Feeling stuck and looking for that special someone to propel your business forward? If so, it’s time to laterally recruit.
Lateral recruitment is the perfect way to add fresh perspective and remedy current skill gaps.
Here are 16 clear benefits of lateral recruitment — including ways to enhance your network so you have direct access when it comes to sourcing the top talent who have what it takes to get your company ahead.
Organizational Impact
One of the most apparent benefits of lateral hiring is that you have more control, directly influencing the organizational impact of the person you hire.
Unlike traditional recruitment, with lateral talent acquisition, you can fine-tune your hiring strategy to target the best candidates with the specific qualities you’re looking for.
Here are some of the key ways a lateral hiring process can help you scale:
1. Skills Benefit the Company
Lateral hires bring specialized skills and experience that immediately benefit the organization, and they often come into their new role with fresh ideas.
Whatever you want to achieve, find a new hire with that skill set. If you’re methodical in your approach and think about what you need, it is much easier to find a lateral recruit.
2. Require Less Training Time
Because lateral hires have experience in the industry already, it reduces onboarding time. That means it’s much easier for them to hit the ground running.
They’re qualified: they’re already familiar with the current role and best practices, and require way less supervision and training time than hires with little-to-no experience in the position.
3. Add Fresh Perspective to Current Challenges
Lateral recruits have different perspectives and insights you can mine to boost competitive strategies. Their experience and ideas are invaluable; you can integrate some of their suggestions into current practices.
Be sure to get their feedback. If they worked a similar role in the past, they can provide invaluable information and tips on what worked and what didn’t.
Diversity-Led Innovation
Another advantage of lateral recruits is the ability to increase diversity.
It’s a well-established fact that diverse teams outperform homogeneous teams. Striving to increase diversity (seeking people who have different backgrounds, problem-solving styles, etc.) while also bringing in a new employee with previous experience just makes sense.
Look for hires who add to company culture while simultaneously being an expert at what they do.
4. Diversity of Thought
Lateral recruits bring a new perspective to problem-solving and other challenges that hinder progress.
By looking at the issues and challenges that persist within your company and thinking about who you need and what skills would remedy that, you can mine the talent pool and find someone who checks all the boxes.
5. New Industry Insights
Skills accumulated throughout a lateral recruit’s career can often be directly applied to your organization.
Most people have experience working for other companies that require a variety of skill sets, and there’s always the chance that some of their past experiences may be applicable to your organization.
6. Culture Add
Most people have heard the term “culture fit.” Companies used to look at potential candidates and select the ones who were most like them, thinking they’d fit in better.
Most companies saw this practice as a good thing.
However (unsurprisingly!) that recruitment strategy quickly led to teams of people who were all basically the same, and all thought the same way. As a result, you guessed it! Innovation suffered.
While there’s no problem with hiring a pleasant person who works well with others and generally “fits in,” it’s important to hire for culture add, not culture fit.
Hiring managers need to focus on what qualities are lacking. Perhaps there’s some way that the company isn’t living up to the values it espouses. Or, the creativity or experience is unbalanced — and you’re looking to bring in a fresh perspective to round it out.
What qualities, skills, creativity style, etc., are currently missing from your organization?
Once you’ve identified the gap in the existing culture, your lateral recruitment process can target individuals who possess the missing qualities or cultural aspects.
Whatever they are, be specific: in order to hire for culture add and include that criteria in your job description, you first need to have a clear idea of what’s missing.
A key way to achieve this is to ensure you’re reaching the people you hope to hire. Therefore, it’s vital to partner with a diverse array of organizations.
For example, Obsidi® is all about supporting diverse tech professionals.
We have almost 100,000 members and have partnered with some of the biggest companies in technology today. Tech companies enjoy partnering with us because they can post their job openings and engage with our members through Tech Talks.
Our members are primarily at the mid-stage level of their careers, so partnering with us is an excellent way to add a new job board to your search, find your lateral recruit, and diversify.
7. Increased Network Opportunities
Lateral recruits are professionals. When you bring them into your organization, you have access to a whole new network of professional connections—theirs.
Increased Growth Opportunities
Perhaps you’ve been thinking about increasing your product range or services.
One of the best things about a lateral recruit is that you can find someone with previous experience with what you’re trying to achieve.
8. Target New Market
For those looking to reach a new market, finding a lateral recruit with experience in the market you’re hoping to tap into is an excellent way to segue into it successfully.
9. Remedy Existing Skill Gaps
If there’s a key competency missing within your organization, lateral hiring is your solution. Be clear about the specific skills or knowledge you’re looking to add, and find a lateral recruit who can bring that to your organization.
10. Rapid Scaling
Hiring candidates with direct experience is an excellent way to expedite a growth initiative. There’s way less launch time since the recruits already know what they’re doing, and can help speed up workflows and get the rest of the team going.
Employee Development
Lateral recruits are a real asset to the rest of the team. You can use their knowledge and experience to your advantage in many ways.
11. Lateral Recruits Can Train and Mentor
Lateral recruits can train current team members, offering valuable guidance and insight.
Having them share what they know cuts down on the cost of having the employees trained elsewhere. They can also mentor and work with other team leads or managers to introduce new protocols and ideas to current practices.
12. Lateral Recruits Motivate
It’s easy to fall into a routine. Adding a lateral recruit to the team can motivate the rest of the employees, or at least shake things up a bit.
Perhaps this occurs due to them setting new performance standards, or engaging in other motivational tactics.
Lateral hires often provide alternative solutions and fresh new ways to motivate, inspire, and get things done.
13. Share Knowledge
The lateral hire’s relevant past experience and expertise can be shared throughout the organization.
Financial Benefits
Of all the ways finding a lateral recruit can benefit an organization, this may be the number one reason most businesses look for lateral recruits.
Making smart financial decisions is what keeps businesses afloat. If you’re strategic about it and can find the perfect candidate, lateral recruits pay off.
14. Less Risk
Lateral hires have worked in the industry for a while; they have a proven performance track record. This makes recruiting them a safer bet than hiring someone who may have the degree, but otherwise has no previous experience in the field.
Because lateral hires have been in the industry for a long time, it’s much easier to vet their performance. Hiring them doesn’t carry such a high risk.
15. Reduced Training Costs
If the lateral recruit has specific niche expertise, they can train staff, cutting back on training costs exponentially. Also, since they themselves require less training, you’re cutting down on costs there as well.
16. Productivity from Day One
Rather than undergo a lengthy training period, lateral recruits are familiar with the position and ready to dive in and get to work immediately.
How to Find Lateral Recruits
So now that you know all the benefits of hiring lateral recruits, you’re probably wondering where to find them.
Here are some great ways to build your network and expand your reach:
Partner with Professional Organizations Like Obsidi®
The more you expand your networking and partnership reach, the better your chances of finding the perfect candidate.
If you’re a tech company and choose to partner with us, you get access to almost 100,000 diverse professionals who work within the sector.
Attend Industry Networking Conferences and Events
You probably want a lateral recruit who is actively engaged in the industry. In order to meet them where they are, you need to participate in industry networking events as well.
For those who work in tech, there are tons of worthwhile events. For example, BFUTR is the largest annual gathering for Black professionals in technology.
Branch out and find the events that align best with your industry and future objectives.
Leverage Professional Social Media Sites
While insufficient when used on their own, professional social media sites like LinkedIn can be a helpful adjunct to your networking efforts. Maximize potential and use social media to engage with and see what other professionals in your industry are up to.
Establish a Rapport
Building a rapport with people in the same field at different stages in their careers is incredibly helpful when it comes to lateral recruiting.
Encourage all employees — from entry-level to executive — to branch out and grow their network by building professional relationships with other people in the industry.
Sometimes, the best word of mouth comes from your employees themselves: if they vouch for your organization and deem it a good place to work, often that’s all it takes to convince someone else to join your team.
Offer an Enticing Compensation Package
The job market is competitive. Try to stand out from the rest by offering competitive pay, a robust benefits package, and other enticing perks.
This not only helps attract recruits and aid in retention, but also demonstrates that your organization cares for the people who show up every day and give their time and energy to help reach those milestones.
If you want to attract professionals to your organization, you have to lead with incentives that make it a no-brainer to choose to work for you.
Conclusion
Lateral recruitment is an incredible strategy that pays off in so many ways.
Rather than thinking of yourself as a headhunter, approach lateral hiring from the perspective of offering a worthy candidate an incredible opportunity to lend their skills and grow.
If you focus on showing up for the community, partner with organizations that make an impact, and continuously strive to create a work culture that values both the employees and community at large, you’ll find it much easier to convince people to join your team.
