It’s STILL all about retention

This is the richest hiring market I can remember – it’s exciting. We had the need for an additional online course developer, so I reluctantly placed my standard Craig’s list ad. Hiring new people into this level of a job isn’t fun for me, typically. I know that our needs are unique and that few people even know what we do, let alone already know how to do it.

I was thrilled, frankly, with the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of applicants. It ended up being a fun process: I did a very quick sort based on a 5 second read of resumes; all the ones that went into the “basically qualified” pile got an email from me asking them to provide a work sample based on a couple of paragraphs I sent to them. We used a free website for them to load their projects, and they sent me the link to their work sample. We ended up with 30 applicants willing to spend at least 2 hours developing a work sample, loading it onto a sharing site and sending me their link. I limited the size of the work sample so each one only took a few minutes to view, and, from there, we were able to narrow it down to 8 people who seemed to really “get it.”

This week, our new hire started. He not only comes to us with a master’s degree in educational design but also with years of online course development expertise. Most important for me was his intense interest in educating for careers in health. All together, this is an employee who would have been out of my reach at any other time in history (at least since computers have been around)!

You, like me, may be excited about the caliber of new employees you’re gaining. But probably, like me, you’re hearing the voice in your head say, “Yeah, but how are you going to keep them?”

Even though today we can hire them – tomorrow, can we keep them?

One of our clients called us to talk about adding more employees to his online training program. He was excited about the success of the program and started telling us about what he’s doing to hire better – and keep them.

He’s being careful to craft help-wanted ads that aim to a higher applicant, including a requirement for basic computer skills. He also notes that online training is a work benefit. He makes sure all new hires can complete at least a few online courses in the appropriate amount of time (as a part of their probationary period); if not, they’re out. If they pass this test, he assigns them 4-6 hours of training online right away, and then gives them access to all the courses we offer to his group. As he says, he's training his new people right, from the beginning and he's not investing one-on-one instructor time with them - he couldn't afford it.

Of course, he’s also doing other things to make his community a compelling place to work, but his results are exciting. Here’s what Rod says, “Since we’ve started this program we have not lost one new employee – not one!”

I’ve asked Rod to share more of his experience in retention and what he’s doing to make it work; watch for a guest article in the near future.

There are some great opportunities in the middle of this particular crisis. Clearly, we need to do a better job, as an industry, with the retention side of the equation if we’re going to be able to truly benefit from these opportunities.