Talent Management - July 2008 - (Page 21)

Seven Steps to Hire Better Quality Talent Jim McCoy With a predicted talent shortfall of several million skilled workers looming for 2010, the pressure for HR and talent managers to hire quality candidates is only going to intensify. These seven steps can facilitate organizations recruiting the talent needed to compete. Step 1: Set a Vision. An open position, whether planned or unexpected, is a perfect opportunity to assess current employee skills against business needs and determine the ideal candidate proﬁle, complete with relevant skills and competencies. Once there is a vision for the candidate, make it a reality with an accurate and compelling job description that effectively brands the company and sells the job. An accurate and energetic job description and Web site effectively reinforce the company’s recruiting brand and get job seekers excited about working for the organization. Step 2: Establish a Sourcing Plan. Recruiting is a strategic initiative and should be supported by thoughtful programs that help achieve desired outcomes. Think like the candidates. What are their social patterns; where do they spend their time? Will they be searching job boards or social networking sites? Will they stop at a kiosk or post their resume to your company’s online career site? Develop a strategy to reach different candidates. Get creative when sourcing. Good hiring managers work in tandem with HR, and companies with strong employment brands approach recruiting with the same rigor as marketing or sales. Attend events and trade shows, scour alumni associations and research Facebook and LinkedIn. Step 3: Communicate the Value Proposition. Quality candidates evaluate the hiring experience, as well as the traditional and nontraditional beneﬁts of a job. Each job’s value proposition is communicated through the company Web site; the job structure, salary and beneﬁts; and through phone manners, how quickly e-mails are returned and how candidates are treated during interviews. Best practices include explaining the hiring process via the company Web site, providing a clear road map to set expectations and communicating whether the position can be structured to support a certain lifestyle. Step 4: Develop a Set of Qualifying Questions and Processes. This step will help organizations qualify whether or not to advance a candidate in the hiring pipeline and avoid wasting time interviewing mediocre candidates. Qualifying processes include the following: • Behavioral interviews should be the ﬁrst step. Ask candidates for examples of when they’ve had to make splitsecond decisions, present to a group to garner support for a project or were forced to make an unpopular decision. • Assessment tools and proﬁles are particularly useful for high-incumbency jobs, such as sales, call centers and light industrial. For middle-management jobs, psychological proﬁling through personality and other tests will help shape a comprehensive picture of the candidate. • Job tryouts, such as day-in-the-life videos that accurately show what the job will entail, can help candidates self-select in or out of the hiring process and have been proven to impact retention rates. The measure of a recruiter’s work is the pipeline of candidates he or she presents, so developing successful qualifying processes can impact success. For instance, offering jobsharing arrangements or part-time scenarios might attract a more senior person or capture the collective experience of new parents seeking to re-enter the workforce. Step 5: Develop an Interview Strategy . Decide what type of information about a candidate’s skills and experience each interviewer will try to obtain. Don’t ask the same questions. This will inhibit accurately understanding a candidate’s skill set, and the candidate will be turned off. Develop brieﬁng documents with questions to share with all interviewers that outline what and what not to ask for each candidate so the company can reduce and manage risk. If a candidate is not an immediate ﬁt, the organization may want to keep him or her engaged for future openings. Step 6: Stage the Formal Offer. Extending the offer is another opportunity to engage and facilitate a smooth on-boarding process. For example, have the recruiter brief the candidate: “We’d like to make you an offer; the offer will be like this, etc.” Having this conversation take place in advance of the discussion between the candidate and hiring manager gives the candidate and the company ample opportunity to make adjustments and create a positive experience. For candidates who make it to the ﬁnal interview but do not receive an offer, follow up and share feedback, as the candidate may be a ﬁt for a future opening. Step 7: Procure Feedback. When employees are ofﬁcially on-board ask about their candidate experience. Find out why that person decided to accept the job to help establish a candidate proﬁle and ﬁnetune a quality talent-identiﬁcation process going forward. When a candidate rejects the offer, ask what could have been done differently. Address recruiting-process shortcomings and make adjustments. Jim McCoy is senior vice president of Veritude. He can be reached at editor@talentmgt.com. talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 21 http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - July 2008

Talent Management - July 2008 Editor’s Letter Human Performance Leading Edge Learning Connections Guest Editorial Passive Candidate Recruiting: Evolving with a Changing Workforce How Do They Feel? Sec Regulations and Executive Compensation Performance Management: A Retail Perspective Train the Non-Trainer Management-Go-Round: Developing Future Leaders Netflix Creates Its Own Script for Talent Management Intuit Spotlights Strategic Importance of Global Employee Recognition Make HR a Profit Center: Automate Technology to Gather Tax Credit Data Offshoring and the Impact on Talent Management Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - July 2008

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