Introduction
The sphere of in-home childcare encompasses a variety of responsibilities, including day home care, nutrition, education, and pastime with children who have working parents. For this reason, in order to provide holistic care to the children, the daycare organization should include professional caregivers, after-school assistants, a registered nurse, and administrative staff to manage the daycare appointments. The goal of the present staffing plan is to outline a blueprint for selecting and hiring quality daycare professionals who can foster an extensive client database and a decent reputation for the organization.
Job Requirements
The organization in question is a growing business that aims at attracting and retaining new clients to the firm. Hence, there is currently to opportunity for the team to secure training for professionals with no work experience in the field, so it is advised highly skilled professional be recruited to the position to contribute to the future profitability of the daycare. The primary requirements for the existing job openings include:
- Academic degree. The fundamental expectation for a potential candidate is a bachelor’s or master’s degree in Child Development, Psychology, Nursing, or Administration, depending on the position applied. Without extensive academic expertise in the sphere of communication with children, a potential employee is likely to feel uncomfortable with unpredictable behavioral patterns of children.
- Soft skills. According to Succi and Canovi (2019), soft skills that encompass one’s ability to employ critical thinking, empathy, teamwork, and creativeness in the workplace have now become one of the compulsory requirements for any type of job. The notion of soft skills in childcare, for its part, is of exceptional significance due to the specifics of working with emotionally vulnerable children whose cognition is flexible and impressionable.
- Work experience in childcare. Although currently, work experience tends to be less significant during the employment procedure, the financial and organizational context of the company cannot account for an extensive educational model for its employees. In the long run, the increased staffing and client database will shift the focus toward employing professionals with little experience.
The two ways in which these requirements can impact the organization include a facilitated onboarding process and higher customer satisfaction. Thus, once potential employees have an academic degree and experience in the field, they will need less time to become accustomed to the working process. Shorter adaptation and onboarding periods will positively affect the hiring costs, but in order to for the requirement to succeed, it is necessary to rely on references from previous workplaces rather than the applicants’ résumés (Kerr, 2020). The presence of good soft and communication skills, for their part, will account for the establishment of a beneficial relationship with both the clients and their parents, creating a foundation for higher customer retention rates.
Hiring Strategy
For the hiring strategy to work, it is necessary to establish both the channel for recruitment and the potential tools for reaching out and communicating with applicants. Hence, the primary focus of the hiring strategy will be to recruit professionals through the LinkedIn platform. Since LinkedIn has proved to be a social media platform that positively contributes to the informational benefits and professional networking, it will be chosen to reach out to potential employees by searching for relevant networks, competitor companies, and former employer referrals (Davis et al., 2020). In the process of contacting potential applicants, the pre-hire assessment strategy of employment will be conducted through a thorough investigation of the candidate’s LinkedIn activity, public information, and professional engagement. According to Kerr (2020), a pre-hire assessment helps identify one’s preferences in terms of thinking skills, personal qualities, and attitude to the team culture in the workplace. If these qualities are not suitable for the organization, no work experience will be able to secure the firm’s development and profitability.
Long-Term Recruitment Plan
Since the present hiring strategy will be focused on the development of a company’s branding and social media presence for online recruitment. Hence, the recruitment plan will look as follows:
- Preparation and groundwork. This stage will include the formation of the recruitment pack, namely, the requirements and expectations for each position, salary calculation, setting up the LinkedIn profile of the company, and extending the potential professional network.
- The recruitment campaign outline. This stage accounts for the creation of the recruitment messages templates and of anticipating the approximate response rates in order to define the number of target candidates to reach over the course of one month.
- Pre-hire labor market analysis. At this stage, the network of potential candidates will be analyzed on the matter of previous workplace referrals and reviews from colleagues.
- Active recruitment stage. After approving the potential candidate list, the phase of reaching out and active communication will be commenced. Based on the immediate feedback, some modifications to the recruitment pack can be introduced.
- Selection. Once a certain number of interested candidates is reached, the planning and conduction of semi-structured and situational interviews will be held in person. During this stage, every candidate will be contacted on a regular basis and provided with more introductory information about the company.
- Hiring and onboarding. Once the final candidates are approved by the office, the organizational and legal aspects of hiring and induction will be initiated.
- Monitoring. This stage accounts for the regular check-up and guidance interventions for new employees.
Branding Strategies
The branding strategies chosen to attract the employees to the workplace include a corporate strategy, an online strategy, and a service strategy. The first strategy is of paramount importance for the employees, as it helps promote some of the company’s core ideas and values. Without a defined corporate strategy, the organization will be unable to tell the candidates what it looks for in a team, so the existence of objectives, beliefs, and values is critical for the employees when choosing between similar job offers (Feldman, 2020). The online strategy, for its part, secures a strong online presence of the company, which ensures the employees’ trust in the company’s qualifications and reputation. Finally, the service strategy will be used to promote the culture of client orientation, as in the field of daycare for children, parents, as well as qualified educators and caregivers, place the quality of service in the first place. All the aforementioned strategies are aimed at increasing both employee and customer retention rates, resulting in steady and substantial company growth.
Communication Strategies
Prior to outlining the strategic communication tools for the applicants, it is of paramount importance to secure the creation of a candidate relationship management (CRM) system. It stands for a spreadsheet containing crucial information about the potential employee, including names, content information, current employment status, brief work experience timeline, and current stance on the job opening. Qualified employees are extremely relevant in the market, so they are contacted by dozens of recruiters daily. In most cases, they ignore copied, and pasted recruitment messages yet react to a personalized text, and the CRM system will help keep the data for such a text organized. Naturally, text messages on LinkedIn are the next major communication strategy for recruitment. Finally, an e-mail newsletter for potential candidates is a beneficial way to draw attention to the company’s services by presenting some relevant information and interesting news and updates about their sphere of specialization.
Selection Process
The two relevant approaches to selecting candidates include interview and personality profiling. Ideally, these processes should be combined together to create a full image of a person willing to work with the firm. During the situational interview, both HR managers and applicants have the chance to discuss the prospects of cooperation after role-playing a workplace incident. During the personality profiling, potential candidates are asked to undergo a certain form of assessment to define what traits of character align with the corporate culture of the firm. A prime example of such a profiling tool is FACET5 that allows for the recognition of the employee’s potential through their personality strengths (Sikorski, 2017). Hence, both these processes contribute to the identification of personal and professional aspects of an employee, as their expertise is critical when working with little kids who need guidance in emotional and cognitive development.
Selection Criteria
The selection criteria for the job openings in question include:
- Relevant qualifications in the sphere of Child Development, Psychology, Nursing, and Administration
- Exceptional communication skills for interaction with children and parents
- Relevant experience in working with children, knowledge of children psychology and development processes
- Willingness to improve one’s skills
- Alignment with the organizational values
Meeting these selection criteria will help the administration and staff reach a consensus in terms of the company’s vision and workflow. The company is willing to provide support for specialists willing to develop and expand their sphere of expertise of the worker is also internally motivated to grow. Hence, these selection criteria, while undeniably contributing to better professional outcomes and customer satisfaction, can also impact the employee retention rates. If specialists settle to meet the values of the company, the firm itself will provide all the necessary resources for work efficiency and higher satisfaction rates.
Assessment Methods
The situational judgment test and the Geneva Emotional Competence Test (GECo) are the two assessment methods chosen for the recruitment campaign (Schlegel & Mortillaro, 2019). Although both tests are valid in terms of the position requirements, the reliability of the GECo is higher. Although GECo is based on the premise of situational judgment, it enhances the procedure with a variety of emotionally specific contexts. In the positions considered, emotional intelligence is extremely valid. The reliability of these methods has been proven by research (Schlegel & Mortillaro, 2019). Hence, as far as the assessment is concerned, it is vital to address both professional and psychological responses to potential cooperation with children.
Job Performance Predictors
As far as KSAOs in the workplace is concerned, the four major predictors to assess one’s KSAOs include:
- Cognitive ability, academic expertise
- Personality traits, the level of emotional resistance
- Past experience, referrals from the previous place of employment
- Problem-solving (Salgado et al., 2019)
These aspects are crucial for successful communication with clients and administration, as they present the sense of personality, previous working patterns, and current professional traits of an individual.
Conclusion
Considering all the aforementioned aspects of recruitment, it may be concluded that children’s daycare is an extremely demanding field, as it seeks professionals with both academic backgrounds and emotional stability. For this reason, it is important to target the recruitment campaign right at the beginning, focusing on highly skilled professionals who would secure customer retention and a holistic approach to childcare. The most cost-efficient way to do this is to employ social media as a primary candidate search tool.
References
Davis, J., Wolff, H. G., Forret, M. L., & Sullivan, S. E. (2020). Networking via LinkedIn: An examination of usage and career benefits. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 118. Web.
Feldman, E. R. (2020). Corporate strategy: Past, present, and future. Strategic Management Review, 1(1), 179-206. Web.
Kerr, D. L. (2020). Guide to hiring success [PDF document]. Web.
Salgado, J. F., Otero, I., & Moscoso, S. (2019). Cognitive reflection and general mental ability as predictors of job performance. Sustainability, 11(22), 6498. Web.
Schlegel, K., & Mortillaro, M. (2019). The Geneva Emotional Competence Test (GECo): An ability measure of workplace emotional intelligence. Journal of Applied Psychology, 104(4), 559. Web.
Sikorski, A. (2017). FACET5 in the recruitment and managing process as regards production personnel–case study. Production Engineering Archives, 15. 36-40.
Succi, C., & Canovi, M. (2020). Soft skills to enhance graduate employability: Comparing students and employers’ perceptions. Studies in Higher Education, 45(9), 1834-1847. Web.