Hiring is always hard. We have learn that recruiting and hiring is especially difficult with some of our small-to-medium size businesses that don’t have the staff or time to focus on hiring the right people, the first time. Hiring was difficult when the economy was doing well; it’s even harder now that times are tough.

Recruiters have learned that when unemployment goes up, the quantity of C-Players massively increases while the amount of resumes from A-Players probably remains the same.  If you are trying to grow your resort business with A-Players (by definition a A-Player is an employee that is incredibly productive and smart—has “it”- that factor that makes everyone want to work with him/her), people that are really GREAT employees you need to have the time, people, and skills to distinguish the A-Players from the B or C-Players which unfortunately is a heck of a lot harder then reviewing and sifting through resumes. To tell the difference between the A-Players and the “others” you need to engage with candidates and therefore you’ll have far more candidates to deal with given this economic climate.

One way to decrease the number of B & C-Players is to specifically target candidates rather then to post a job ad in the local newspaper. We suggest hiring one of our recruiters (of course) to network your job to our network and to specifically target candidates for you rather then waiting for them to find you.

This economic downturn looks like it will affect us all for the next couple of years, so be sure to call us to help you fill your company with only A-Players and thereby creating your own A-Team.

We hear the frustrations daily from our local Steamboat Springs, Colorado employers. In our weekly meetings, community board meetings, individual client meetings…even during our grocery shopping trips and weekend ski outings. The number one issue here in our resort location is sourcing and retaining quality talent. Yet not often do we hear what they are doing to increase or support their recruiting efforts. The situation is very similar to our “lack of affordable housing” issue which is always a hot topic and has been for years yet the only proactive thing that ever comes from the discussions are more meetings, more discussion and unfortunately no action on moving forward with a solution.

With our years of Human Capital experience and recruiting for resort located businesses we hope to be able to help resort businesses whom don’t have the staffing resources to strengthen their recruitment strategies promote their employment brand and build new creative recruitment methods and help them set forth proactive measures to ensure their recruiting challenges are met for the “talent gap” that our resort businesses are starting to feel the effects of.

Working together we can create recruitment programs to strengthen and grow our local resort workforce for years to come.

Karen Goedert

Resort Recruiters Staff

Hello fellow employers and employees!

Wow..is it a challenge — recruiting in our resort environments. We recently conducted a Recruiting 101 workshop here in Steamboat Springs, Colorado and the challenges of sourcing, screening, hiring, retaining, and housing our new workforce was a conversation that went on for hours. Check out some of the tidbits about what our talent pool is going to look like in the next 5-10 years.

1. Over the next 20 years, one person will retire every minute.
2. Generation X is roughly ½ the size of the retiring Baby Boomers. (this little fact will produce a bit of a talent gap)
3. One million bank teller positions to fill by 2014

4. Currently we have about 4 Million Real Estate Agents….58% or 2.3 million will retire starting in 2010

If you are not talking about your recruiting strategies daily with your management staff….or creating new creative recruiting methods then you are behind your competition.