When looking to recruit new staff, security companies, be it service providers, integrators, installers, equipment sellers or even security departments, often make a number of fundamental mistakes. Under no circumstances should you make what you are offering sound too easy. You want to attract the best possible employees. You want people who are effective at what they do and are not afraid to go ahead and do it. In other words, you want performers.
It does not matter if you are seeking a senior manager to run an entire division, or a junior technician – all of your employees should be effective, regardless of where they are in your organisation.
Think about the different levels of performance as a scale. At the bottom of the scale are the no-hopers who are totally ineffective. They never achieve anything and are simply deadweight in your organisation. At the upper end of the scale are the top performers. These are the ones who get the job done; regardless of the barriers. And they do it rapidly and easily.
However, we must consider why people from both ends of this scale are looking for a job. The poor performer is looking for a job because they have just been fired for non-performance, or because they are finding their current job too tough. They are often looking for something easier. Often what the poor performer is searching for is an easy job with lots of perks and high pay in a really comfortable environment where they do not have to work too hard.
Top performers, on the other hand, are usually looking for another job because their current role is not offering them enough challenges. What they are searching for is something with more meat in it. Perks, pay and conditions are usually not as important in terms of defining what they are after.
Really effective people thrive on being confronted with problems and barriers. If things are too easy, they will usually lose interest pretty fast. Think back to a time when you overcame a seemingly impossible hurdle in your career and assess how you eventually conquered that obstacle? It is likely that you were really fired up, enthusiastic and ready to take on the world. And in addition to these feelings, you were probably looking forward to another challenge that was equally as tough. That is how top performers respond to the challenges their jobs present to them.
When their job is no longer tossing serious challenges at them, and when it all becomes too easy, they start to look around for something that they deem to be more interesting. The motivations of you candidates can be quite diverse, and you need to take account of this difference when you position your company, and the job itself.
If you promote your company as being a nice place to work in a comfortable environment, you are going to get the attention of anyone who considers that a comfortable work environment is the most important attribute. If that is how they think, watch out. Do not tell them about your modern offices or the new workstations that incorporate the latest computer technology – your best candidates are not looking for that.
As far as the job is concerned, if you promote it as being one that is highly paid, has lots of perks and is very easy to perform, you will attract first and foremost the poor performer who is looking for easy money in a nice and comfortable working environment.
What you need to do is make both the job and the environment sound challenging. To convey this level of challenge, tell them that the job is a serious one that very few people can perform. Let them know how big it can become if they are good enough. Give them some idea of the difficulties involved with managing the potential expansion of the area they will control. Build on these concepts to make the challenges clear. You are challenging them to dare to apply.
If you do that, you will scare off the poor performers and save yourself the trouble of weeding them out through the interview process. You will also catch the attention of some of the best people in your industry who are currently looking for the ultimate challenge.
