Six Service Business Recruiting Tips to Build an Empire
You need A-players to grow an awesome service business.
These are the tips you need to know about recruiting in a service business.
Let’s be honest. It’s tough to find the right people for your service business. Your recruiting efforts bring plenty of people to your doorstep.
But you might struggle to separate the A-players from the people who won’t help you to grow the business.
And you want to find and keep those A-players.
With the right people, you can enjoy massive profit and growth. Think about it like this. I have one awesome electrician who does over $100,000 per month. That’s $1.2 million added to the business because that guy’s doing what he does.
If you’ve got people that have the same drive to succeed as you do, you’ll easily achieve 20% or 30% growth every year.
That’s the effect that A-players have on your business. Get a bunch of them on board and you’re flying.
On the flipside, recruiting the wrong people means you’re not doing those levels of business. Plus, you’re probably going to have quick employee turnover. People come and go, which means you get no stability.
And that eats into your bottom line.
You’ve got two targets. First, you need to recruit the right people to your service business. Then, you’ve got to make sure you train them rather than letting them train you.
These six service business recruiting tips will show you how.
Where Do You Start?
Here’s the secret that a lot of service business owners don’t know about recruiting.
It’s actually a form of service business marketing. You’re looking to attract A-players. And to do that, you need to make your company look like an awesome place to work.
An A-player isn’t somebody who’s desperate for a job. They usually have their pick of companies to work for. With the right service business recruiting marketing, you go to the top of their list.
Word of mouth can help you here. If your people love working for you, they’ll tell other talented people about you.
But you might need a little expert help.
BirdDogHR is an awesome resource when you’re recruiting in a service business.
They’re a cloud-based software solution provider. And what they do is help people like you find awesome recruits.
They give you a platform for service business recruiting marketing. They help you with the on-boarding and your training. Most importantly, they help you keep your people engaged with what you’re doing so they never want to leave.
They give you a great place to start your marketing. Now let’s dive into some general service business recruiting tips.
Tip #1 – Make Your Marketing Accessible
People carry out 3 billion job searches every day in this country from smartphones alone.
If you’re looking to recruit somebody, you’ve got to make your marketing materials accessible on every device possible. Someone looking to apply for a job using a smartphone isn’t going to wade through a massive online form. They’re not going to download something to send it back over to you.
They just want to fill out some quick details and get the application in.
Accessibility is so important with your service business recruiting marketing. You have to consider every possible device that someone might use to access your materials.
That means digging deeper than desktop vs smartphone.
You’ve got to ensure you’re delivering a consistent experience across browsers. An ad that looks great on Microsoft Edge may not look so hot on Google Chrome. They have different protocols in place that you’ve got to consider.
Test your materials. Make sure they display well and that they’re as suitable for mobile devices as they are desktops.
Tip #2 – Create a Hotlist
Maybe you don’t have any open positions in your service business.
That’s no excuse to stop your recruiting marketing. Remember that what you have today isn’t what you’ll have tomorrow. You’ve put all of these systems in place to grow your business. And that means you’re going to need to bring an A-player on board again sooner or later.
That’s where your hotlist is going to come into play.
A hotlist is a list of A-players that you’ve come across while recruiting. You just haven’t had a need to bring them on board just yet.
Maintain that list and add to it whenever you meet someone awesome. Keep details about what the person does and the salary they’d expect.
When a new opportunity comes up in your business, jump to that list. Check to see if you’ve already got a contact who might have an interest in what you’re offering. That can save you a ton of time. Plus, you’re hiring from a list of people that you already know are awesome.
Tip #3 – Build Your Avatar
We talk about this all of the time because it’s so important.
Recruiting is a form of service business marketing. And that means you need an avatar for your ideal recruit as well as your ideal customer.
What is the employee that you want?
How old are they? What are their hobbies?
Write down all of the things that you look for on a cultural level as well as a skill level. Remember that recruiting somebody for their skills alone isn’t going to help you if they’re not a good fit for your business.
Your avatar is your blueprint. Refer to it whenever you’re recruiting to make sure the people that make it to your business are the people that you want.
And if you need help building it, just look at the A-players you’ve already got. Think about what makes them so valuable to the business and use that as the basis of your service business recruiting marketing.
Tip #4 – Bridge the Generation Gap
This is one of the most important service business recruiting tips.
Different generations want different things. CEO Warrior founder Mike Agugliaro puts it like this:
“I used to say, ‘Would it be okay if I show you how to make enough money to buy a Mercedes while working here?”
“<But> I gotta change it because the current generation isn’t looking for a Mercedes. So now I gotta say, ‘can I show you how to buy the best iPhone for next to nothing while working here?”
That’s just one example of bridging the generational gap. What the younger people want out of their careers may not align with what your older employees want.
And that’s okay.
Your job is to figure out what they want so that you can offer it to the A-players. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that everybody wants the same thing.
Tip #5 – Use a Copywriter for Your Ads
You’re not a writer. You’re a service business owner.
That means you might struggle when you’re trying to write ad copy that appeals to A-players.
Again, that’s okay. It’s not your forte and it doesn’t need to be.
Hire a copywriter to take care of the ads and marketing materials for you. But don’t make the mistake of just hiring somebody and telling them to get to work. Make sure you provide them with the materials they need to create ad copy that reflects your business.
Remember that avatar that you created? Your copywriter needs to know about that so they know who they’re writing for. They can change the language and emotional content of the ads based on the target audience.
In fact, emotion is mission critical in your service business recruiting marketing. You need copy that’s going to make people feel something. It’s got to inspire them to fall in love with the idea of working for you before they even meet you.
Tip #6 – Identify the Magnet
What’s your magnet?
What is it about your service business that’s going to attract people and make them want to work for you?
If you can’t answer that, you’re going to have trouble with your service business recruiting marketing. You may end up only attracting people who want a paycheck rather than people who want to grow.
There are plenty of things that might be your magnet. Maybe it’s the growth opportunities that you offer within the business. Perhaps it’s your future vision for what the business will become.
The key is that it’s got to be something other than money. Your magnet’s going to draw the right people to you, which makes recruiting so much easier.
Recruit A-Players Today
You’ll find it so much easier to find A-players with these service business recruiting tips.
The key thing to remember is that recruiting is a form of marketing. Just throwing out a job ad without putting any thought into it isn’t going to work. In fact, that’s probably why you’re struggling to find great people.
You need to know who you want to hire and what you have to offer to the industry’s best people.
CEO Warrior can help you to do it. Join us and you get access to awesome service business coaches and a ton of useful materials.
We have one last question for you.