Too often, companies rely purely on their human resources department for recruiting and hiring. Sometimes, the best recruiting takes place not by an HR professional, but by a good employee or brand ambassador – and not in an office, but in an Arby’s.
[related]During a recent Commercial Integrator webcast, How to Avoid These Common Recruiting and Hiring Mistakes, Pam Grater, human resources director for Diversified, talked about how a human resources professional can only take recruiting so far.
Recruiting goes far beyond human resources, she said, and really everybody within an integration firm should act as pro AV brand ambassadors – “being able to articulate what it is about [the company] that they like [and] what are the advantages to working there.”
When employees/brand ambassadors attend training sessions or industry conferences, for instance, they are effectively recruiting by amplifying that their organization is a great place to work.
Related: Why Is It So Hard to Recruit and Hire Great Employees?
But being a brand ambassador goes well beyond attending work-related events.
Grater shared an example of how having great brand ambassadors can work in unconventional settings. “One of my favorite stories,” she began. “One of our managers recruited somebody who was working at a Subway or some sandwich shop because he saw attitude and aptitude.”
An HR professional, she pointed out, might not recognize specific characteristics that would help an employment prospect excel in a particular role quite the same way a team manager might.
HR professionals, she pointed out, are great at very important aspects of recruiting, including nitty-gritty tasks like background checks. It’s important to have pro AV brand ambassadors, however, to help growing companies cast a wide net by keeping an eye out for potentially great team members.
In the sandwich shop case, there is a happy ending. “That person is [now] a contributing technical person on the team,” Grater said.
Watch the video to hear Grater’s sandwich shop recruiting story. Download the entire webcast here.
