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Rey Ramirez of Thrive HR Consulting: 5 Ways To Attract & Retain Top Talent
Volunteer — providing employees time to volunteer at a foodbank or another nonprofit is a great way to give back to the community and help others.
As part of our HR Strategy Series, I’m talking with top experts in the field to teach prospects what hiring managers are actually looking for, while also supporting business leaders in their hiring and retention strategies. Today I had the pleasure of talking with Rey Ramirez.
Rey Ramirez is co-Founder of Thrive HR Consulting, an HR advisory firm that seeks to augment HR needs for organizations, providing fractional HR services for leading, managing, or providing guidance in all facets of HR.
Can you share the most interesting or funny story that happened to you since you started this career and what lesson you learned from that?
About 12 months after we started the company in early 2021, we were notified that our website was hijacked by a hacker group and we were held up for ransom. We had to pay $3000 to get back our own website.
A great and expensive learning on website security and registration. As a start-up, we became victims of a scam. We have learned from that and are much better protected now!
Are you working on any exciting new projects at your company? How is this helping people?
We are working on a refresh of an organization’s compensation program. We are evaluating the market for base pay and bonus targets. We are also establishing job structures and career ladders to help employees understand how to progress in their careers.
These projects help organizations ensure they are paying at market and help employees visualize career growth with the employer. This is the 4th project of this type over the last 18 months and not only do they help organizations retain talent, but it also helps attract talent with a documented pay & career system.
Due to the rapid market changes, we recommend that organizations look at their pay programs every 6 months — a new requirement in this new market!
Wonderful. Now let’s jump into the main focus of our series. Hiring can be very time-consuming and difficult. Can you share 5 techniques that you use to identify the talent that would be best suited for the job you want to fill?
1. Always look inside your organization first.
I think that 2023 will be the year to focus on internal talent. If you have an opening, find talent inside your organization, if the person is not quite ready for the bigger role, take the risk and move them into the role with some additional coaching. If you want to be an organization where employees stay for a career, invest in developing your talent and move them into promotional or developmental opportunities.
In prior leadership roles, I have always made sure my team had development plans and I was an advocate for each team member moving to bigger and better roles. This not only drove retention of great talent, but it made it easier to find new talent when they knew I would focus on their career development!
2. Ask for referrals from your network.
If I had an opening on my team, I would go to my network and ask for referrals. I know that I would only get great people from my network and have filled many roles using this technique.
At Cisco Systems, I had a critical HR Manager role open in Mexico City that I needed to fill. I reached out to my contacts in Latin America and a Brazilian leader gave me the name of a great candidate who was moving to Mexico due to a family requirement. We interviewed him and offered the role. He was a great addition to our team and has grown into a Top Latin American HR Leader.
3. Talk to professional organizations about your opportunities.
Another approach to finding great talent is to tap into local and national organizations. As an example, here in Denver, we have a group “HR Colorado” that will post open roles and the information goes to 50K practitioners. The cost is $100 for a repeat posting.
I have been able to find talent for our consulting business and for other clients who needed to fill open HR jobs. There are similar organizations in all professional fields.
4. Dedicate time to the interviewing of candidates.
Plan, ask the right questions, and look for enthusiasm and excitement about the work — it’s all about attitude. I would recommend that all hiring managers spend time on the recruitment process.
Work with your recruiters to source candidates from the right organizations. Make the recruiters recruit, not just show you resumes of people that have applied for the role online. Develop a list of questions for all first-round interviews so you can evaluate candidates on similar questions — apples to apples.
Look for candidates who love the work, and who see this as a calling or passion. If you have two candidates with similar backgrounds, hire the one that is excited about coming to work. If they are disinterested in the interviews, they will be the same as employees on your team! Put in the time to hire the right candidate for your team!
5. 100-Day Onboarding Plan.
You have spent months finding the right candidate and investing in the onboarding of your new employee. Establish goals for the first 30–60–90 days.
Do check-ins every 30 days to see how they are doing. Set up meetings with the correct leaders and partners your new employee will be working with. Make sure they have a desk, laptop, email account, tool accesses, and anything else they need on Day 1, not Day 14. Just because you had to figure it out on your own when you started, does not mean that your employee has to go through the same pain and suffering!
If we don’t do a good job of onboarding and welcoming a new employee into the organization, they will be looking for a new gig within 30 days. This is the average amount of time most new hires stay off of Job Boards after being hired!
With so much noise and competition out there, what are your top 3 ways to attract and engage the best talent in an industry when they haven’t already reached out to you?
What are the 3 most effective strategies you use to retain employees?
In your experience, is it important for HR to keep up with the latest trends? If so, please share an example of what this might look like.
Work From Home/Remote Working: Employees have proven they can be productive working from home and now employers want these same employees to return to the office. This will only lead to conflict and the loss of great employees. Employees will vote based on taking their skills and going to a new employer that provides the flexibility required by talent. Great talent is still needed by all employers in our markets.
What are some creative ways to increase the value provided to employees without breaking the bank?
Focus employee development on experience and exposure. We don’t need to spend large amounts of dollars for training programs that get 20% retention. Provide development by leading a project, working with someone new, and learning from other employees in the organization.
If an employee has an interest in Sales or Marketing — have them shadow a salesperson for a day or expose them to a marketing leader and see what they do and how often. These types of plans do not cost a lot of money and can be great learning opportunities for employees.
If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Volunteer. Providing employees time to volunteer at a food bank or another nonprofit is a great way to give back to the community and help others. These types of programs should be year-round, not only during the holidays.
What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote” and how has it been relevant to you in your life?
“It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that matters.”
Enjoy your life, laugh, cry, love & enjoy family and friends. That is what matters the most, focus on that!
Thank you for sharing so many valuable insights with us today!