When times are tough in business, it can be tempting to bunker down and reduce costs, but sometimes you still need to grow your team in an economic downturn. That means it's more important than ever to find the right talent and not just “fill the seat.” 

Here’s your guide to hiring in hard times!

 Key Takeaways

• Figure out what roles are essential and what roles are "nice to have." 
• Keep salaries as competitive as possible.
• Look for both high EQ and resourcefulness in job candidates.
• Don’t overlook the hidden talent you already have on your staff.
• Focus on creating a strong company culture to attract your ideal employees. 

Reevaluate Your True Talent Needs

To make smart hiring decisions in uncertain times, you need to seek out clarity. Figure out what roles are essential and which ones are “nice to have.” Instead of overloading a team with quick hires in hopes of achieving fast changes, take time to hire purposefully for the positions you absolutely need. 

Audit current team capabilities before adding to your headcount. 

• What skills can help your employees advance within the company? 
• How developed is your talent pipeline? 
• Who shows potential on your team? Who wants to grow?

Ask questions like these and look internally to potentially reduce onboarding costs and talent acquisition costs.

Focus on Quality Over Quantity

Now that you know exactly what the role demands, it’s time to find the right person. While hiring, target those high-impact roles that directly drive revenue, efficiency, and customer retention for the most value. 

You need to really understand the role before trying to fill it. Create clear, competency-based job descriptions and a job benchmark to measure candidates against.

“One of the most common mistakes I see is organizations foregoing critical due diligence in favor of ‘filling the seat,’” said Mark Debinski, the Founder and President of Bluewater Advisory. “In a challenging economy, they’re trying to hire for value at a lower salary range. What I’ve seen is that if you’re not offering a market-relevant salary, you’re not getting a quality hire and you’re at great risk of turnover.” 

Strengthen Your Hiring Criteria

It’s your organization’s responsibility to create the kind of hiring criteria that lands top talent and creates a culture of retention. You can do this by emphasizing adaptability, problem-solving, and resilience as core skills necessary in new hires.

Look for candidates with a track record of thriving in ambiguity; you can find this out by asking pointed questions. Float potential problem-solving scenarios that match their future work, asking for specific examples of their past experience. 

Prioritize the Right Skills 

Prioritize skills that support long-term growth, not just immediate tasks. 

“Look for a combination of high emotional intelligence and resourcefulness,” advised Debinski. “In tough times, idealistic things like engineers using work time toward the firm’s bike rack design contest ought to be put on the back burner.  Remember, that needs to be communicated very carefully, in a manner we refer to as candor with respect. It’s all about going back to basics and finding opportunities you might have missed before. That requires both EQ and a sharp mindset.”

Shift your perspective from hiring the role; you’re hiring the person, not just the role. Retention comes from strong foundations; that’s how to create a team that lasts. Roles can shift internally or adapt as needed—people are what matter.

Lean Into Internal Pipeline First

By identifying high-potential internal talent who can upskill or shift roles, you can potentially realign your org. chart and fill a necessary role without the expenses of recruiting and onboarding. 

“Don’t overlook the hidden talent you already have on your staff,” said Debinski. “I’ve often seen more introverted workers with amazing talent get overlooked. We were working with an architecture firm that was decades old. After running Talent Insights, we found a young interior designer who was a Steady communicator with a high Instinctive driver. She was very talented, but lacked the experience the owners wanted. We paired her with a ‘salt and pepper’ senior partner, an expert with vast institutional knowledge. Not only did they make a great team in front of clients, but that mentorship brought her to the next level of her career and helped her get promoted.”

If you are able to promote from within, you can fill more leadership and executive roles and hire for the promoted employee’s previous role. It’s more cost-friendly to hire an entry-level employee than a manager, especially when your internal team can retain institutional knowledge and promote training and cross-functional development. 

Strengthen Your Employer Brand, Even in Hard Times

One of the most important things you can do at low cost during economically challenging times is strengthen your brand. Communicate stability, purpose, and future vision with a clear purpose and a developed culture. 

“Making sure the company is clear on its values needs to be a priority,” said Debinski. “That means it’s up to leaders to hold one another accountable. Leaders need to model behaviors that exemplify their values from the top down.” When your team understands your organizational values and passion, it becomes easier to find new employees who will contribute to the cultural development of the company. In these cases, that gut feeling during interviews tends to carry more weight.

When hiring, Debinski urges you to “pay attention to unspoken connections and reconsider technical criteria if a potential team member is a strong cultural fit.” Depending on the role, synergy could be more important for long-term retention.

Make Compensation Creative

There are ways to make a role attractive to top talent without spending the majority of your budget. Adopting flexible work arrangements alone can make the difference you need: Gallup shared that six in 10 employees with remote-capable positions are extremely likely to look for a new role if flexibility is taken away. That means that you can scoop up top talent with the right benefits. Forbes shared research that reinforces this idea; they found that workers are willing to earn 25% less for a role that’s hybrid or remote instead of being fully in-person, even if the job responsibilities are the same. 

This eagerness for flexibility isn’t an excuse to underpay new hirers; it’s an opportunity to make a role attractive to the right people, even in hard hiring times. 

Another way to make compensation creative is to provide employee development opportunities that make work more meaningful for your teams. When you tap into an individual’s passions and reward what’s important to them, you get a higher level of engagement and retention. Keeping that in mind during the hiring process helps you find the right person for the right roles—and keep them in it. 

“It’s very hard for workers to engage when their roles conflict with their driving forces, those things that motivate them individually and compel them to action,” explained Debinski. “Team members with driver conflicts find their work isolating and difficult. When passions align, that’s where you find synergy while building a warm talent pipeline and the kind of advancement your team needs.” 

Want to harness powerful insights for your team? We have an assessment for that.