If you’re having challenges attracting, recruiting, and hiring great employees, then join the club! There is a massive labor shortage in parts of North America right now due to a myriad of factors, which means you need to invest in your recruitment and hiring practices like never before. You need to be extra intentional when it comes to your recruitment practices and hiring. And you need to embrace what the research shows – if you get your recruitment and hiring right, it will have an enormous impact on your employee retention rates.
“Shaping your culture is more than half done when you hire the right team.” Jessica Herrin, Founder Stella & Dot
Here is a checklist of some ideas that will help you attract, recruit, and keep employees who are a match for your culture, based on my book, Hire, Inspire and Fuel Their Fire: How to Recruit, Onboard, and Train New Employees to Live Your Culture Out Loud.
Bring your workplace culture to life on your website and help new hires understand your culture before they even apply
1. Create a top-10 list of the top-10 reasons employees should consider you. Intermix humorous reasons with more serious, culture-related reasons.
2. Create a fast paced day-in-the-life-of-you video.
3. Feature team photos and fun bios of your current employees.
4. Create fun job descriptions that are conversational, meaningful, and full of humor. (There are great examples in Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire.)
5. Include testimonial videos or quotes from current employees.
6. Create innovative, attention-grabbing recruitment videos that bring your culture to life in fun ways. 
7. Add humor to your recruitment ads. (There are great examples featured in my book Hire, Inspire and Fuel Their Fire.)
8. Be blunt about what you are NOT looking for. You need to actively screen out and even discourage people that you know won’t be a fit for you!
Recruit partners to help you find candidates and use a wide net to find people
9. Trumpet your culture on social media platforms.
10. Enlist the help of your vendors, partners, and suppliers when recruiting.
11. Leverage all your employees as ambassadors and consider incentives for employees who find great employees.
12. Enlist your customers in your search for new employees.
13. Go back to employees you may passed on in earlier interviews – they may be ready now!
14. Consider more mature employees – there is a huge percentage of retired employees that want to return to the workforce. Don’t allow ageism to get in the way of some potentially fabulous, experienced employees.
15. Reach out to employees that resigned – many companies have had great success with his strategy, especially if they have committed to improving their workplace culture.
Hire for attitude, hire for culture growth
16. If you only hire for a culture match, you run the risk of hiring clones who will not help you grow or challenge the status quo. Hire with culture growth in mind – who will help you move your culture in the direction you want it to grow?
17. Hold multiple interviews to assess potential candidates’ attitudes and culture fit. Many companies have an initial screening/interviewing process where they determine if the candidate has the technical 
skills/training/certification required, then they use a series of follow-up interviews focused strictly on the candidate’s personality and to assess their fit for your values.
18. Hire first and foremost for attitude. You can train for almost everything else. Mark Murphy’s book, Hiring for Attitude, has some excellent advice on this front.
19. Spend as much time speaking about your culture, values, and expectations as you do listening to the candidate.You need to make sure it’s a match for both parties.
20. Inject some humor into the interview process. Many organizations ask quirky questions (e.g. “A penguin walks into the room right now and it’s wearing a sombrero. Why is the penguin here and what does it say?”) to gauge a candidate’s attitude and ability to laugh at themselves.
21. Set candidates up for success. As I write in Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire, a Finnish company allows candidates to choose who hires them and where the interview takes place as well as sending them the interview questions beforehand! They do this so they can truly get a feel for the person and hire the right people and not just people who “interview well.”
22. Consider using a rotating team for interviews that includes team members of the potential candidate.
23. Include interview questions that relate to your core values.
24. Include interview questions around the importance of culture and teamwork.
25. Check in with any other employees the candidates have contact with (shuttle drivers, receptionists, etc.) to assess how friendly they were before the interview.
Start teaching new hires your cultural norms before day one
26. Send new hires a handwritten welcome/congratulatory note signed by all their team members.
27. Get as much of the administrative paperwork out of the way before they start on day one.
28. Consider a survey to assess their needs and preferences for various aspects related to your workplace.
29. Send a welcome gift not just to the new hire, but to their family as well.
30. Send a fun “survival guide” that includes fun office toys, a humorous book, a map of the best pizza joints in your neighborhood etc.
31. Send a reading list of recommended books that embody your culture, or send along an actual book or two.
32. Ask the new employee to create a short video introducing themselves to their soon-to-be teammates.
33. Have their team create a fun welcome video introducing themselves to the new hires.
34. Have new hires complete a fun questionnaire that will help introduce themselves to the rest of their team.
35. Send new hires a package that introduces their future teammates in a fun, personal way.
36. Send them a link to a special “new hires” section of your website that includes fun videos and all the information they’ll need to feel comfortable on day one.
37. Mail them a copy of your fun and amazing culture guide book.
38. If you don’t have a culture guide book yet, get on it!
39. Consider inviting new candidates to a social event before day one as a “soft introduction.” It could just be a coffee break or Friday luncheon pizza party.
You had me at ‘hello’: Starting off on the right foot on day one
40. Have a team member pick them up on their first day.
41. Send a deluxe rental or even a limo to pick them up on day one.
42. Assign a special parking space for them for the first week.
43. Create a welcome banner welcoming all new recruits.
44. Have a welcome note waiting for them on their desk.
45. Schedule a breakfast or lunch with their manager or a senior leader sometime in the first week.
46. Have a special gift waiting for them on their desk.
47. Assign a “tour guide” to give the a fun guided tour to everyplace and everyone they need to connect with.
48. Give them a one page “cheat sheet” survival guide that summarizes all the important stuff they need at hand, including “hotline” phone numbers of people they can call for assistant with questions.
Immersing new employees in your culture
49. Create that culture guide! You really do need a fun, conversational culture guide that clearly articulates your values, cultural norms, and expectations.
50. Hold a culture boot camp that immerses them in your culture.
51. Create a fun scavenger hunt that lists people, places, and objects they need to find within the first month on the job.
52. Assign a mentor or “culture buddy.”
53. Hold entry interviews to discuss both your expectations and their expectations and to reinforce your cultural norms.
54. Arrange a special “meet the managers”‘ meeting where they have the opportunity to meet all your senior managers and ask questions.
55. Create a fun welcome ritual that you hold within the first month.
There are more ideas and great examples in my book, Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire, but this list is a fabulous starting point.
Remember, hiring is an investment that pays off! You cannot afford to NOT get your hiring right, because the costs of employee turnover and the costs associated with not hiring the right people are enormous!
If I can be of service with your recruitment and on-boarding practices in any way, please reach out!
Michael Kerr. 2022. Michael Kerr is a Canadian Hall of Fame business speaker, executive coach, and the author of 8 books including, Hire, Inspire, and Fuel Their Fire, The Jerk-Free Workplace, and The Humor Advantage.
Michael travels the world researching, writing, and speaking about inspiring workplace cultures that drive outrageous results.