Hiring the right people is one of the greatest challenges in business. Too often, owners fall into the “hope and pray” trap. It looks something like this: post a job ad, cross your fingers, and hope someone great shows up. Or worse, outsource the whole problem (finding, screening, interviewing etc.) to a recruiter, leaving the quality of your team in someone else’s hands.

But here’s the truth: businesses don’t grow because of luck. They grow because of people. And people are too important to leave to chance.

In this article, I’ll walk you through a proven approach for building an Employee Acquisition Plan. A structured system that takes you from reactive hiring to predictable success in finding, attracting and keeping A-players.

The Cost of “Hope & Pray” Hiring

When recruitment is treated as a last-minute scramble, the hidden costs pile up fast:

• Turnover and churn: hires made in haste often leave just as quickly.
  

• Culture misfits: the wrong people drain energy, damage morale and erode trust.
  

• Lost opportunity: owners get pulled back into day-to-day firefighting instead of building the business.

The most expensive hire you’ll ever make isn’t the one you pay the highest salary. It’s the wrong person in the wrong seat.

Why Every Business Needs an Employee Acquisition Plan

It doesn’t matter whether you run a consultancy, an agency or a trades business - you’re in the people business first.

When you zoom out, you’ll see that growth doesn’t follow new clients, technology, or products - it follows talent. With the right team, everything else scales. Without them, even the best strategies stall.

The blinding flash of the obvious? Recruitment isn’t an event - it’s a process. Just as you’d never leave your sales pipeline to chance, you shouldn’t leave your hiring pipeline to chance either.

The Four Steps to Winning the Battle for Talent

Think of recruitment like fishing. You don’t cast a line once and hope. You follow a process. Here’s the 4-step framework I coach business owners to use:

1. Prepare the Bait

• Get clear on your ideal candidate profile (skills, values, and culture fit).
  

• Develop a compelling Employee Value Proposition (EVP) - why would someone choose you over a competitor?
  

• Position your business as a workplace of choice, not just a job.

Coaching Note: Your job ad isn’t just an ad - it’s a piece of marketing. Make it as persuasive as your best sales pitch.

2. Cast the Net

• Use multiple channels: online job boards, employee referrals, LinkedIn, industry networks.
  

• Think like a marketer. Learn / apply marketing best practice principles in your job ads.
  

• Don’t be afraid to proactively reach out to people you’d love on your team.

Coach’s Note: Good businesses “advertise”. Great businesses campaign for talent.

3. Sort the Fish

• Don’t rely on gut feel alone - introduce structure.
  

• Use shortlisting tools, skills tests, and carefully structured screening calls to save time.
  

• Balance skill and character: you can train ability, but you can’t train integrity.

Coach’s Note: Research shows unstructured interviews are only 50/50 accurate. Adding structured assessments including psychometric profiling can push accuracy to 80 - 90%.

4. Reel Them In

• Remember: A-players have options. They’re interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them.
  

• Close the deal with more than money: showcase your culture, your vision, your delegation skills and your growth path.
  

• Seal the relationship through structured onboarding that makes them feel part of the team from day one.

Coach’s Note: Speed matters. The best candidates don’t stay on the market long - move decisively.

Common Recruitment Mistakes to Avoid

• Relying solely on recruiters or ads and abdicating responsibility.
  

• Confusing activity with results (lots of long 60+ minute interviews ≠ quality hires).
  

• Neglecting onboarding - hiring the right person but setting them up to fail.

Making Recruitment Part of Your Growth System

Treat recruitment like sales and marketing. Build a repeatable, measurable process you can refine over time.

When recruitment is systemised, it stops being a distraction and becomes a driver of growth. As a bonus, other managers can then learn your process and help actively recruit their own team members as appropriate (further freeing up your time).

Stop Gambling, Start Planning

An Employee Acquisition Plan gives you the confidence that when it’s time to grow, you’ll have the right people, in the right seats, ready to drive the business forward.

Ask yourself:

• Do I have a documented process for hiring?
  

• Am I confident it will consistently attract A-players?
  

• Or am I still relying on luck and hoping for the best?

Great businesses don’t gamble with talent. They plan.

Ready to move from “hope and pray” hiring to a proven system for attracting A-players? At Butler & Co, we coach business owners through building recruitment processes that scale. If you’d like to learn more, let’s start talking.