In the growth stages, there can be pressure to maintain your hiring momentum to demonstrate your success. Hiring more people means more demand for your services, which means your business is thriving. However, as a growing business, you cannot hire all the time. There isn’t the capacity, and there isn’t always the demand to hire new roles. Hiring freezes are sometimes essential as your business progresses.
When done strategically, freezing or pausing hiring can create much-needed breathing space for your HR teams which can help give your business a competitive edge. Especially in today’s competitive talent market, you can be caught up in the rat race of recruitment, trying to bring in qualified candidates as quickly as possible regardless of their cultural fit or expectations. Aspects of the hiring process and employee experience often get lost or overlooked during intense hiring periods, so giving yourself time and resources to reflect and evaluate these processes could help refine your hiring process. Instead of recruiting quickly and without a real strategy, you can ensure you’re planning ahead for future hires, creating better experiences for new and existing employees and build a more tactical approach to hiring, which will set you ahead of the competition.