Talent Management – Recruiting & Hiring – 4th in a Series

In the previous Talent Management Blogs, we defined “Talent Management” as a set of integrated organizational HR processes designed to attract, develop, motivate, and retain productive, engaged employees. Thus far, we have reviewed how to develop a set of skills and competencies to drive Job Descriptions, hiring criteria and Performance Management and we determined how many employees with the right skills and competencies were needed to deliver your business goals.

The focus of this blog is to develop a set of processes to find those perfect employees and to bring them into your company. Remember, this is where “employee engagement” begins – your company’s first impression. The Objectives of Recruiting and Hiring are to:

• Source potential candidates that align with the role’s required competencies and skills and the corporation’s Values and Vision,
• Attract and develop a pool of candidates that is sufficient to fill your Workforce Planning needs now and in the future,
• Select the optimal candidate for your particular opening at this particular time,
• Ensure your entry candidates are not only successful in their current role, but also have the capacity and capabilities to be your future succession candidates,
• Begin the employee engagement process,
• Enhance your organization’s diversity and inclusion standing, and
• Deliver all of this at the best value.

If those requirements aren’t stringent enough, organizations are typically recruiting and hiring across multiple levels, generations, locations, skills and cultures! And don’t forget the legal and social regulations and requirements. The scope of a blog is insufficient to cover Recruiting and Hiring in any significant detail – there are hundreds of books for that. Whichever size and style best fits your company, following all some basic decisions:

1. Basics; Competencies, Numbers, Principles. Through your Strategic Business Planning process you will have determined the numbers, skills and future requirements. This coupled with your Corporate Vision, Mission and Values will provide sufficient information to move forward.
2. Whose job is Recruiting and Hiring? The easy answer is “Everyone has a role.” You are bringing in the future of your company; Leaders, knowledge, tools, strength. Therefore, every person in the company must deliver on their role. Depending on the corporation’s size and complexity and how often you hire, there are many options:
   • a. A full Recruiting Organization
   • Utilization of outside resources – Staffing firms, recruiting firms, consultants, etc.
   • Part of the Human Resources Department role
   • A portion of every employee’s role; campus visits, tour guides, interviewing, etc.
3. Sourcing; Simple? Complex? Automated? Historically, you asked your friends and/or placed an ad in the newspaper and you chose from whoever showed up. Now there are a myriad of options
   • Social Media, Job Boards, Website Careers Section,
   • Staffing Firms, Temp to perm, Temp Agencies
   • Recruiting Firms – Retained vs. Contingency
   • High School, Technical/Trade Schools, College/University
   • Paper vs. Cloud, Excel vs. Applicant Tracking Systems, Stand-alone vs. ERP
   • All of these decisions are critical and most will have already been made when you started to develop your Talent Management Process (See Blog #1).
4. Getting Started As we reviewed in the Workforce Planning blog, the steps are easy, the decisions are not.
   • Create a Talent Management Action Plan,
   • Institute the Plan. Make sure you have full Leadership alignment and participation in the plan,
   • Monitor, Measure and Continuous Improvement. There are certain legal requirement re tracking and retention, so at a minimum these must be in place. However, the true benefit to your company is to continuously improve your processes to ensure you bring in the right employee at the right time with the right skills…

Now that you have hired the best employee you need to develop and train them quickly and efficiently. The next blog will discuss how organizations optimize employee contributions through Training and Development. Click on the following link to complete this simple HR Self-assessment. The free self-assessment takes only a few minutes and your results will be sent to you immediately along with information on how your company stacks up against benchmarked best practices. You can read the rest of our series on Talent Management here.

About the author: Bruce Dougan is the head of Group50’s Organization Design and Development Practice. Bruce and the Group50 team are all former executives with well-known manufacturing and distribution companies who understand what it takes to design, train, develop and motivate organizations to successfully implement a company’s strategic plan.

Group50 Exit Planning Consultants has designed a series of strategic assessments, workshops and strategic execution tools that optimize your organization. You can reach us at (909) 949-9083 or send a note to info@group50.com.

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