Tapping Top Talent in a Downturn

HR leaders often are faced with the task of downsizing in one business unit and recruiting highly skilled professionals in another. They have to cope with an exponential increase in applicants for a much smaller number of open jobs, maintain morale in constantly shifting external and internal environments and help their organizations retain key employees. This must be done with reduced recruiting and HR staffs and slashed budgets, at a time when brand image is a critical success factor.

Today, more than ever, organizations must recruit and select the best talent where they have openings and upgrade talent in areas where it will advantage the business. Change in the business environment has happened so fast, many organizations have been slow to adjust and take action. In the current economic climate, it is necessary to take a step back and evaluate workforce plans, as well as talent acquisition processes and enabling technology and determine a strategy that works for the organization in the new recruiting reality.

A Fresh Approach

The biggest mistake an organization can make in this challenging environment is to let down markets drive its vision and shut down recruiting completely. Don't ignore reality. Take a well-planned, creative approach to workforce planning and talent acquisition.

When recruiting departments are faced with more work and fewer resources, build in efficiencies, maximize existing tools, eliminate waste from existing processes, innovate, manage vendor relationships and establish strategic partnerships.

Consider the following steps:

1. Re-evaluate recruitment marketing strategies.
Don't stop running ads and posting jobs, but do be strategic and take a planned approach. The market has shifted from a scarcity to an abundance of candidates in a very short time - adjust accordingly. Don't overspend or spend in the wrong areas. Now is a great time to be out in the market as the competition for talent is much lower. Take advantage of it.

Also, renegotiate existing vendor relationships; don't pay last year's rates this year. There will still be skill shortages and geographic recruiting gaps, so rewrite copy and spruce up the company's look. Speak in a genuine voice for the organization by working with the marketing department.

2. Leverage the hidden gold mine.
Arguably the most commonly overlooked tool in any organization is its existing database. A real gold mine of information, the resumes collected by recruiters and HR staff during the past few years should provide great leads on passive and active candidates. For instance, run a Boolean search on the company's internal ATS database.

3. Improve competitive insight.
Leverage candidate interviews to collect market data on competitors. Actively call leads and network to gain insight into their knowledge about competitors. As talent managers interview candidates from competitors, gather critical information to help position the company to win in the market.

4. Tap the current employee pool.
Take a fresh look at the existing employee pool. Which individuals shine in the downturn? Identify individuals who have been interested in gaining experience in other functional areas and who would be willing to wear two hats during difficult times.

For the right employees, the current climate might provide real opportunities to gain much needed and desired experience in another area. Strong employees will appreciate the opportunity for long-term career growth, and it will show them how much they are valued.

5. Maximize social networking in recruiting.
When used properly, social media networks are an effective tool. The time demand is surprisingly low. If an organization has limited time, choose one or two networks to try. One recommendation is LinkedIn, which is targeted to professionals and requires little maintenance.

6. Automate candidate contact, and employ well-designed self-service.
Tracking down candidates can be time-consuming and frustrating, not to mention costly. Be efficient. One of the easiest solutions is to work with a provider to automate the process. There are myriad tools and software options on the market. The most attractive are those that include auto-scheduling, online minimum qualification screening and telephony/video interviewing platforms. Talent leaders also will want to improve and perhaps automate selection tools to ensure they find those few best needles in the now huge haystack.

Many talent managers can relate to the challenge of responding to the growth in candidate calls to "check status" and a single candidate applying for multiple positions. Turn on auto e-mails. A recent Pinstripe survey showed that less than 20 percent of organizations use that functionality in their ATSs.

Books Are Fun Ltd., a Chicago-based subsidiary of Reader's Digest, and the world's leading display marketer of books and gifts, experienced the benefits of automation firsthand. To meet expansion goals and cover attrition rates, Books Are Fun recruits 250-300 independent sales representatives every year. Before automation, the company's six internal recruiters spent 70 percent of their time screening applicants.

"We knew that the most important part of the recruiting process is the late-stage conversation that we have with a candidate about the job as a lifestyle change rather than just another position," said David Hammond, vice president of sales recruitment. "We needed our internal folks to focus on these late-stage conversations. It was a waste of time for my staff to handle the screening process."

Books Are Fun outsourced the sourcing and screening process to an organization that was able to reduce costs and time to fill by streamlining candidate tracking; managing all recruitment marketing efforts including postings and active and passive candidate sourcing; and accessing additional resources, including community-based recruiting from libraries and organizations, franchise and sales-niche recruiting, various national and regional job boards and TRM contact searches.

7. Find the right candidates from the onset.
Many organizations put too many people through too far in their processes. Design talent acquisition, screening and selection processes carefully and stick with them. Screen people in - and out - early.

"In the past, Books Are Fun offered a contract to the first qualified candidate that appeared. Now we want to offer a contract to the most qualified candidates only," Hammond said. "Our new system generates enough volume of qualified candidates to provide us with real choices."

8. Review the funnel and revise processes.
An organization may have fewer openings, but now there will be more people applying, which will significantly increase the amount of time spent screening and responding to applicants. This can exhaust an HR team, particularly one that recently reduced staff, and could increase effective cost per hire.

Adopt a high-volume recruiting model to process a high volume of candidates in a time of low job requisitions. Technology enables the process in a candidate friendly way. Move online prequalifiers to the top of the funnel, and save the paid online screens and assessments for the spot where the funnel is slimmer.

Books Are Fun revised its process and brought about significant improvements, including a 45 percent decrease in costs, a decrease in time to fill from 52 to 42 days and clear recruiting metrics including weekly summaries, pipeline reports, hiring funnels and detailed process maps.

9. Protect the brand.
When an organization is one of a few that is hiring, and getting 500 resumes for every job posted, process change is necessary. Work with experts to ensure the company doesn't miss good people or alienate future prospects and customers. This is particularly important if an organization is a major consumer brand, and every applicant also is a consumer.

Be polite and respectful every time. Companies are not usually good at this, and HR will find it especially important to partner with marketing and hiring managers when everyone is being asked to do more with less.

Times are tough and the human resources function is on the frontlines of the battle. But remember, every downturn yields winners and losers. Some organizations will not merely weather this storm; they will seize the opportunity to emerge as a more efficient and successful.


[About the Author: Sue Marks is founder and CEO of Pinstripe Inc., an HR and recruitment process outsourcing firm serving large- and middle-market domestic clients, as well as the Global 5000.]

Organisational Behaviour - Poach Reproach

The not-so-good side of recruiting off competitors.

Key learnings:

1. Poaching has its advantages
2. But recruiting off competitors is not always a good idea

There are reasons why poaching is a successful way of filling critical vacancies. And there are also reasons, other than legal, why recruiting from one’s competitor is a huge mistake. This is particularly true when salespeople are poached or snared away from one’s archrivals, as this approach to filling vacancies is ridden with land mines. Unless organisations know how to avoid them, the best thing to do would be to avoid such recruiting! This mailer tries to expose a few recruit-from- competitors myths, so that organisations can tread cautiously.

Why snatch or snare?

Good salespeople are as rare as snakes in Ireland! The pressure to cover a large ground and numbers is so immense that organisations would not be bothered about orienting or training those who are new and inexperienced in a particular type of selling. Other than paying lip service to training and encouraging salespeople to refer to bulky and shoddily documented sales guides, there is little that most organisations do to equip their sales force. But this does not mean organisations do not understand how detrimental poor sales teams can be to business.

Therefore, it appears that the quickest and the most ‘logical’ approach to building a good sales team is to recruit someone who is already doing the job well. However, this approach of bringing rivals’ men across will not do much good for organisations because many of their assumptions are only myths.

Myth 1 The more insular and complex the industry, the better it is to recruit insiders.
As one analyst rightly says, “No one came out of the womb mastering your industry.” Recruiters need to understand that such a belief is only shaky. However, there are certain specialised skills and knowledge that salespeople require to serve in a particular industry. Instead of taking newcomers through the entire gamut of training, equipping them with those special skills and knowledge is a better approach than recruiting salespeople ‘with similar experience’, only to realise they are worse mismatches than freshers.

Organisations bent upon recruiting individuals with relevant industry experience should understand the challenge of scalability. Organisations cannot fit in all or could afford all! This inward recruiting trend can keep talent pipelines dry and make referral programmes a waste of time.

Myth 2 They will bring their clientele across.
Given the ‘rolling stones’ trend, no one raises an eyebrow when people jump jobs. In fact, employees with 3–5 years of tenures have become an oddity! Even customers understand that employee loyalty has a changed definition these days. Therefore, assuming they will follow their ‘trusted advisor and friend’ is unrealistic. As marketing observations go, customers once hooked to a brand or product, are likely to remain more loyal to it than a salesperson to his organisation! Moreover, someone who could bring in his clientele could also take them away when he leaves the organisation.

Myth 3 Recruiting someone who works for the big guys is a good thing for small enterprises.
This only works when both enterprises are identical in their operations. And even if they do, a fact worth considering is that no two organisations have analogous sales cultures. Therefore, the assumption that someone who has done a similar job well in a bigger organisation will also be successful in a smaller set up is incorrect. An expert says, “A synergistic match between your company and the candidate is needed to put together a long-lasting sales marriage.”

Another incorrect assumption is that salespeople will carry forward their passion into the new job. While passionate salespeople are a driving force, those who jump jobs frequently do not remember what to be passionate about! “Salespeople who bounce from company to company in the industry become ‘vanilla’,” says an observer.

Even when full-fledged training isn’t a possibility, infusing newcomers with passion should be a primary objective of on-boarding. Some will argue that the surest way to infuse passion is to train well. However, there a few other things that can trigger passion when there is no training.

They include:

1. Telling a salesperson that he has been chosen specially for a product launch
2. Asking a salesperson to become a role-model for others
3. Making a salesperson in-charge of a team soon after on-boarding
   

Myth 4 Those recruited from big companies will blend into their new roles with ease.
Sometimes, the real reasons for recruiting from competitors are laziness and the inability to train. While the latter is understandable, laziness is not. The lack of drive to scout for and select the right talent leads organisations into believing that recruiting experienced hands from one’s competitors will give them ready-made salespersons. But the truth is that when someone comes on board, he needs to be trained in ‘the organisation’ s way of selling’, no matter where he worked before, and for how long.

The above beliefs are common in organisations. Being a little worldly-wise should help them steer clear of the myths that affect their recruiting.

Ref: TheManageMentor.

Performance Appraisal - Management by Objectives

Once an employee has been selected, trained and embarked on his duties, it is time for performance appraisal. What is performance appraisal? Why do companies need to take up this task?

According to Heyel, “it is the process of evaluating the performance and qualifications of the employees in terms of job requirements, for administrative purposes such as placement, selection and promotions, to provide financial rewards and other actions which require differential treatment among the members of a group as distinguished from actions affecting all members equally”.

This concept dates back to the First World War and was then called “Merit rating programme”. Over a period of time, this concept has been through an ocean of change. The areas of evaluation have also changed.

Importance and objectives: Performance appraisals have been considered to be the most significant and indispensable tool for the management as it,

• Provides useful information for decision making in areas of promotion and merit rating and compensation reviews.
• Links information gathering and decision making process, which are the basis for judging the effectiveness of personnel subfunctions such as recruiting, selecting and compensation.
• Helps pinpoint areas of concerns in the primary systems like marketing, finance and production.
• Enhances understanding for training and counselling needs.
  

Methods of performance appraisal

There are several methods for evaluating performance. Management by objectives is the most popular one.

Management by objectives is primarily to change the behaviour and attitude towards getting an activity or assignment completed in a manner that it is beneficial for the organisation. Management by objectives is a result-oriented process. In this system, emphasis is on results and goals rather than a prescribed method.

For instance, the number of quality articles to be churned out in a week, at a publishing house is, let’s say, five. This is the goal of the organisation. This goal has to be set in coordination with the writers. The emphasis here again would be on accomplishing this task flawlessly over the week rather than the setting of a method to accomplish the same. You are giving them a free hand to decide as to how they want to work in order to accomplish target. This gives the employee both responsibility as well as authority to do a job. The employees are now responsible for its success and failure and it is their baby. It is a VERY SMART MANAGEMENT TOOL where the employee is involved in the decision making process.

The fives magic sutras

The mystery of management of objectives has the following basic steps.

Set organisational goals. This envisages that organisational goals and business strategies are expressed clearly, concisely and accurately. They are periodically reviewed. They should be challenging enough to motivate the employee. Clear and attainable goals help channel energies towards desired behaviour and let the employee know the basis on which he will be rewarded.

Joint goal setting. This step establishes short-term goals, which are performance oriented, between the management and the employee. The responsibilities are clarified to the employees through organisational charts and job description. The goals decided by the employee need to complement the goals of the management. They also need to be flexible to accommodate new ideas without losing individual responsibilities. Moreover they should be easily quantifiable. For example,

To prepare, process and transfer to the office superintended, all account payable vouchers within three working days from the receipt of the voucher.

To hold weekly meetings with all employee.To use program evaluation and review technique (pert) for all new plant layouts.

Performance reviews. This step suggests frequent performance review between the manager and the employees. During the initial stages the meetings be held once a month and later could be quarterly. For maximum benefit these meetings should be scheduled for more than once a year.

Set check posts: Establishment of major check posts to measure progress. This is merely to check that the employee surges towards his premeditated goal without any disruptions. These check levels should be higher in the initial stages and then gradually reduce. This demands that the manager should be on constant alert and exercise sound judgment.

Feedback: The employees who receive frequent feedback about their performance are highly motivated than those who do not. However, one has to ensure that the feedback is relevant and specific. This helps the employee and the manager understand where they stand.

The five-sutra process of management by objectives ensures that the manager and the employee define and establish goals and objectives for an employee to be achieved within a prescribed period of time. The employee is to be supervised and evaluated, periodically. To this extent, a frequent feedback and superior-employee interaction model must be evolved.

Ref: TheManageMentor

The First and the Best! - Recruitment & Retention

Recruiting is indeed stressful. Recruiting managers are working constantly to meet deadlines and are eternally at war with time. The pressure to keep organisations adequately staffed with quality talent is huge. It needs recruiting managers to be on their toes, keeping a constant vigil on the changing work picture and the competitors' recruiting strategy. To add to the chaos, is a downdraft that has taken economists and business leaders across the globe by surprise. They find themselves plummeted from what they called the "economic zenith" to an abyss of recession.

In an economic downturn recruiting becomes doubly challenging. For, companies have little resources to spare while the demand and desperateness to survive increase creating a grossly -skewed demand-supply equation. Thus, it is important that corporates design their recruiting strategy in a way that helps them stay afloat even when the environment conspires against them.

Recruits are for keeps

Most recruiting efforts go wasted as recruiting managers witness a gross mismatch between the "perceived competence" of the recruit and the "actual competence" and they have to do the exercise all over again! Experts believe this is precisely where most resources-time, money and effort-get wasted and therefore this is also the point where resource economisation can take place. Recruiting managers have to be aware and cautious about the possible traps that can hamper their ability to recruit right the first time. According to research, there are three basic recruiting traps that levy a heavy drag on a recruiting manager's ability to recruit right. These include:

• 
  
  Recruiting against time


• 
  
  Recruiting on the basis of the resume rather than the person presenting the resume


• 
  
  Recruiting purely on the basis of job description
  

These recruiting traps indicate how simple mistakes can cause a big dent on the corporate pocket. Understanding that all issues emerge from simple and non-complex mistakes is important as most times managers tend to ignore the basic issues and in doing so create a situation marked by chaos and confusion.

Recruiting managers often recruit in a hurry under high pressure, without dwelling much on important recruit details and corporate requirements. In the rush to fill the empty chairs, recruiting managers lose perspective of the larger picture and make decisions based on availability of time and not availability of talent. In addition, recruiting managers get influenced unreasonably by the resumes they see. Their decisions depend to a large extent on the qualifications and work experience of the individual and therefore fail to take into account other intangible factors like personality, values, beliefs, character traits and soft skills.

Apart from recruiting in a hurry, recruiting managers also need to stay wary of "resume recruiting" and make a deliberate attempt to assess people on what they see and not what they "read". Resumes can be extremely misleading, since most times they are not written by the person himself but by some "resume management" consultant! Achievements are exaggerated beyond comprehension to create an impression that often manages to do its job well! Such misleading resumes play havoc with organisation's talent pool and only pollute it if anything.

Further, recruiting managers should be aware that job descriptions represent only the technical aspect of the job. However the soul of the job lies outside the technical pre-requisites and therefore it is important that recruiting managers take into account the intangible factors required to succeed in that particular job.

Evading the trap

How does one dodge the traps? The traps are extremely elusive and intricately woven with basic recruiting fabric that it becomes extremely difficult for recruiting managers to evade. To do so , experts suggest a systematic procedure that takes care of important recruiting milestones like internal recruiting, culture, team competence, and candidate screening. Each of these factors plays a significant role in effective recruiting and therefore if they are tended to well they can result in great recruiting success.

Internal recruiting

Internal recruiting is an extremely viable source of talent that works well if recruiting managers approach it the right way. The crux of internal recruiting lies in benchmarking. Benchmarking provides recruiting managers with the right perspective about the existing talent within a given function, the top performer rating and the expectations tied to the established standards.

Core culture and team competence

Recruiting managers need to evaluate the organisational culture and identify the defining attributes of the cultures. This will help managers convey corporate priorities to the candidate better and in turn understand his priorities, thereby enabling better overlap between the two.

Apart from a thorough understanding of the corporate culture, managers also need to identify the key players of their work teams and understand why the teams are not working to their optimum levels. This understanding would help in identifying the missing links and prevent duplication and redundancy of any kind.

Recruiting practices

Redefining recruiting practices would help managers fine- tune their recruiting efforts. The redefinition exercise should include:

• 
  
  A recruiting protocol that lists the procedure and practices for effective recruiting


• 
  
  Encourage cross-training within the organisation


• 
  
  Create candidate-screening rules applicable across the company


• 
  
  Build behaviour-based interview models


• 
  
  Create a decision -making template that gives relevant weightage to important parameters in the decision -making process
  

Recruiting in an economic downturn is tough. The traps become more rigid and the minefields even more lethal. Hence recruiting managers have to plan much ahead of time and lay down procedures that would help them recruit the best the very first time, saving them the agony of going talent hunting yet again!