The perfect choice for hiring

Workforce recruitment and retention is a key to sustainable growth. Our first Workforce Connect Series event focused on just this topic - and shared tools and resources to help business owners succeed.

Tim Dyck is our facilitator for the entire Workforce Connect Series. Since getting an opportunity to work for Disney in the early-2000’s where he saw first-hand how effective Recruitment, People, and HR Strategies can drive customer and business success, Tim has been relentless in helping businesses use them to meaningfully connect with workforces to empower front-line results. Since working at Disney, Tim has gone on to help businesses in multiple industries including transportation and hospitality leverage recruitment and retention success as their number 1 driver of bottom line success.

In 2020, his success led him to starting Best Culture Solutions, where he and his team help local business owners recruit, retain, and unlock the best talent available by implementing People and HR Strategies that follow a simple formula he learned at Disney: hire them right, train them right, and treat them right.

We spoke with Tim about insights and feedback from the Workforce Connect Session.

FMWB: What were the key takeaways from last week's session?

Tim: There were a few big takeaways from both our wonderful keynote speaker, Sheila Musgrove, and our panel of Elaine Read and Ainsworth Wisdom.

The first is that we often use perfectionism in our hiring processes to try to find the perfect candidate, when in reality no one is perfect and these expectations are incredibly unrealistic. Perfectionism often leads employers to miss the boat on the best fit available and they end up having to settle for a worse hire. This also leads us to miss certain groups and demographics who may bring different experience to the table.

The second takeaway was that we often don’t properly screen resumes by over focussing on empty experience and not digging deeper into their specific skillset or ability to adapt to a different industry or role. This mistake alone is causing employers to inaccurately disqualify candidates, thus shrinking their talent pool. Properly identifying candidates by digging deeper into their resume is the #1 tool they can leverage to find a hidden pool of talent.

The last big takeaway is that employers need to ask better interview questions that actually get to the root of a candidate’s abilities and potential to contribute to their team. These questions should clarify extra details like quantity and scope of someone’s experiences and accomplishments.

FMWB: What do you think surprised some of the business owners in the room?

Tim: The biggest surprise we heard was around about was the need to ask deeper interview questions. A lot of the people who attended knew from their own hit and miss experiences with interviews that traditional questions don’t reveal the best candidate, but weren’t sure what the alternative is.

FMWB: What have been some of the themes you've seen keep coming up locally that may be different than businesses find elsewhere?

Tim: I don’t think this will surprise anyone, but the amount of available talent in Fort McMurray is a little different than elsewhere. Every major centre right now is reporting not being able to find the right talent, but as a company who recruits across North America, we especially see this here. This is why it’s so important to not limit yourself by screening resumes the wrong way as a business leader.

FMWB: What are some of the risks in recruitment that business owners may not be aware of?

Tim: The biggest risk lies in the missing awareness that hiring is easily the most important thing that every business owner does, and you have to get it as right as possible. You can have the best product, policies, and processes in the world, but none of it will mean anything if you don’t have the right people motivated and committed to bring them to life.

FMWB: Are there resources you'd recommend to help businesses with recruitment if they missed last week's session?

Tim: Absolutely. My firm, Best Culture Solutions, is a full-cycle local recruitment firm that can help local businesses with recruitment. We can be reached at www.bestculturesolutions.ca and my personal email is tim@bestculturesolutions.ca.

Our keynote speaker, Sheila Musgrove, is also highly successful in the recruitment field and I highly recommend her. She can be found at tagrecruitmentgroup.com and she is absolutely fantastic to work with.

Careers Next Generation, who participated in our panel, can also help employers connect with the young workforce and they can be found at careersnextgen.ca.