0.5 Hiring Process in a net 2.0 Economy

I just resumed coaching a long-time client. We have been through the dot.com wars together. I coached him through multiple promotions and positions at start-up companies. He left for business school when the bubble burst and weathered out the recession obtaining a solid ivy league education.

When he called shortly after joining an old-dog non-tech company, I wondered what he was thinking in making that career move. It appeared to be to him a very cool opportunity to make change happen by moving the product's delivery into digital distribution.

Unfortunately, my client is going crazy with way more work than he can handle. He got a fast-track promotion and is doing his old job plus the new one until he can hire his replacement. That happened last December.  Seems like the company has had a 50 year policy of not using any kind of recruiters, neither internally nor externally.  It's up to each manager to source, identify, attract, screen, interview and hire their direct reports. 

The catch 22 is that my client is spending every spare minute trying to make the revenue forecast and has no time to hire and bring on board the team that could help him make the numbers. Does sound familiar?

We planning strategy on how to change a "it's always worked this way" mindset to "OK, let's pay the 20%, engage a recruiter and get good people on-board yesterday".

How much are we talking in serious money here? Not much really, it's about 20 to 40K. I could do a treatise on the internal cost of lost revenues, blown morale, burned out employees and lowered productivity because of an unwillingness to hire a recruiter. I am sure they are figuring that this is a slippery slope and can add up astronomically with multiple hires. But this is not a black/white yes/no choice for any organization.

Using a search person selectively for a specific hiring intervention makes for a good ROI. It is difficult to get a 0.5 company to become a 2.0 company when they can't get past outmoded rules and procedures.