Attracting the Best Candidates

Podcast Series: Finish Strong® – Fulcrum ConsultingWorks Inc.

As manufacturers are searching high and low for employees, it is crucial that we not make bad hiring decisions out of a sense of desperation. A warm body is not what you need. Today we’ll dig into how to attract candidates who can help you create a future that you can’t even predict well right now.

Technology is the future of manufacturing, yet we need other than technologists.

We need to identify those who can help us learn, change, and grow as an organization.

Machines make better machines than people ever will. And conversely, people make better people than machines ever will. Hiring people for repetitive and low-thinking tasks is an extremely short-term strategy. No one will be happy with that. Trying to automate judgement, creativity, passion, and fascination with learning will fail.

Start by determining if you really need a person or if you should pursue task automation instead. Many roles are repetitive and require only rules-based decision-making. Physical automation can handle much of the repetitive rules-based decision-making work in production arenas.

A good candidate can be wasted if we’re not careful. We don’t need bad ones.

If we want people who can and will think, we need to provide them work opportunities where thinking is integral to the job.

Most employees can do much more than is asked of them. At virtually every one of the clients I’ve worked with over 30 years, I’ve discovered employees with great potential who management considered high-maintenance complainers, and others management liked who only did what they were told.

Does leadership style attract, develop, and retain the kind of employees you need? Are the job roles offered consistent with the type of employees you need?

Perhaps before you look for candidates it is worth looking at the actual work.

Eliminate or automate lousy work. Your company will be a much stronger magnet for people who are creative, passionate, and fascinated with learning. Those are the ones fundamental to your company’s success.

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