Strategic Recruiting: How to Gain Competitive Advantage in the Recruiting Marketplace

With the aging population, economic trends, and the growth of medical technology, there is a huge future potential for the growth of long-term home health care services. We see this growth in the areas of private pay home care, and government funded supportive services. The only major obstacle to significant growth of these businesses is the ability to attract and retain enough capable people.

In the future, the home care organizations who can attract and retain the best people will be able to gain and sustain competitive advantage in their marketplace. This is what we mean by Strategic Recruiting.

If you go to the dictionary and look up the word "strategy," you will find a definition that refers to . . . generalship, the art of war, and gaining the better of an adversary. Strategic Recruiting is, therefore, the process of concentrating your energy, actions and resources on those factors that will enable you to recruit and retain the very best people in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of your customers. The agencies who can do that will have significant competitive advantage in their marketplace.

Creating Strategic Recruiting Advantage

Gaining Strategic Recruiting Advantage is much like the marketing efforts you use to gain and sustain competitive advantage in your marketplace. The process involves defining the unique factors that set your organization apart from its competitors. If you are to have significant Strategic Recruiting Advantage, you must differentiate your agency from all of the other companies in your market area who are recruiting from the same population. This includes not only other home care organizations, but other healthcare providers, services businesses and fast food franchises.

In our work with dozens of home care organizations around the country, we have identified five sources of Strategic Recruiting Advantage. The key is for you to select one of these five sources as your Strategic Recruiting Focus. This is the primary focus you will use to make your organization different from your competitors in the eyes of your prospective employees. In order to implement your Strategic Focus, we suggest that you select two others as your supporting strategies. The result is what we call the Strategic Focus Pyramid.

By selecting and clearly defining your Strategic Focus and two supporting recruiting strategies, you will be able to create the perception that your agency is a different place to work. one that is highly desirable for the type of prospective employee you are seeking to hire.

Five Sources of Strategic Recruiting Advantage

The five sources from which you can select your Strategic Recruiting Focus are:

Meaningful Work. This strategy emphasizes the mission of your organization, and helps prospective employees understand how important the work is that they will be doing. Carrying this strategy forward, it means that you put significant emphasis on the meaning of work and the purpose for which your organization exists. You build meaning and purpose into your communication with employees.

Appreciation and Recognition. The underlying principle of this strategy is that people want to feel appreciated for the work they do and the contribution they make to the organization. This strategy emphasizes the use of formal and informal recognition to show employees how much they are appreciated. Companies that use this strategy spend considerable time and money creating awards, contests and prizes to show people that their performance is recognized and valued. It's amazing what people will do for recognition and a show of appreciation.

Career Opportunity. For most people, paraprofessional positions in home care are viewed as a dead-end. There's nowhere to go from there for minimally skilled workers. However, the career opportunity strategy is based on the idea of creating on-going learning opportunities so that people can in fact move upward in their careers. Career ladders enable paraprofessionals to move up from homemaker or companion to home care aide or certified nursing assistant. Some agencies have a tuition refund policy that enables people to work as home care aides while going to school to become an RN, LPN, therapist or therapy assistant. By making it clear that you expect them to remain with your organization after they graduate, you set boundaries that make this a real win-win strategy.

Relationships. This strategy is base on the idea that. All things being equal, people would rather do business with a friend. All things being unequal, people would still rather do business with a friend. The same thing is true in recruiting. Many people prefer to work in the same agency as their friends. Or, they prefer to work in an agency where they have some previous knowledge or connection with the agency. The Relationships strategy is based on using techniques to have your current staff refer their friends and relatives who bring similar skills and work ethic. This strategy focuses on building strong, mutually beneficial relationships in the communities where your target employees live.

Pay and Benefits. Using the strategy, you make a conscious decision to establish a compensation and benefits package that is significantly higher than your competitors in the marketplace. In order to make this work, it means that you will probably need to charge a higher price for your services in order to sustain your profit margins.

To make the Strategic Focus Pyramid work for you, study these five strategies carefully. Consider your marketplace and your competition. Then select one that best suits your organization and its culture as your Strategic Focus. Select two that you think are most important as your supporting strategies. Develop an action plan that defines what you will do to implement each strategy and gain Strategic Recruiting Advantage in your marketplace.

1999 Stephen C. Tweed, CSP

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