Without an inkling of a doubt, the most life-altering change is happening to us as we speak, thanks to the virus. While one of your primary concerns might be losing your company as many have before you, people’s primary objective today is staying alive. In this regard, you would do well to learn from the much-celebrated teachings of the great war general Sun-Tzu. Indeed, this rings a bell most especially in your hiring.
There could be no better way for you to expand your workforce amidst all the chaos than to be flexible and adjust. As Sun-Tzu states that to win we must be “like water” in our approach. As water shapes itself to the very nature of the ground unto which it flows, we must “modify our tactics” in accordance with the opponent we are facing. This can only mean that etching your hiring policies in stone could very well be your doom.
Take note. While business is never about obliterating the competition, it’s all about ensuring your organization thrives in spite of the challenges. Taking a page from Sun-Tzu’s teachings can be your formula for attracting the best talents in town. Let us show you how.
Sun-Tzu and the Changing Landscape
Though Sun-Tzu (544 BC to 496 BC) was born hundreds of years before us, his teachings about military conquest and strategies have endured through time. His military genius has been coded in his world-renowned book The Art of War.
Unequaled in its strategic brilliance, the book has been studied by the best and the brightest military men and businessmen alike throughout these years both in the Eastern and Western spheres of the planet. So much, many pundits attribute a huge chunk of Napoleon Bonaparte’s success to the emperor’s study of the Sun-Tzu.
What remains now is for you to adopt these teachings to your own hiring process. To do that, take into account the realities of the times. It is paramount in ensuring you get win top talent over.
A recent study of 2,200 tech workers both from America and Great Britain should enlighten us. One of the major finds is that remote work has become the preference of choice for many of these workers. Those who preferred to have the flexibility of remote work numbered up to 57%, a percentage much higher than before the pandemic started.
On the other end of the spectrum, 68% of employers reveal that they are actively hiring. This points out the simple fact that if you want to expand your workforce you’re going to have to deal with this competition.
Additionally Zoom remains supreme as the interview of choice for many of those studied both in American and in the U.K. What should interest you, even more, is a whopping majority (over 70%) choose to accept a job offer even when they’ve never been to the office.
Applying Flexibility in Hiring
You should take your cue from all these data. Offering flexibility right now in light of all the dangers posed by the virus is not an option. It’s a must.
For starters, enhance your remote work hiring process. If you’ve been struggling about zeroing in on top talent online, getting a timely boost from accomplished employment background check companies should be spot-on. Not only will these companies help you separate the grain from the chaff of talents, but they will also give you a glorious advantage to ensure you land what you came for: a top-drawer professional to boost your ranks.
Additionally, you should attract talent by branding yourself as a flexible company to work with. You can do this by giving them work schedules that are tailored to your worker’s needs. That could mean flexibility in their reporting to work and allowing them to work remotely.
Moreover, there are other ways you can incorporate flexibility in these times. A compressed workweek is one and the opportunity to go on sabbatical is another.
While working remotely is a good start, it is not the end-all-be-all solution. You must go further. That’s the reason why you need to take a closer look and do your due diligence. At a time when everyone recruiting is recruiting also for remote work, you need to sharpen your claws and overhaul your processes.
To date, there are two factors that stand out like a sore thumb. Being able to decide when to start and end their work shifts and choosing to work remotely are two of the flexible policies the workers desire more than anything else at work today.
To this end, meeting the demands of flexibility means you need to change your approach too. A good way to do this is not to focus so much on the time logged at work but to focus instead on the quality of the output. Giving them goals and an apt deadline is therefore key.
You’ll find that becoming flexible is not just a skin-deep make-over. It’s a process change. The sooner you can adjust, the better. As Sun-Tzu detailed, knowing yourself is half the battle. And the results should cap it all.
