By Stacy Pursell, CPC/CERS
The VET Recruiter®
While it’s true that there are a number of factors that are involved in the success of any company or organization, including within the Animal Health industry and Veterinary profession, there is one factor that stands out from the rest.
That factor is talent.
Personnel represents the biggest and most important investment that an organization makes, namely because that investment can provide a substantial return on multiple levels. The primary level is the one that is most evident. When you hire the right candidates for the right positions, those professionals can accomplish the following as new employees:
- Get up to speed more quickly
- Complete more work in a shorter amount of time, increasing personal productivity
- Collaborate with co-workers and colleagues more effectively, thus increasing team productivity and positioning themselves for a leadership role
More productivity, of course, leads to more profitability, which is one of the top goals of any organization. However, achieving greater levels of productivity is just one way to attain more profitability. Another way is to reduce the costs associated with hiring and personnel management, and hiring the right talent can help you to accomplish this goal, as well.
Increased profitability and decreased costs
Not only is it critical to hire a qualified candidate for your open position—hopefully the top candidate available in the marketplace—but it’s equally important to hire the right fit. This means the right fit in terms of the company culture and also the core values of the organization. There are three ways that focusing on this aspect of hiring helps your organization to reduce costs and increase profitability:
#1—Reduced risk of a bad hire
The only thing worse than not being able to hire the right candidates is hiring the wrong candidate. That’s because inevitably, you will have to part ways with your new employee and start all over again, which is quite costly. Not only do you want to hire someone with the right skills and experience for the position, but you also want to hire someone with the right mindset and attitude.
#2—Greater levels of camaraderie and enhanced employer brand
When you hire a candidate who is a good cultural fit within your organization, they will assimilate themselves more quickly into that culture. And if they fit well within that culture, they will contribute to the positive energy in the workplace, which will make it a better atmosphere for everyone and help your organization to build a better employer brand.
#3—Increased rate of employee retention (less turnover)
If you hire a candidate who is a good cultural fit, then that candidate will be less likely to leave once they become an employee. And if they bring with them more positive energy and contribute to a better atmosphere for everyone, then they will theoretically make it more difficult for other employees to want to leave, as well. As you can see, these kinds of hires have a compounding effect upon the health and success of an organization.
Another component of hiring success is the ability to hire the best candidates available based upon multiple criteria and to do it in the least amount of time possible. Time is definitely of the essence when it comes to hiring top talent, and that is especially the case in the Animal Health industry and Veterinary profession. There are two ways that focusing on this aspect of hiring can help your organization to reduce costs and increase profitability:
#1—Less time that the position is left open
The longer that a position is left open, the longer that someone is not carrying out the duties and responsibilities associated with that position. Yes, you could have other employees “chip in” to help with those duties, but there is a big downside to this stopgap solution, namely that the duties are not being completed to the high level required and the other employees’ responsibilities are probably suffering in the process.
#2—Less time and energy expended during the hiring process
Hiring is an intensive process that requires a considerable amount of effort in the pursuit of the right candidates. The drawback for employers is that whoever is involved in the hiring process is taking time away from their other duties and responsibilities, and those duties theoretically contribute to the productivity and bottom line of the organization. If you hire the right candidates in an expedient fashion, then not only have you hired the right candidates, but everyone involved with the process can also resume their normal responsibilities more quickly.
The major steps toward hiring success
As you can see, the #1 factor in the long-term success of your organization is talent. However, hiring the top talent available in the marketplace is just the first step. How you go about hiring that talent is equally important, if not more so. After all, what’s the point of hiring someone with the requisite skills and experience, only to have them turn out to be the wrong hire for cultural fit reasons? Or they leave the organization after only six months or 12 months on the job?
To recap, here are the major steps involved in achieving consistently high levels of hiring success:
- Identifying the top candidates in the marketplace for your open position, not just those professionals who are actively looking for a new job
- Hiring not only for skills and experience, but also for the potential cultural fit within the organization
- Filling your open positions with the best candidates available (based upon all criteria) in the shortest amount of time possible
Following this blueprint can help the long-term success of your organization through improving production and profitability by hiring the right candidates from a technical standpoint and also through reducing costs and improving profitability by hiring the right candidates from a cultural standpoint.
While this might seem like a daunting task, this is where an Animal Health executive recruiter or Veterinary recruiter can help. Specifically, this is where The VET Recruiter can help. For more than 23 years, we’ve been helping Animal Health and Veterinary employers identify, engage, recruit, and hire the best candidates for their organizations!
You can click here to find out more about our services for employers. Click here to learn more about our recruiting process.
We help support careers in one of two ways: 1. By helping Animal Health and Veterinary professionals to find the right opportunity when the time is right, and 2. By helping to recruit top talent for the critical needs of Animal Health and Veterinary organizations. If this is something that you would like to explore further, please send an email to stacy@thevetrecruiter.com.