So much of what we’ve built at GBD reflects needs that we had when we were running recruiting in-house, and that’s especially true with our Advisory services. At a prior company, there was a point when we had a big name consulting firm come in and do an assessment of recruiting. I was really excited. Not only for the results, but also for the opportunity to use an external party to get ahead on some of the foundational work that we desperately needed to get done, but didn’t have the time to do.
The day came when they presented back their findings, and I nodded my head furiously through most of it. YES! We needed to update our eng interview process. YES! We needed to update our recruiting tech stack and integrate scheduling. YES! We needed to shift from a department-aligned to a centralized sourcing model. And then they left - the deliverable was just the outline. And the work that we already knew needed to be done remained undone…and the budget I could have used to get it done had just been used to have them package what we already knew into a beautiful deck.
Out of the memory of that frustrating experience (and a few others), as well as some more positive experiences getting outside help, our Advisory services were born. We’ve found that teams have the biggest need for one of these two approaches:
- Co-create with the existing team. Some teams we work with know exactly what needs to get done. They might even know how to do it. What is lacking is the extra pair of hands to execute, and often a clear roadmap on how to actually get where they’re trying to go.
- Assess, build the roadmap, and identify the highest leverage work. Other clients aren’t sure what they should be doing next. They may be feeling the impact of a less-than-ideal process, but they need us to look under the hood and tell them what will make the biggest impact for their company. Once the issues and priorities are clear, we often stay on to deliver results in partnership with the internal team.
When it comes to executing, we like to focus on how the work can get done most successfully. That ranges from us sharing best practices and playing a project management role, guiding the internal team to execute in the most effective way possible, all the way to taking on the work ourselves with a high degree of independence and delivering finished products to the team. Along the way, stakeholder buy-in and change management are always top priorities, since we know that even the most beautiful new process will never see the light of day if our many stakeholders (hiring managers, the People team, leadership, recruiters, sourcers, coordinators) are not bought in. Whether it’s building a new offer pitch script or moving to a competency-based hiring process, we love seeing the impact this work has on our clients’ recruiting goals.
In many companies, hiring has slowed a bit from what was projected at the beginning of the year, which makes this the perfect moment to do some of this foundational work and ensure your team is set up well for 2023 to do the most efficient, effective hiring possible. As we’ve mentioned in a previous post, pointing your team towards foundational work during a slowdown helps demonstrate value and can give the team a continued sense of momentum.
