Hiring is one of the most important processes for any business. Successful hiring means businesses gain the skills and talent needed to tackle challenges and action innovative ideas. Hiring becomes even more important for fast growth businesses that are rapidly growing and changing. Executives and employees that thrive in such environments are the vital components that these businesses need, to maintain any type of growth.

Fast growth businesses aren’t just limited to tech start-ups in Silicon Valley. Any business in the world, from chemical industries, to legal firms, can experience rapid growth. Innovations, market opportunities and smart business operations can provide the platform for businesses to go through unprecedented transformation and growth. This can apply to both relatively young businesses and start-ups, as well as very established businesses that have been trading for decades.

But during these times of prosperity, businesses can often be vulnerable to “growing pains.” These growing pains can be detrimental to continued growth. Businesses often find themselves in a position where they don’t necessarily have the skills and resources in place to handle such growth. Under skilled teams and businesses with a lack of personnel will ultimately find themselves in difficulty and most likely fail to truly capitalise on the opportunities that allowed them to grow so quickly.

So, what can fast growth business do to ensure they can continue to grow and develop?

Finding Top Talent

The first step fast growth companies must look at, is their ability to find top talent in their market. The only way to confidently predict continued growth is by ensuring you have executives and employees who have the skills and ability to do well in such an environment.

Market mapping is a great way to take a step back and analyse the current employment infrastructure in the market. This can help identify areas or job roles that your business currently doesn’t have. If competitors and others in the market are building teams and departments around certain individuals or skillsets, it might be something that your business should understand.

Marketing mapping in executive search helps businesses ensure they know what type of talent they need, and where to find it. As businesses grow and develop, they are often in need of skills that they never previously needed. This means understanding how to bring these skills into that business becomes an ever increasingly important task.

Market mapping often identifies the importance of an international approach when it comes to hiring and recruitment. Understanding the landscape of talent across the globe often illustrates and highlights how certain regions foster specific skills and talent. As a result, it’s important your business takes advantage of such circumstances and doesn’t miss opportunities to get the best people to help provide support and hard-work during times of rapid change.

Here at Edward Drummond, we draw upon extensive talent pools in more than 20 key territories worldwide, leveraging trusted relationships with specialist partners, who bring an intimate understanding of local culture and industry contacts. This means we can confidently ensure when we help hire and recruit for key positions, the very best talent, regardless of where they are in the world, are considered and factored into any decision.

Finding top talent also relies on due diligence. By this, we simply mean doing everything you can to make sure any hiring decision is going to be right for the business. This helps minimise the risks of any hire. Rushed or ill-advised hiring can be a costly mistake, damaging to profitability and reputation. Equally, taking the time to investigate opportunities for integration, and working with the candidate to ensure a smooth and successful transition, can make the difference between a good hire and a great one. Early stage due diligence is a concept designed to help offer quick, streamlined and actionable insights for businesses that want a top line review on potential opportunities to align with quick business decisions.

Retaining Top Talent

As many businesses unfortunately find out the hard way, finding and hiring top talent is only half the battle. Retaining your best executives and employees is a vital aspect of building sustainable businesses. Employee retention helps provide some stability and predictability in environments that change quickly, as is the case for fast growth businesses.

Processes identified in finding the top talent, such as due diligence and market mapping will often help highlight what the market is currently offering top talent. This helps provide meaningful insights into how businesses can structure their benefits and salaries. This ensures your business can be competitive and provide packages that meet candidate expectations.

Employee retention is often also related to company culture and if an employee aligns themselves with the mission of the business. Having a high retention rate can be improved by only hiring people that show clear signs of sharing the same values and aspirations of the business. Again, this means adopting a hiring process that takes the time to understand what the business needs and what type of candidate is best suited to this. Rushed hires, particularly at executive or management level, can lead to a poor retention rate as employees simply aren’t a good fit with the business.

During times of rapid growth, it’s easy for businesses to get very focused on growth. This can sometimes come at the expense of focusing on employee development and career prospects. Every member of the team will want to have opportunities to grow and take pride in having short-term and long-term goals. This means businesses, regardless of growth rate, much ensure they are employee centric and take care of the people who are helping the business grow.

Top Talent and Edward Drummond

If your business is going through change, perhaps due to rapid growth or changes in the market, get in touch with our specialist consultants and executive search experts here at Edward Drummond. We pride ourselves on getting real, tangible results for our clients. Get in touch today and let us show you how we can support and add value to your hiring and recruitment.