs are met
At the most basic level, you need people in place to keep the company running. Defining your hiring needs ensures that every essential role is accounted for and filled so that you can maintain operations uninterrupted.
It promotes business continuity
In a similar vein, having a firm grasp on your hiring needs ensures that you’re not hit with a surprise that puts the company’s future at risk. If you have to delay shipments or disappoint clients due to inadequate staffing, the business’s very existence could be in jeopardy.
This also extends to protecting the continuity of your current workforce. Effective hiring prevents existing staff from being stretched too thin, which can contribute to burnout, absenteeism, low performance, and turnover.
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It facilitates growth
Defining your hiring needs isn’t just about what you require today; it’s also about planning for tomorrow. Thinking long-term positions you for growth and ensures you’re prepared for the advancements that lie ahead in your industry and the broader market.
It identifies what to look for when hiring
Part of defining your hiring needs is specifying precise qualifications for your open positions, like the skills, credentials, experience, and mindset the right candidate will have. This lets recruiters and hiring managers know exactly what to look for rather than committing the cardinal hiring sin of “going with their gut.”
Clear specifications create a streamlined recruitment process that functions like an efficient machine. This was especially important for one of our clients who continuously recruits for a high volume of similar positions. Defining exactly what to look for enabled their recruiters to easily replicate their efforts and not have to start from square one every time they needed to hire. This clarity allowed them to achieve a faster time to hire while reducing their recruiting expenses.
Related: Best Practices for Writing Clear and Compelling Job Postings
It produces clearly defined roles
Clear hiring specifications lead to clearly defined job descriptions, which benefit employers and employees alike. When each team member understands the expectations of their role, there are no questions about how they should be spending their time or the benchmarks they should be working toward. Employees are happier and have higher morale, while employers enjoy better performance.
It allows you to build a strong culture
Performance aside, hiring with intention is imperative if you want to build a strong company culture. Investing in a strong culture offers so many benefits: it empowers employees, it helps teams collaborate with better results, it boosts retention, and on and on (for more on building a culture of empowerment, check out this episode of the Hire Calling podcast on how to implement a culture of empowerment). Defining your hiring needs forces you to spell out the types of people you want to add to your team so that each new hire is a cohesive part of the whole.
Steps to Accurately Define Your Hiring Needs
1. Assign ownership to the process
I see a lot of clients fail to do this and it causes problems before they even post their first job listing. When “everyone” is responsible for defining an organization’s hiring needs, that means no one is actually taking ownership of the task and things fall through the cracks.
Whether it’s your HR team, department heads, or a staffing agency partner like my team at 4 Corner Resources, it should be clear who is leading the way in defining and managing your hiring priorities. This is a common problem on smaller teams or in departments where hiring isn’t something that happens frequently. There have been many times when we have had to take a step back and work with hiring managers to decide who needs to be involved in the interview process or who needs to have the final vote on candidates. The best advice I can give here is to ensure that all of this is worked out before you have someone in play.
2. Define organizational priorities
Your organizational goals give direction to all of your hiring efforts. For example, should you recruit a CMO or launch a public relations team? Should you hire two entry-level candidates you can train, or a mid-career professional who will bring prior expertise? To answer those questions, you need to know the company’s priorities.
This goes back to the first story I told about the client who struggled to articulate where its new hires were falling short; without a clear eye on your goals, it’s hard to tell if your hiring efforts are paying off. Before we start sourcing candidates, we always discuss a client’s high-level priorities so we can make every decision based on what’s aligned with them.
3. Assess the current situation
How are things going in terms of team capacity? Is one department constantly stretched thin? Is another under-utilized? Maybe there’s a person whose role lacks clarity and whose talents can be better leveraged, or a position that used to be critical to operations that has become less so with changing technology. In terms of individual employees, who’s due for a promotion? Is anyone showing signs they’re likely to resign?
Analyzing all of these data points gives you context about where hiring needs exist or are likely to exist in the near future. Your hiring analytics can be an incredibly useful source of insight here, revealing workforce trends and resource gaps that can be addressed through recruitment.
4. Identify skill gaps
The lack of necessary skills is a huge problem across industries right now. Employers simply can’t find enough people with the skills needed to keep pace with the latest advancements, with a whopping 87% of companies saying they either have a skills gap right now or will within the next five years. Skills gaps should factor heavily into your recruitment planning to minimize disruptions to your business.
Conduct a skills gap analysis to understand your workforce’s current skills and identify where shortfalls exist. This will reveal areas where you either need to hire to fill a need or develop talent internally to bring their skills up to speed.
5. Anticipate future needs
Next, consider the direction your business and workforce are headed. Is your company growing? In what areas? Is the technology in your industry changing? How will you implement that technology? As you answer these questions, look into the future in 12 to 24 months. This ensures critical future positions stay on your radar so you can fold them into your hiring at the appropriate time.
AI can be a great asset in forecasting future hiring needs. It allows you to model different scenarios and see how changes to certain factors, like the economy or the labor market, could, in turn, impact your recruiting needs. We talk in-depth about the opportunities and challenges of leveraging AI in your recruiting here.
6. Set hiring priorities
Based on all the steps you’ve completed so far, you should be able to create a list of roles you need to hire for. Next, assign a priority level for each of them. Some clients do this on a scale of 1 to 100, with 1 meaning hiring can happen anytime and 100 meaning you need to find someone ASAP.
You can also use a priority matrix that considers urgency and time frame, like this:
| Job title | Urgency | Time frame |
| Marketing associate | Medium | Immediate |
| VP of technology | High | 3 months |
| Regional sales manager | Medium | 6 months |
This is a good way to help recruiters visualize where they should focus their attention right now and what they should be keeping an eye out for in the near future.
Related: How to Identify and Set Hiring Priorities
7. Create hiring criteria
Lastly, define your hiring needs on the position level. This includes everything in the job listing for an individual role: hard and soft skills, credentials, experience, education, personality traits, responsibilities, and performance expectations. Consider also the type of employment required. Is a full-time employee necessary, or could the need be filled by a part-time worker or freelancer? How might temporary employees serve your needs?
Be mindful of how each role ties back to the organizational priorities and skill needs you identified in earlier steps. Creating detailed hiring criteria promotes alignment between your company and the candidates it attracts.
Defining your hiring needs is an essential part of an effective recruitment strategy, helping you avoid mishires and achieve long-term vitality. My team can assist with developing a staffing plan that aligns with your priorities and helps you achieve your business goals. Let’s work together to improve your hiring process and build a foundation for sustainable growth; get started by contacting 4 Corner Resources today.
