Posts tagged ‘talent management’

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June 25, 2015

STOP Hiring More Recruiters! 5 Reasons Why You’re Throwing Away Your Precious Budget if You Do

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OK, I admit it: the titles of my posts tend to be a bit on the cheeky side, and this one is no exception. But while at first glance some may think I’ve gone too far this time, the fact is that I’m frustrated in that some people within the Talent Acquisition space continue doing things the same way because “that’s how they’ve always been done.” Don’t get me wrong, there are some real innovators among us. But by and large, little continues to evolve.

One example of this is how HR and Talent Acquisition leaders deal with increasing hiring volumes and overcapacity among their recruiters. As is often the case and the easiest path taken, their precious budget is used to hire more recruiters with the expectation is that all will be solved. This is the exact opposite of what you should be doing.

However, what if there were multiple ways to address hiring volume issues, improve candidate engagement, improve an organization’s brand – both in the marketplace and among candidates – and fill open roles sooner; and all while maintaining (not increasing!) the current Talent Acquisition budget? This may sound like wishful thinking, but with some help from my good friend and talent sourcing trailblazer Amit Hinduja, we’ll show you that this isn’t just possible, it’s practical as well. Here are five insights to help you acquire talent more effectively and inexpensively. Yes, you read that right: it’s time to save money!

1.  Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

An applicant tracking system (ATS) is one of the most important investments that your organization can make, because in terms of talent acquisition, it’s the best tool for saving money in the shortest amount of time. Most importantly, you don’t need an experienced recruiter in order to uncover the vast amounts of hires that already exist within it. Here are some specific ATS related tips and insights to keep in mind:

  • Invest in an ATS. If you don’t already have an ATS: get one! Yes, you’ll need to spend money in order to save money, but the good news is that it truly is a minimal cost. An ATS can be purchased for as little as $100 per month, it’s easy to use, and it provides your team with a number of benefits, including the opportunity to constantly revisit and connect with engaged candidates that you already have.
  • Mine your ATS. As candidates apply through your career site, your ATS will grow to eventually contain hundreds — if not thousands — of engaged candidates. The amount of hires that comes from a well-mined ATS can be massive, but only if your team commits to mining through your ATS first. External sites, especially those with paid access or licenses, are often unnecessary as your new hires are within short (and much less expensive!) reach.
  • Nurture your ATS. While it’s good to have a database filled with candidates, the reality is that resumes alone won’t fix your hiring woes. The key here is to develop and maintain a database of qualified and engaged candidates. Most ATS’s include features that allow you to stay connected to your candidates, while emphasizing the uniqueness of your employment brand and keeping your organization top of mind. Remember all of those silver and bronze medalist candidates who were good, but not the exact fit for what you were looking for? Those are your hires for tomorrow — but only if you succeed in keeping them engaged. Doing so through your ATS is simple, effective, and the activity can be tracked.
  • Educate and inform with your ATS. Talent Acquisition functions are often viewed with frustration, and typically lacking an executive champion. In fact, they’re even relegated to an administrative function. Organizations that make full use of their ATS see this tool for its added capability, including the ability to build internal awareness and influence stakeholders because of the vast amount of valuable data. ATS’s are great for identifying value for spend, understanding how candidates are being engaged, reducing or even eliminating costly tools and resources, and providing your business stakeholders with competitive intelligence.

2. Train for Additional Sourcing Capability. 

With the widespread accessibility of data and the availability of free tools, we have reached a point where finding candidates has become a skill that can be developed much more easily than in the past. Simply put: you no longer need to employ teams of highly paid recruiters to find candidates.

The majority of activity that goes into securing talent including building a prospect list, executing search queries, coordinating interviews and facilitating the approval process doesn’t require senior level recruiters. Less expensive junior resources, or even re-skilled workers in search of a second career, can be trained to source and find candidates. I know this first-hand because at The Talent Company, we’ve coached our clients to do this many times.

With this being said, it’s also true that some skills take time to develop. For example, convincing a coveted candidate to consider an opportunity, or intuitively knowing how to “close” a candidate are talents that come with experience. However, again, neither of these (or any other more advanced abilities) requires an entire senior level recruitment team. With a solid process, defined accountability, a focus on continuous training, and committed leadership, a hybrid team can and does work well.

Before moving on, I would like to caution organizations that take this approach with an overly simplistic view. The truth is, it isn’t simple to execute. However, it can certainly be done if the effort includes supportive leadership and an experienced Talent Acquisition/HR Manager; one who has experience with this type of model, and has the time to coach and mentor developing employees.

3. Leaders are Sources for Candidates Too

With the legacy of the “Great Recession” still fresh in our minds, organizations and hiring managers have moved towards what I consider an overly-specific approach to hiring talent. In most cases, candidates must match up with all or nearly all of the “must have” requirements.

The issue here, of course, is that there is a very real lack of qualified talent. Assessing for suitability is one thing. However, when we insist on sticking to our druthers and finding the “perfect candidate,” we must accept that a perfectly-suited and available candidate is rare. Finding this type of talent requires that an organization use all of its resources. This includes tapping into the professional networks and relationships of internal management and leadership teams. Leaders can be coached to open up their professional networks and support the efforts of recruitment teams. Essentially, inspiring recruitment advocacy amongst your management ranks makes great business sense and saves money.

4. Building a Culture of Empathy and Business Support 

Your business leaders and hiring managers play a significant role in influencing the efficiency and effectiveness of your Talent Acquisition function. For example, a common yet often overlooked fact is that the total amount of open requisitions within most organizations is incorrect and inflated. The actual number can be far less. As a result, recruiters spend too much time chasing down hiring managers, only to eventually find out that the roles are on hold, still require approval, or that the requisition really isn’t critical.

Simply put, it’s up to us as Recruitment and HR leaders to help “the business” understand their role as enablers, and dare I say, catalysts of the core issue. Through frequent and honest dialogue, we must work together to eliminate inefficiencies and free up capacity to find strong candidates, and fill “real” requisitions. Initially, this will require courage and patience, and you should expect to face resistance from hiring managers who may not understand your message. But with a consultative approach that shows how and why this impacts the overall organization, you will prevail and eliminate the need to hire additional resources to keep up with demand.

5. Leveraging Social Media

Let’s switch gears now and consider how others save money while sourcing for quality talent. For insights on this, I turned to Amit Hinduja, a senior sourcing specialist and social media recruiter. Many of the tools and techniques Amit uses to find candidates are free. For example, a recent hire of his came from Whatsapp: a mobile messaging app. The following are based on his experience in utilizing social media:

  • Get Social. Leading organizations that integrate social media into their overall recruitment process see a number of benefits. They include a reduction in “time to fill,” unlimited opportunities for generating leads, finding candidates faster, and building pipelines of passive candidates for future requirements. If your organization hasn’t adopted a comprehensive approach to leveraging social media, its time to give it a further look. There are numerous opportunities for cost savings.
  • Talent Analytics (Big Data). Social media allows you to easily monitor and manage results, including what’s working and what isn’t. For example, you can track activity to see how and where candidates engage with your brand and career opportunities. Of particular importance is that you can redeploy resources and budget to the areas and tools that generate the largest impact, and eliminate unnecessary spending.
  • Go Where the Candidates Are. Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the most common sources for candidates on social media. However, other channels should be mined as well because by putting sole focus on the “big 3” your team can be wasting valuable time and missing out on other, more potent sources for talent. For example, to source for technology consultants Amit visits free sites like Stackoverflow, Stackexchange and Superuser. For requirements within the graphic and UI/UX design space, he uses Dribble, Medium and Artfox. In planning a bit upfront, he applies a targeted effort in the direction that yields him the best, quickest and most cost effective results. As with all points mentioned above, Amit stresses that social media is simply one tool within an overall talent attraction strategy. It is, however, an important one as its value evolves, expands and continues to influence how organizations acquire talent.

The Bottom-Line

While a lean approach to acquiring talent is invariably the preferred one, leaders who anticipate continued growth and hiring would be well served to consider all of the options listed above. We have put them in practice both at The Talent Company and for our clients, and I can assure you that they work and save money. With that being said, they also require an experienced talent leader, appropriate internal support, knowledgeable external counsel, and most of all: patience. But the rewards are well worth the effort, if only to establish beyond any doubt that we do have options and doing things “the way we’ve always done them” may be the easier decision, but certainly not the best nor the most effective one.

 

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Joe Minaudo is the leader of the Strategy and Transformation practice with The Talent Company (www.thetalent.co), a human resources consulting firm that works closely with clients to develop, optimize and innovate their Recruitment and Talent practices. Joe possesses more than 15 years of recruitment, talent management and workforce planning experience. He has lead recruitment and workforce planning functions for both international and global Big 4 consulting firms. Joe can be found at the following social channels LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

Amit Hinduja is an innovative Talent hunter who uses social media platforms as his playground. His expertise is in social media recruiting, online research, competitive intelligence, community management and training. He has consulted for Fortune 500 companies, presented at a number of recruitment conferences and participates in panel discussions with universities and colleges around the world.  Amit can be found at the following social channels LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+.

 

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April 24, 2015

7 Reasons Why Recruitment Should Partner with Marketing

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7 Reasons Why Recruitment Should Partner with Marketing

Every organization reaches a point where its ability to attract new talent demands a new, creative approach. The old way simply doesn’t cut it anymore, and hiring managers grow impatient. So where does one find new inspiration?

Acquiring talent is undeniably similar to marketing. In marketing, as in finding talent, customers (and candidates) must be engaged, convinced and nurtured before a sale (or hire) is completed.

Ultimately, any organization that is struggling to keep up and compete for talent would be remiss to not leverage its internal marketing expertise. Here are a few marketing themes to help reposition an organization on a path to success:

  1. Create a positive experience every time. Some of the largest organizations in the world spend millions of dollars to ensure that customer touch points are positive – which, ultimately, improves the customer experience and drives up revenue. The same principle can be applied to the candidate interview experience. The consequences of a poor interview experience last far beyond the interview itself, as colleagues, friends and family surely come to know about it. It’s key for organizations to ensure that every candidate interaction is positive.
  2. Use job posting titles to engage. A job title is an opportunity to stand out and engage talent. How can any recruiter expect to engage quality talent with a title as unoriginal as Network Administrator? Organizations should use this opportunity (or “copy space” as marketers refer to it) to educate candidates on what makes the organization unique and sets it apart. For example World Class International Organization in Search of Network Infrastructure Star is sure to get much more positive attention – not to mention clicks and inquiries.
  3. Leverage other channels. Attracting talent these days is so competitive, that in many organizations opportunities remain unfilled for months. However, with the volume of tools and people available, there’s no reason for this! I have over 1,000 connections on LinkedIn, who, in turn, connect me to nearly 1,600,000 people (via extended networks). That’s a lot of extra people to help put an opportunity in front of the right candidate. Don’t forget to engage your extended network and ask for help to spread the word! A word of caution however: reciprocity is key. You, too, must be willing to share opportunities when asked. Another channel to consider is recruitment vendors. They’re an extension of an organization. Just remember that to ensure that they have the right collateral and share appropriate messaging on your organizations behalf.
  4. Create content worth sharing. Content (such as a job description) should do more than just communicate job details. Rather, it can be used to establish brand, convey key differentiators, and elevate an organization as a leading employer – provided, of course, that the content is worth sharing. If so, then one of the most potent and inexpensive ways to spread the word is through social media; especially now that integrated communication features such as Share, Like, Re-Tweet and Pin It make it effortless for people to share compelling content.
  5. Repeat and schedule updates. Another great social media feature is the ability to strategically position content in front of a target market when they’re most likely to read it. Many social media aggregators make it easy to schedule and repeatedly distribute content. It’s like running a 30-second commercial during the Super Bowl because the content is distributed to a targeted and engaged audience. And best of all, it’s free!
  6. Build and foster communities. A well-developed community engages people and allows them to remain connected to an organization’s brand. Communities come in different forms and sizes, including simple LinkedIn groups and Facebook pages, to comprehensive alumni programs that provide key market updates, attract new talent, and foster new business leads. A well-maintained community builds brand awareness, creates interest, and can be a fantastic source for new and engaged candidates.
  7. Conduct market research. Prior to entering a new market or launching a new product, organizations conduct research to understand market influences, identify obstacles to success, and discover how to best position their product or service. Talent attraction can certainly follow that lead. It amazes me how often talent is described as “one of the top two most important assets for an organization,” and yet it’s rarely given the same resources and budget as a marketing strategy. Market research enables organizations to gain insights on what influences and motivates top talent to consider new career opportunities.

While each of the themes above are beneficial, frankly, the only way to measurably take recruiting to the next level is to embed the principles of marketing within every aspect of an organization’s talent attraction strategy. This includes identifying, engaging, nurturing, and onboarding talent.

Of course, all of this begs the question: “What about organizations that lack the required marketing resources, or whose marketing department barely helps out with simple branding initiatives — let alone all of this extra talent attraction stuff?”

This is a valid concern and common challenge. To find an answer, I consulted a number of marketing leaders within my network. All of their feedback boiled down to this: talent attraction functions must do their homework, build a business case, and convince leadership that it is a worthy investment for additional marketing resources and budget.

In addition, organizations are wise to socialize what they want to achieve by seeking the advice of marketing leaders – because they likely know how, and how not, to proceed. At the same time, bringing marketing leaders into the conversation helps build early consensus and support, which is typically a deciding factor to the executive who will (or won’t) be releasing the additional budget.

As the global economy continues to improve, the fight for talent will grow with intensity. It will be a difficult challenge for many companies. Traditional methods of attracting talent are becoming less useful, and so the need for a different approach is growing. And on a humanistic level, how we interact has also evolved as social media empowers the average person to become more collaborative, bold and influential as opinions are voiced live and with a global reach. One poor interview experience with a candidate, and hundreds — if not thousands — will know about it in a matter of days (sometimes hours).

What this also means is that the close alignment between marketing and talent attraction needs to be more prevalent – and not just to avoid negative candidate feedback, but as a means to better understand and engage hard-to-find talent tactically and strategically.

My opinion is that we hit an inflexion point a while ago, and that talent attraction’s next frontier is clearly a partnership with marketing.

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Joe Minaudo is the leader of the Recruitment Strategy and Transformation practice with The Talent Company (www.thetalent.co), a human resources consulting firm that works closely with clients to develop, optimize and innovate their HR, Recruitment and Talent practices. Joe possesses more than 15 years of recruitment, talent management and workforce planning experience. He has lead recruitment and workforce planning functions for both international and global Big 4 consulting firms. Joe can be found at the following social tools LinkedIn and Twitter.

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April 15, 2015

The 3 Steps to Talent Optimization

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First of all, what is Talent Optimization?

I get asked this question often and usually by individuals who confuse it with the function of talent development or talent management within their organization.

My definition of Talent Optimization is simply the alignment between the business strategy and the plan for your most important organizational asset, your talent.

It involves three critical steps:

  1. Start with your business strategy and assess its impacts on your talent needs.

The business strategy needs to be at the core of talent optimization.  The business strategy has to drive the desired organization talent outcomes.  Every talent initiative your organization develops, sponsors and participates in must be steered directly from where the business wants to go.  Without this alignment back to your business strategy your organization is simply wasting its time, efforts and money for initiatives that aren’t supporting what is important to your organization’s success.  So many companies have invested heavily in talent focused programs and initiatives over the years which look great…..but many times when I ask them why the created the program they aren’t able to align the purpose of their high visibility programs back to the business strategy.  Simply put, these companies have spent lots of money on “window dressings” and failed to focus their investments into ones that will shape their organization’s talent to where it needs to go.

  1. Assess your current talent to effectively understand current skills and capabilities.

Similar to analyzing the value of an organization’s asset, understanding your organization’s own talent and their capabilities is another critical factor within talent optimization.  Companies need to properly gauge their own talent’s skills, abilities, and limitations to effectively understand the gaps between their current talent and the desired skills and abilities needed to successfully achieve their business strategy and goals.  Very few companies are able to do this successfully.  Most companies understand the skills and competencies needed within each role but fail to understand the full capabilities and experiences of the talent working within that role.  Companies recruit and hire simply to fill their roles and fail to recognize the other skills, abilities and experiences of the new hire beyond the requirements the role.  There are so many great tools and technologies available for organizations to gain a better understanding of their talent which is essential to building an effective organization talent strategy and plan.

  1. Move, develop and recruit talent successfully to meet the organizational needs and goals.

An organization’s ability to effectively move, develop and recruit talent is the third critical factor for an organization to optimize talent.  Companies must be self-aware and understand their true capabilities within talent management, talent development and talent acquisition.  An organization who isn’t effective in managing and developing their own talent will need to rely more on hiring new talent to fulfill the requirements of the business strategy.  The organization must understand the limitations of their talent function and make the appropriate decision to either invest quickly in resolving their functional deficiencies or work around them.

Talent optimization starts at the top of the organization and shouldn’t be just another HR exercise which the executive team and the rest of the organization isn’t fully supporting.  Talent optimization is an organizational function – not just an HR function.

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Simon Parkin is the Practice Leader for HR, Recruitment and Talent Management Solutions at The Talent Company – www.thetalent.co  Simon is recognized as a global thought leader in the acquisition and management of talent and has successfully transformed the Talent function for organizations of all sizes. Simon works closely with clients to build, develop and innovate their Recruitment, Talent and HR functions. He is a former global leader of Recruitment and Talent for a Fortune 100 company. Simon is a featured speaker at a number of HR and Recruitment conferences across North America and an author of many acclaimed articles on innovative Recruitment, Talent and HR trends and best practices. Simon’s full profile can be found at http://ca.linkedin.com/in/simonparkin1 and he can be reached at simon.parkin@thetalent.co

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April 6, 2015

Are HR & CEO’s Headed For A Showdown?

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There is definitely a showdown coming. In fact, it may have already arrived. A recent Universum study stated that the “schism within organizations around issues of talent attraction, employer branding and retention have simmered for more than a decade.” In response China Gorman, CEO of the Great Places to Work Institute, wrote on Tuesday that she believes that a massive showdown is coming between HR and CEOs. While I obviously share her belief that the showdown is coming, I don’t agree that HR will be on the losing side.

Call me an optimist but I’m not the only one. In The Talent Company’s HR Pulse study we surveyed human resources professionals globally on the state of HR. The results of this study show that HR’s mood is positive; more than 50% of our respondents indicated that their HR team has improved in the last year.

Let’s look closer at the current state of talent. In their annual CEO survey PwC revealed that 63% of CEO’s are concerned about talent shortages and the availability of key skills. They’re right to be worried.

Study after study has identified talent as a significant gap. For instance, in our recent Pulse on Leadership study, The Talent Company surveyed HR and Business Leaders and fully 54% of our respondents gave their organization a failing grade on identifying current and future leaders. Furthermore, 78% of respondents said that HR needs to be more proactive in partnering with business leadership to develop talent programs.

Why is HR failing at their mandate? The Conference Board says the reasons are varied but attributes it primarily to human resources still being viewed as a support function, administrative overload, HR’s inability to invest in long-term strategic planning and a lack of critical business skills (such as data-driven analysis or forecasting) on the part of HR leaders.

So, you may ask why we’re feeling positive. Again, looking at our HR Pulse results we can see that in the last year HR effectiveness has improved due to process improvements and efficiencies, companies adding key HR expertise to support their growth agenda and better alignment between HR programs and business needs.

HR is finally getting a seat at the table as a strategic partner. The Society for Human Resources Management conducted a survey that indicates that “more than six out of ten HR professionals agreed that their head of HR was strongly involved in business decisions at the board level”.

Now that we have a seat at the table we need to be less concerned with keeping that seat and focus on being able to influence the talent agenda. While the PwC global CEO survey reported that 93% of CEOs know they need to change their strategy to attract and retain talent, 61% of respondents admit they have not done so yet.

The time to act is now. Make the next year a period of change and transformation for your Human Resources and Talent functions.

First, ensure you are able to deliver on your core mandate. Continue to identify process improvements and use technology in smart ways to optimize transactional functions. More importantly, make sure that you retain your key Human Resources professionals.

Once the right team and tools are in place, your Human Resources team members can become true HR Business Partners who can deliver services in a consultative, forward thinking and innovative way.

My colleague, Gord MacDonald, succinctly summarized this approach as The 5 C’s Of Being A Business Consultant:

  • Provide Credible people leadership to the company, with an emphasis on the human versus the capital side of human capital.
  • Build a Collaborative company culture.
  • Leverage the uniqueness of the company Culture. Doing what is right for the company.
  • Influence appropriate Change management at the organizational level.
  • Know what Customers want from the business.

In summary, our HR Pulse results revealed that HR’s top three priorities for the next year are talent and leadership development, talent acquisition and a focus on employee engagement. Focusing on these priorities will help ensure HR are successfully contributing to company growth and profitability.

 

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Kathleen Jinkerson is the Director of HR & Talent Solutions with The Talent Company, a human resources consulting firm that works closely with clients to develop, optimize and innovate their Talent practices. Kathleen possesses almost 10 years of experience in partnering with organizations to help them build their talent capacity as well as their HR and leadership teams. Kathleen is very active on both LinkedIn and Twitter.

 

For more information on The Talent Company and our customized solutions, visit www.thetalent.co

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March 26, 2015

12 Traits of a Great Leader

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People know effective leadership when they see it and simply holding a position in leadership doesn’t make someone a good leader. A great leader strives to help others reach their goals; they are always developing themselves, and act as a visionary for their organization.  Fresh from The Talent Company’s new Pulse on Leadership study (http://thetalent.co/pulseonleadership/), we asked the study’s participants what they considered to be the top traits of a great leader.

Here are the Top 12 Traits of a Great Leader:

#12 – Open & Trusted – People want to work for a leader they can trust−a leader that has morals,  values, and integrity. An open and trusted leader will always get more from their team and have a stronger following. Leaders new to their role and/or to their team need to build their credibility and trust from their team over time. Unfortunately trust is a trait that can be lost quickly. Be honest, fair, candid and forthright, and treat everyone in the same way that you yourself would want to be treated.

#11 – Sense of Humour – A sense of humour shows your employees that you are more than a leader, and that you aren’t a machine, which encourages them to feel comfortable around you.

#10 – Empathetic – People want their leader to have a caring side. Great leaders care about their  people, not just about the business. It’s not about their ego, it’s about humility. It’s not about fulfilling  personal agendas, it’s about helping their people to be successful.

#9 – Self-Awareness – A great leader not only understands the many different traits needed to effectively lead others; they also have a strong awareness of their own qualities, strengths and areas to continuing to develop themselves. When they look into the mirror, they see who they really are and how others see them versus who they imagine they are.

#8 – Passionate & Optimistic – People want to work with and for people who lift them up instead of dragging them down. A great leader seeks out the positives in their people, helping them overcome their own feelings of self-doubt and spreading passion and optimism throughout the organization. Passion is infectious. Others will feel it and want to get on board with you.

#7 – Results Focused – At the end of the day as a leader you are responsible for delivering results. What really counts is what is accomplished. Great leaders spend their energy on the most effective actions and activities to achieve the greatest outcomes.

#6 – Personal Accountability – A great leader takes ownership of situations that they are involved in. They see them through and take responsibility for what happens – both good or bad. They don’t point fingers and blame others when things go wrong but do their best to make things right.

#5 – Talent Focused – To become a great leader, you must build and develop a great team. The ability to recruit great new talent while focusing on the individual and collective growth and development of your team is often overlooked as a trait of a great leader. How can you as a leader be successful if you don’t have great talent around you?

#4 – Strong Communicator – Communication is one of the fundamental capabilities of a great leader.  Communication is a two-way conversation with listening as important as speaking. Great leaders listen more than they speak and the more personal and engaging the conversation is, the more effective it will be.

#3 – Supportive – A great leader supports their team members by creating an environment where it is safe to take risks, be honest, speak up and reach their potential. Truly effective leaders not only recognize potential, they feed it, prepare it, and allow their team to exercise it. They know when to shield their team from controversy, protect them and keep them focused on the most important tasks.

#2 – Commitment – Nothing shows commitment and humility like getting your hands dirty with the rest of your team. Showing your commitment sets the example for others to follow, and leads to greater loyalty and respect for you as a leader.

#1 – Inspiration & Vision – A great leader is able to paint a vivid picture of where their team and organization is headed. Try to paint and communicate a vision of the future that inspires your people to do whatever it takes to get there. People want to work toward something they believe in – it gives your team a reason to work, to succeed, and to do their best in everything they do.

 

Leadership doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and it can’t be learned overnight. To be successful as a leader, you must approach it as a long-term journey of continuous reflection and self-improvement.

For more results from The Talent Company’s Pulse on Leadership study please click here http://thetalent.co/pulseonleadership/

Pulse on Leadership

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Simon Parkin is the Practice Leader for Recruitment and Talent Management Solutions at The Talent Company – http://www.thetalent.co      Simon is recognized as a global thought leader in the acquisition and management of talent and has successfully transformed the Talent function for organizations of all sizes.  Simon works closely with clients to build, develop and innovate their Recruitment, Talent and HR functions. He is a former global leader of Recruitment and Talent for a Fortune 100 company.  Simon is a featured speaker at a number of HR and Recruitment conferences across North America and an author of many acclaimed articles on innovative Recruitment, Talent and HR trends and best practices. Simon can be reached at simon.parkin@thetalent.co

For more information on The Talent Company please visit www.thetalent.co

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January 8, 2015

The Talent Company Announces The Results Of Its Pulse on Leadership Study

 

Pulse on Leadership

Markham, Ontario, Canada – January 8, 2015 – The Talent Company, a management consulting firm specializing in human resources solutions announces the results of its most recent study – Pulse on Leadership.

The Talent Company launched the Pulse on Leadership study as a follow up to a recurring, yet important theme found in last year’s study HR Pulse. “Although it wasn’t a surprise to see the topic of leadership come up as being important to so many of our survey participants, it was very interesting to see how so many viewed it as the primary gap within their organization.” says Simon Parkin, Managing Partner at The Talent Company. “We knew with our newest Pulse on Leadership study this had to be explored further. I’m proud to say that our team has uncovered very compelling data which we’re excited to share with leaders and HR communities around the world”.

Individuals invited to participate in the Pulse on Leadership study included business leaders, HR professionals as well as employees with their own perspective and experiences on the topic of leadership.  A snapshot of the results from this study include:

  • Obstacles organizations face in developing an effective leadership development program.
  • The top leadership traits when comparing female versus male leaders.
  • The most popular methods that companies use to develop leaders.…..and much more

Results of the Pulse on Leadership study can be found by registering here (http://thetalent.co/pulseonleadership/)

“It was once again a pleasure to have been involved in this meaningful initiative with The Talent Company.  Insights within the HR and Talent space have always been of great interest to me.” says Brian Boudreau, Chief Insights Officer with Innovation Curation.  “This study was important for a variety of reasons but most importantly because of the prevalence and impact that strong leadership can have on company performance and the retention of talent.”

About The Talent Company

The Talent Company is a management consulting firm that specializes in human resources solutions.  We are an organization comprised of leading Human Resources, Talent Management, Recruitment, and Leadership experts with proven track records of client and organizational success.  Our collective resources, vast experience and extensive industry knowledge enhance our ability to deliver outstanding value to our clients.  For more information, please visit www.thetalent.co

About Innovation Curation

Innovation Curation is a market research firm that specializes in identifying and socializing insights on customers to orient and inspire value-creating strategy and tactics.  For more information, please visit www.innovationcuration.com

 

Inquiries:

Joe Minaudo

The Talent Company

joe.minaudo@thetalent.co

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December 15, 2014

12 Days of Talent: Day 2 – 2 Outcome-Focused Recruitment Metrics

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2  Outcome-Focused Recruitment Metrics

How many of us in recruiting are getting too caught up in recruitment metrics these days? We seem to feel that having data on every move a recruiter makes will lead to a better recruitment function. Are we focused on too many metrics in recruitment and are we in fact slowing down the overall effectiveness of our function by creating a too heavily measured environment? And do our business leaders really care about all of these metrics?

We need to be concerned with the engagement levels of our recruiters who are in my opinion the most important factor in an effective recruitment function. Recruiters are getting frustrated with the increased level of measures being used to evaluate their performance. They dislike the increased time it is taking them away from core recruiting to provide data inputs used for reporting. We can’t forget about the importance of the engagement of our recruiters and ensuring metrics aren’t becoming a barrier or blockage to successful recruiting. We also don’t want to build an environment for our recruiters that make them feel and perform as if they are working in a call centre.

Don’t get me wrong, metrics can be a great way to tell a story or use to analyze potential problems within a recruitment function but I continue to hear stories of recruitment functions getting too caught up with metrics and spending too much time generating fancy looking reports full of data that they think the business wants to see.

Let’s think of what is important from the business perspective – which should be what is the true outcome of our work and our impact to the organization’s bottom line.  That’s all they truly want to hear from us.  They aren’t interested in the thirty page presentation on how we decreased their cost per hire by 10% or improved the interview to hire ratio by 20%.

Our businesses all feel the pressure from their shareholders, their employees and their customers.  So from a business perspective, my 2 most important measures of recruitment are:

  • Quality of Hire
  • Service Delivery Excellence

Quality of Hire

This should measure the true outcome of the new hire’s performance and the direct impact to the organization’s bottom line. This measure can be taken in the new hires first 6 months or 1 year. Simply prequalify the primary goals or targets of the new hire with the hiring leader prior to hiring for the role. Did the new hire meet, exceed, or fail to meet these goals or targets. If the new hire exceeded their goals, what was the direct impact to the organization – this is the ultimate outcome and my recommended measure of recruitment success.

Recruiter Service Delivery

This should measure how effective the recruiter was in delivering the recruitment service to their client, the hiring leader. This measure should be taken following the new hires start with the organization and can be done using a simple survey asking if the recruiter met, exceeded, or failed to meet their expectations in terms of process and outcome.  Expectation setting with hiring leaders is a major component of this measure and only helps when measuring a hiring leader’s satisfaction with the performance of the recruiter and the function.  A great tool for recruiters to use with their hiring leaders is a service level agreement which sets the expectations of the relationship and service on both sides.

So the next time you are looking through endless pages of recruitment data, ask yourself is this the data most important to me and the business?

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Simon Parkin is the Practice Leader for HR, Recruitment and Talent Management Solutions at The Talent Company – www.thetalent.co  Simon is recognized as a global thought leader in the acquisition and management of talent and has successfully transformed the Talent function for organizations of all sizes. Simon works closely with clients to build, develop and innovate their Recruitment, Talent and HR functions. He is a former global leader of Recruitment and Talent for a Fortune 100 company. Simon is a featured speaker at a number of HR and Recruitment conferences across North America and an author of many acclaimed articles on innovative Recruitment, Talent and HR trends and best practices. Simon’s full profile can be found at http://ca.linkedin.com/in/simonparkin1 and he can be reached at simon.parkin@thetalent.co

For more information on The Talent Company and our 12 Days of Talent project, visit www.thetalent.co

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December 12, 2014

12 Days of Talent: Day 3 – The 3 Steps in Talent Optimization

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The 3 Steps in Talent Optimization

First of all, what is Talent Optimization?

I get asked this question often and usually by individuals who confuse it with the function of talent development or talent management within their organization.

My definition of Talent Optimization is simply the alignment between the business strategy and the plan for your most important organizational asset, your talent.

It involves three critical steps:

  1. Start with your business strategy and assess its impacts on your talent needs.

The business strategy needs to be at the core of talent optimization.  The business strategy has to drive the desired organization talent outcomes.  Every talent initiative your organization develops, sponsors and participates in must be steered directly from where the business wants to go.  Without this alignment back to your business strategy your organization is simply wasting its time, efforts and money for initiatives that aren’t supporting what is important to your organization’s success.  So many companies have invested heavily in talent focused programs and initiatives over the years which look great…..but many times when I ask them why the created the program they aren’t able to align the purpose of their high visibility programs back to the business strategy.  Simply put, these companies have spent lots of money on “window dressings” and failed to focus their investments into ones that will shape their organization’s talent to where it needs to go.

  1. Assess your current talent to effectively understand current skills and capabilities.

Similar to analyzing the value of an organization’s asset, understanding your organization’s own talent and their capabilities is another critical factor within talent optimization.  Companies need to properly gauge their own talent’s skills, abilities, and limitations to effectively understand the gaps between their current talent and the desired skills and abilities needed to successfully achieve their business strategy and goals.  Very few companies are able to do this successfully.  Most companies understand the skills and competencies needed within each role but fail to understand the full capabilities and experiences of the talent working within that role.  Companies recruit and hire simply to fill their roles and fail to recognize the other skills, abilities and experiences of the new hire beyond the requirements the role.  There are so many great tools and technologies available for organizations to gain a better understanding of their talent which is essential to building an effective organization talent strategy and plan.

  1. Move, develop and recruit talent successfully to meet the organizational needs and goals.

An organization’s ability to effectively move, develop and recruit talent is the third critical factor for an organization to optimize talent.  Companies must be self-aware and understand their true capabilities within talent management, talent development and talent acquisition.  An organization who isn’t effective in managing and developing their own talent will need to rely more on hiring new talent to fulfill the requirements of the business strategy.  The organization must understand the limitations of their talent function and make the appropriate decision to either invest quickly in resolving their functional deficiencies or work around them.

Talent optimization starts at the top of the organization and shouldn’t be just another HR exercise which the executive team and the rest of the organization isn’t fully supporting.  Talent optimization is an organizational function – not just an HR function.

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Simon Parkin is the Practice Leader for HR, Recruitment and Talent Management Solutions at The Talent Company – www.thetalent.co  Simon is recognized as a global thought leader in the acquisition and management of talent and has successfully transformed the Talent function for organizations of all sizes. Simon works closely with clients to build, develop and innovate their Recruitment, Talent and HR functions. He is a former global leader of Recruitment and Talent for a Fortune 100 company. Simon is a featured speaker at a number of HR and Recruitment conferences across North America and an author of many acclaimed articles on innovative Recruitment, Talent and HR trends and best practices. Simon’s full profile can be found at http://ca.linkedin.com/in/simonparkin1 and he can be reached at simon.parkin@thetalent.co

For more information on The Talent Company and our 12 Days of Talent project, visit www.thetalent.co

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December 11, 2014

12 Days of Talent: Day 4 – 4 Reasons Why Onboarding Is Your Competitive Advantage

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4 Reasons Why Onboarding Is Your Competitive Advantage

In a world of hyper efficiency and doing more with less, Onboarding for most is an aspect focused on short-term tasks and getting a new hire settled in. It often starts with being brought to their desk, given a laptop, asked to setup their voicemail, email and then of course, the journey starts to fill out copious forms and reading through mind numbing company documents that “help you get familiar with us”. Our view is that this common approach is too systematic and critically void of what Onboarding is truly supposed to be – a human experience.

Onboarding is not a checklist, nor should it be an attempt to get a new hire to a desk and setup. It is a unique opportunity to show your new member that your external brand mirrors your internal brand. What is promoted externally as a wonderful place to build a career is not only words on a website but is in fact tangible and can be experienced within every aspect of your organization. Additionally, Onboarding should be an experience that provides a new employee with the opportunity to engage, socialize, understand your company’s culture and embrace its core values.

For the few that recognize Onboarding as a competitive edge, it is considered a series of milestones that can often last up to one year. For these exemplars, Onboarding includes mentoring and coaching, networking opportunities, formal goal setting, training, development plans and it is integrated into the talent management process and part of the overall talent strategy. Executing on this well not only produces an engaged employee but it also generates the following:

  1. New brand ambassadors for your company and, hopefully, a source for new and otherwise untapped candidate pipelines
  2. Valuable competitive and industry intelligence
  3. Robustness in your talent management program as existing employees are given opportunities to expand their skills beyond functional areas
  4. Leadership becoming more “connected” to their employee base.

Within these organizations, Onboarding is a shared accountability. It is not the responsibility of HR but rather includes the contribution of many. More importantly, the onus resides with the performance manager to ensure the new hire has a successful first year.

Companies that view Onboarding as a set of painful steps facilitated by checklists are missing out on a unique opportunity. It is a short window of opportunity that provides you with a chance to connect, engage and develop the talent that you have hired, not another number that is added to a report.

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Joe Minaudo is the leader of the Recruitment Strategy and Transformation practice with The Talent Company (www.thetalent.co), a human resources consulting firm that works closely with clients to develop, optimize and innovate their Recruitment and Talent practices. Joe possesses more than 15 years of recruitment, talent management and workforce planning experience. He has lead recruitment and workforce planning functions for both international and global Big 4 consulting firms. Joe can be found at the following social tools LinkedIn and Twitter.

For more information on The Talent Company and our 12 Days of Talent project, visit www.thetalent.co

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December 10, 2014

12 Days of Talent: Day 5 – 5 Steps To Building Proactive Pipelines of External Talent

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5 Steps To Building Proactive Pipelines of External Talent

One of the continuing challenges facing the Recruitment function is moving from the traditional, reactive and primarily transactional focus to a proactive and enhanced recruitment model.

Think about when you sit down with your hiring leaders to scope a new open position and the role details. When you ask the hiring leaders for a proposed start date for a new hire, how many of them responded with “ASAP” or “yesterday”? How many of your hiring leaders complain about the time it takes to recruit talent externally? And how many of us recruiters continue to get frustrated with these unrealistic pressures from hiring leaders? We know that for the most part, top external talent just doesn’t fall into our laps.

Effective sourcing takes time especially for tougher and more specialized positions to fill.

Over the past few years, I have been working with clients to build and develop effective proactive pipelines of top external talent. Building this type of pipeline isn’t for the light-hearted; it takes time and effort and requires planning, proper resourcing, as well as a skilled recruiter. The planning and the resourcing are the keys to success – proactive pipelining cannot be successfully implemented without the appropriate amount of time devoted to this initiative by a skilled sourcer and recruiter.

The return on investment of proactive pipelining is more than worth the effort. I have witnessed first-hand the enhanced quality of hire via this proactive channel as time is no longer the recruiter’s enemy. Beyond quality of hire, the average time to fill a position is reduced by on average 10-12 days as the sourcing of the top external talent has already been completed prior to the position becoming open.

So how do you get started with building these proactive pipelines of external talent? I look at it as a simple 5 step process:

Plan

Identify

Build

Manage

Execute

 

#1 – Plan

By far the most important step of this process is the planning. Within the planning stage you need to determine what position or positions you plan on building these pipelines for. I would recommend selecting only a few positions, those you and your business deem “critical” to your organization’s success and bottom line either now or within the next year. Determining what positions are “critical” is a difficult task. If you ask any hiring leader they will say that all of their open positions are “critical”. This will force you to walk a political tight rope to prioritize “criticalness”. You should work with the top-level business leaders to determine which positions they think are “critical”. Once you have your critical position(s) identified, you need to invest your time into understanding all about the position and why it would be attractive to potential candidates. Remember, as it is proactive, you are recruiting for a position that isn’t currently open. Knowing all the features and the upside of the position will allow you to effectively sell the potential opportunity to the top talent.

#2 – Identify

Once the planning is complete it is time to identify the top external talent in the market. This is where your skills as a top recruiter will come into play and requires you to be at the top of your game. I always go by the rule that the majority of the top talent in the external market is passive and not actively searching for a new opportunity. Your typical transactional and reactive recruitment sourcing channels won’t effectively work, so don’t count on simply posting the position to job boards as a solution to attract top talent. Be aggressive. Use your networks and referrals to determine who is at the top of their field within the market. Who is the top talent at your competition, or within a recognized leading top talent organization within your geographic area? Get out of the office and do some true recruiting to identify those resources outside your organization that will bring value and success to your company.

 #3 – Build

This is when you worry about getting them interested and excited about your organization. You have identified the individuals you think are the best of the best for the skill set you are looking for. Now it is time to determine the ideal approach to contact and sell to this talent in order to effectively build your proactive pipeline. Again, this is where a recruiter must be a “salesperson” and effectively sell the talent on the organization and the opportunities potentially coming in the future. You must be honest and set expectations that you are recruiting proactively for future opportunities and they have been identified to you as top talent within the market. Don’t be too aggressive with the candidate and always ask if it is alright to keep in touch within an agreed upon timeframe. Also use this opportunity to network further and ask for referrals for other positions you are recruiting for. Be careful to ensure the communication with these candidates is very positive and is a “win-win” for both the candidate and you as the recruiter.

#4 – Manage

By “Manage”, I mean, effectively manage your pipelined candidates. You need to ensure you nurture and speak with your pipelined candidates on a regular basis as was established and agreed upon when you first spoke with the candidates. If possible use technology to effectively document and track your pipeline – this is where a CRM tool could be effectively used by recruiters similar to the way salespeople use this tool for building and managing sales pipelines.

Steps 2, 3 and 4 are ongoing. You should always be on the lookout for new top talent externally and ensure you are effectively building and managing your pipelines. Again, this is an investment and will pay off when your organization most needs it to.

#5 – Execute

Step 5 is sometimes forgotten and it is simply to execute once one of your critical positions becomes open. Your sourcing is hopefully already complete and now when your hiring leaders answer your “when would you like the person to start” with “ASAP” you can pull out a slate of pre-sourced and qualified top external talent and sit back and relax………ok, maybe not relax but you will be feeling very good about your efforts as will your business leaders.

And of course, you need to continually monitor the success of your proactive pipelining efforts – how are you going to show your business leaders the ROI of your efforts?

Obviously there are many more details within each of these 5 steps to effectively build proactive pipelines of external talent and I hope this high level description provides insight into how to further add value to your organization’s hunt for key talent.

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 Simon Parkin is the Practice Leader for HR, Recruitment and Talent Management Solutions at The Talent Company – www.thetalent.co  Simon is recognized as a global thought leader in the acquisition and management of talent and has successfully transformed the Talent function for organizations of all sizes. Simon works closely with clients to build, develop and innovate their Recruitment, Talent and HR functions. He is a former global leader of Recruitment and Talent for a Fortune 100 company. Simon is a featured speaker at a number of HR and Recruitment conferences across North America and an author of many acclaimed articles on innovative Recruitment, Talent and HR trends and best practices. Simon’s full profile can be found at http://ca.linkedin.com/in/simonparkin1 and he can be reached at simon.parkin@thetalent.co

For more information on The Talent Company and our 12 Days of Talent project, visit www.thetalent.co

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