As we near the busy period, an EOFY hiring checklist can help you set your goals and determine if you’re adequately resourced for the year ahead.
Is EOFY a period of planning for your business? As we near the busy period, an EOFY hiring checklist can help you set your goals and determine if you’re adequately resourced for the year ahead.
If done well, it will also help you win support from key stakeholders in the business, fast-tracking hiring decisions down the line.
A new financial year is about a clean start. To prevent any expenses from seeping into the new financial year, make payments relating to the previous financial year before the end of June. If this is not possible, ensure the payment is accrued.
This is something that an accountant typically takes care of for the business, but it should also be completed by each department head: marketing, sales, IT, etc.
While deep in the data of the financial year past, look at what worked and what didn’t. Plot it along a graph, like the Growth Share Matrix, to identify business priorities and their profitability. It will become clear where you may be losing money, and what were effective strategies for your business.
Once you’ve identified key strategies for your business, set your tangible goals for the year ahead. This roadmap should include every detail: skill requirements to meet goals, timing and predicted impact of the goal being completed.
Budgets rarely change year-to-year, and if they do, you often must present a strong case for a big fluctuation. Plan for the year ahead by setting benchmarks. Divide your budget into business needs and recruitment wants (including hiring costs) and this will give you a good gauge of what you’re working with.
Be sure you also review the effectiveness of past recruitment campaigns, making note of spend and retention, to ensure you are targeting role types that you have had previous proven success recruiting. If this is a new role, consider getting help from a recruiter so you do not exhaust your budget without making a hire. We tackle this in a previous blog, ‘Evaluate your hiring success: Metrics to measure‘.
This is one of the most important steps in our EOFY hiring checklist. Once you have determined your key goals for the year, conduct a time audit of your current team. What current activities consume their days and weeks? How will you meet your roadmap deadlines with your current staff?
Are you missing any critical skills to reach a key objective over the coming year? Are you hoping to implement new software? Weigh up the pros and cons of upskilling your staff from scratch. Or, instead, hire someone already skilled in the space who can then train your team.
Are their day-to-day responsibilities that take up the time of your team, but do not contribute to business goals? (Think: admin tasks for someone highly technically skilled.)
If you determine there are tasks that can be outsourced, or assigned to a new hire, you’re effectively freeing up your existing staff to work towards the business goals outlined in step 3.
As part of any business case, you need support from your higher-ups so you can work towards your goals together. If you’ve determined there are resource gaps or opportunities in your business, now is also the time to put feelers out into the market so that when you’re ready, you will have a pool of potential candidates to pick from.
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