The Power of Hiring Fast for Cannabis Companies and Why Hiring Slowly Could Cost You
Whether you’re a CEO, hiring manager, or business owner, your hiring decisions can greatly impact the success of your organization. This is especially true when it comes to making quick and informed decisions about who to add to your team.
The cannabis industry is growing at a lightning-quick pace, and it’s often difficult to keep up with the demands of the ever-changing landscape. Because of this, the success of cannabis organizations rests heavily on their recruitment strategy and process.
How confident are you in your decision to hire the right person for the job? Do you take an extensive yet efficient approach when interviewing potential hires? Do you trust your gut and act quickly? Or do you get stuck in the time-wasting-cycle of non-stop comparison? In this article, we’ll explore why the speed of hiring matters in today’s fast-paced cannabis industry—and what could happen if you don’t act quickly enough.
The Cost of a Long Recruitment Process
No matter how well you know your industry or how important a job may be or how “cool” or “well-known” your company may be, if you’re taking too long to recruit new talent then you’re at serious risk of losing out on valuable employees. Worse, you could be creating a bad reputation for your company, letting your competition snatch up great talent or eroding your company from within.
Most jobs shouldn’t require more than 3 rounds of interviews and those interview rounds shouldn’t take more than 2 weeks. When interviews begin to be scheduled 2-3 weeks apart from each other, or when interview feedback is not provided in a timely manner, candidates understandably begin to lose faith and interest in the job opportunity and even worse, the company. They may also begin to wonder if the job is even “real” or question why it’s open in the first place. Even if they do make it to the offer stage, they have now collected several reasons to become hesitant to accept a position.
If a company is spending months recruiting for one position, chances are high that the desired candidate will end up taking an opportunity with a company that has a more efficient hiring process. We live in an exceedingly fast and competitive world and how you do one thing is how you do everything. Candidates often look at a company's recruitment and hiring process as a microcosm and reflection of a company's internal health and ability to grow, compete and ultimately make a decision. Decision paralysis is the death of many companies.
Typically, when a role needs to be filled, especially when it is to replace someone who has recently left an organization, other team members are asked to step in (or step up) for a period of time. As the recruitment process lengthens to fill the vacant position, the person tasked with stepping in and covering is at a higher risk of burning out. For example, if the VP of Sales is gone, the VP of Marketing is suddenly tasked with the VP of Sales job, or the Director of Sales has to step in and is pulled away from their original assignments to deal with an extra workload. Sure, this may be doable for a bit of time but eventually, someone or something is going to break.
A company's reputation is also heavily intertwined with its recruitment process. Hiring processes, practices, and dealings are becoming more and more public as platforms like Twitter and LinkedIn continue to become soapboxes for the burned, bruised, and disgruntled. The cannabis industry, although growing, is still a relatively tight-knit industry based on relationships and as such, reputation can change quickly as word travels fast. We can all think of companies that have risked their public reputation by how they treat their people.
Why Speed and Decisiveness Matters in the Cannabis Industry
In the world of cannabis, quick action is key—this is especially true when it comes to hiring. The best candidates in the market simply do not stay on the job hunt or available for very long, so if you’re a cannabis company that’s not confident and decisive when making hiring decisions, you could end up missing out on some truly great future team members.
When it comes to hiring for your cannabis business, trust your gut and use your available resources (HR, external recruiters, etc.) to come to an informed decision as quickly as possible. Don’t waste valuable time and resources interviewing countless candidates or second-guessing yourself; research each prospect and act fast. Have a slice of humble pie and remind yourself that there probably aren’t thousands of candidates chomping at the bits to work for a startup in an obscure location and in a difficult industry, as is the case with many cannabis companies.
Things to keep in mind:
The cannabis industry is rapidly evolving, and top-tier talent moves fast. By being quicker with your hiring process, you’re more likely to get the best candidate before they are swooped up by another company.
Speeding up the time it takes to hire a new employee allows you to focus on other aspects of your business (sales, marketing or product development).
Quickly finding and onboarding talent decreases the impact of high turnover rates on employee morale; this way, everyone onboard feels an important sense of job security.
Hiring quickly also allows you to maintain consistency with workflow and manage costs. By having experienced people in a role who understand the company's needs, you can optimize operations faster than if you were starting from square one each time a role opened up.
When you hire efficiently you:
Increase employee retention, because people enjoy believing that you really wanted to hire them, instead of being extremely nitpicky.
Save money by not eating up too much time from various stakeholders and managers.
Ensure your competitors don’t get the chance to hire the talent you have identified.
Increase capacity for revenue generating activities.
Maintain your reputation in the market as a place that does good business.
Ensure that your current team does not fall victim to burn out.