KeenHire Blog by Margaret Graziano

Do You Want to Profile Performance or Predict It?

A Commentary from Previsor on the Risks of Profiling in the use of Pre-Employment Psychometric Assessment Tools in building a Conscious Hiring Process. 

Overview
This commentary describes the profiling approach to using pre-employment psychometric assessments, compares it to the predictive approach to using assessments, and then contrasts these two very different approaches. It then describes the dramatically different results derived from an analysis in which the two methods were compared side-by-side in the selection process for a given organization. At KeenHire, we use both approaches in tandem to deliver the best hiring process to our customers. The Key is in the Role Analysis (referred to as job analysis in this article).

What is Profiling and How Does it Compare to the Predictive Model?
The profiling approach involves assessing a small group of employees that have been identified by the organization as high-performers, and using the resulting test scores to determine how to evaluate job candidates. Candidates whose assessment scores more closely resemble the scores obtained by the high-performers are judged to be better “fits” for the role, and are forecasted to be better hires. A predictive approach, by contrast, involves identifying job-relevant traits based on an in-depth job analysis, and selecting those candidates who earn higher scores on measures of those traits.

Seven Problems with the Profiling Approach to Assessment
Most assessment experts do not advocate using a profiling approach, even though it would be easy for them to implement, due to seven major problems with profiling. These are summarized below.

#1: The "Ceiling Effect" Problem
The scores obtained by the high-performing employees asked to complete the assessment define the ceiling—the maximum possible score that can be obtained on the assessment. This means that it is actually impossible to identify a candidate who is a better fit for the position than current high-performers. The high performers used to develop the model don’t just represent “desirable,” they represent “the best imaginable. ”The profiling model has no answer for the question, “If a candidate came along who was an even better fit for the position than your current high performers, how would you know?”

#2: The Not Enough Data Problem
The profiling approach relies on a large number of conclusions and decisions made on the basis of a very small amount of data. Profiling assumes that the test scores obtained from a handful of employees produces information that will be consistent with and generalizable to job candidates. But the unfortunate reality is that small data samples are very rarely conclusive. Models built on the basis of test scores from five people, or even fifteen people, are very unlikely to be accurate. They may not even be close, and can even lead to false conclusions. At KeenHire, we measure the actual on the job performance of every participant in the job benchmark study. If the on the job results are not exceptional, we encourage our customers to exclude that participant from the study.

#3: The (Non)Essential Trait Problem
Profiling is more likely to incorrectly identify unimportant traits as job-relevant, or overlook traits that are essential to job success. This is because the profiling approach is based on a few individuals and their traits, not on how relevant those traits are to the job demands or requirements. Maybe the handful of assessed employees just happen to share traits that are not actually job relevant. Maybe they differ on traits that are job relevant because one or two of them have learned to compensate for a limitation in one area with particular strengths in others. Maybe the traits common to the top-performers who were tested are the same traits possessed by weaker performers—but since weaker performers were not assessed as part of the approach, there is no way to know. Any of these possibilities would result in a profiling model that has no value in identifying future high performers.

#4: The “Over-Cloning” Problem
Profiling emphasizes similarities without any regard to whether or not they are important similarities. For example, if the profile is created based on a ten-scale personality instrument, but only four of those scales are actually relevant for success in the position, the organization is needlessly forcing consistency and uniformity in six areas. Good, high-potential candidates may be passed over because they are not sufficiently similar to current employees in areas that have no bearing on their likelihood of success. At KeenHire, our process begins with an Organizational Development approach. We work diligently to build a balanced organization by first digging deep into who the organization is, we seek to understand the current corporate culture, the desired culture, the strategic objectives and goals as well as the barriers to achievement.  We then assess and evaluate the Executive team,the mission critical and key contributors. We look for what is working, what is not and what is missing, the presence of which would make a difference. Only after we have a full picture of the current state and the desired future state do we make recommendations.  No one with any level of discernment or sanity really wants the "Stepford" culture. Most companies simply do not understand how to build a high performance culture. That is where we come in and make the difference.

Conscious Interviewing-Bring Science And Precision To Your Hiring Process

Behavioral Interviewing Certification Training

 

The Premise

Turnover cost the US economy over a billion dollars last year. What is it costing your organization? The estimated costs of a poor hire runs 3-7 x's of a roles salary.

 

No matter what type of organization you run the competition for mission critical high quality people is heating up. With costs rising and margins shrinking, no organization can afford unwanted employee turnover and money pouring out the door due to poor hires. When we say costs of a mis-hire, we don’t only mean in the wrong hires’ salary, we are talking about the management and training hours wasted, the unsatisfied customers, the compromised processes and employee morale issues - it all adds up.

 

Let’s face it in the world right now, your internal people resources is one of your only differentiating competitive advantages. For your company to sustain growth and be profitable it is critical that you hire effective difference makers who have the capacity to achieve your company's goals and objectives.

 

In KeenHire's Conscious Interviewing program you learn a proven, effective methodology and a process to attract and select the right people, for the right roles all the time.

 

 Click Here to register
 
The Program

The KeenHire™ Conscious Interviewing course trains and empowers recruitment professionals and hiring managers to learn interviewing strategies that help your company succeed.  At KeenHire we bring science and precision to the recruitment and hiring process® and we teach you how to do it too.  We train you to implement a Conscious interviewing process that saves your company time, money and effort while causing early engagement from your high potential candidates.

 

Join us for this hands on training workshop that encompasses every aspect of correctly utilizing targeted selection, behavioral interviewing and Role analysis in your employee selection process. You walk away with a thorough understanding of when to look for what types of behaviors, competencies and motivators and which types of questions to ask to hone in on specific behaviors as well as what answers to listen for and when to probe and when not to probe. In our full Conscious Interviewing course you actually have the opportunity to create 2 behavioral interview benchmarks that you can use immediatley. With each course registration you get a FREE 90 day subscription to KeenView - KeenHire's on line behavioral, values and competency based interviewing software.
 

The Take Aways
1. Develop a fundamental understanding and appreciation for why most bad hiring decisions are made in the first ten minutes of the interview. Learn interviewing strategies that help your company succeed.

2. Learn the foundation behind behavioral, competency and value based interviewing and why it is so important to utilize this diligent conscious interviewing process when hiring for high impact roles.
3. Gain faculty in uncovering the key performance indicators for each role.

4. Delve into all facets of what drives peak performance -motivations, ways of being, ways of thinking, and modes of interacting.

5. Improve your prowess in creating astute behavioral interviewing models that target the right fit.
6. Receive your Certification in Conscious Interviewing which includes; role analysis, top talent benchmarking, behavioral selection, behavioral interviewing and behavioral interviewing interpretation.

 

The Expert

Dr. Stephanie Marberry, Interviewing Strategies Consultant received her Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational and Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University.  As an originating partner at KeenHire Talent Management, Stephanie has consulted with small to mid-sized companies in High Touch and High Tech markets to improve their hiring efficiency and effectiveness through the implementation of customized selection systems. Dr. Marberry has a passion for educating others on current HR best practices by utilizing the appropriate scientific tools and methods to identify, select, develop, and retain top talent. Her facilitative training style encourages discussion and application, allowing her participants to gain a clear understanding on how to implement the techniques into their own business processes.

  

Want to Bring a KeenHire Consultant In-house?

Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 8 weekly 90 minute sessions and begin on Friday afternoons June 18, August 9, September 17 at 12:00 p.m. pst and costs $499.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click Here to register.

 

Can't make time for training, visit the KeenHire on line store and purchase tools, workbooks, scripts, manuals, assessments, CD's, DVD's, books and more.

 

Conscious Hiring-Maximize Your Hiring Effectiveness!

An Effective & Operationally Efficient Talent Delivery Model for Astute Employers

 

The Premise

Fundamental to building an organization with the best resources is implementing a hiring process that attracts the right people, screens and assesses that those people have the right stuff to do the job in the right way and engages the right people to come on board ready to hit the ground running! KeenHire Conscious Hiring training enables you to learn interviewing strategies and helps your company succeed.

 

Companies with a very specific purpose and mission require a strategic Talent Acquisition plan and a carefully defined new employee selection process to get them where they are going. Business leaders of these organizations know that the success of their organization depends on the quality of the people inside. A Conscious Hiring process takes into account the purpose and result base for each employment position in the company, then it looks to your business philosophies, company mission, vision and core values. Only after the core business objectives are considered is an astute employee screening, selection process and interview strategy implemented.  KeenHire Talent Management’s Conscious-Hiring process trains and enables you to identify the right people for the right roles while causing early engagement of the right people throughout the hiring process.

A fundamental aspect of a Conscious-Hiring process is systematically integrating and on boarding each new hire into your organization.

One of your only competitive advantages is the how your mission critical, key contributor and next level leaders solve your company's business issues, execute your companies mission, run the operations and interact with your customers.  In a nutshell the success of your company hinges on its ability to recruit, interview, hire and retain its employee talent base wisely.

Make no mistake about it, your hiring decisions make or break your business. What you don’t know will cost you: training time, management time and workforce productivity losses, company morale and employee productivity, new sales and customers. The bottom line is if you want a healthy EBITA you must run an organization with the right profit minded, effective and 'can do' people. KeenHire Conscious Hiring training enables you to learn interviewing strategies and helps your company succeed.

A holistic Conscious Hiring process empowers you to hire right the first time, every time.

The Program
•Change the way you think about your employees' impact on your business

•Raise the level of influence and span of control your Recruitment and Employee Selection process  

  has on your company's overall organizational effectiveness

•Learn how to avoid common interviewing traps & mitigate hiring risk

•Hone in on the key elements of building a systematic results based Conscious-Hiring process

•Hire right the first time and increase your employee ROI

 

 The Takeaways

1. Walk away with a blueprint for creating a highly effective Conscious-Hiring process
2. Learn to conduct Role Analysis, the organizational development approach to scoping the role
3. Study a step-by-step process for Choosing Your Talent Wisely and hiring with your head
4. Understand how to use, select and administer psychometric assessment tools
5. Review Behavioral Interviewing techniques; the when, why and hows

The Expert

Dr. Stephanie Marberry, Interviewing Strategies Consultant, received her Ph.D. in Industrial Organizational and Social Psychology from Northern Illinois University.  As an originating partner at KeenHire Talent Management, Stephanie has consulted with small to mid-sized companies in High Touch and High Tech markets to improve their hiring efficiency and effectiveness through the implementation of customized selection systems. Dr. Marberry has a passion for educating others on current HR best practices by utilizing the appropriate scientific tools and methods to identify, select, develop, and retain top talent. Her facilitative training style encourages discussion and application, allowing her participants to gain a clear understanding on how to implement the techniques into their own business processes.

 

Want to Bring a KeenHire Interview Strategies Consultant In-house? Call Today! 1-888-533-6447

 

Registration

Virtual Courses consist of 4 weekly 2 hour sessions on Fridays at 12:00 p.m. pacific and begin on June 18, August 9, September 17 and costs $399.00 per person. Save 30% overall when you register 3 or more participants. Click here to register for Conscious Hiring.

 

Can't make time for training, visit the KeenHire on line store and purchase tools, workbooks, scripts, manuals, assessments, CD's, DVD's, books and more.

Are Mo, Larry And Curly Doing Your Hiring?

I'm serious.

Let's get real, have you ever hired someone you knew little about for a job you knew less about? It happens to all of us.

I started my own company, for the 1st time when I was 29 years old. I had a pre teenager, a young son at home and a new baby due any day. 

The company I was with was shutting down, literally, that night. The girls and I took our stuff and needed a place to go, FAST.  I had no operations experience, no management experience, no finance, no marketing and certainly no technology experience. I had no operational infrastructure, organizational design or business plan.  We had a couple desks, a phone and a hard floor. Failure was not an option, as I was the breadwinner.

Our first year we did $1,000,000.00 in sales, we had a temp division and a direct hire team. As I began to think about growing, I started to hire. I hired people who reminded me of me. Imagine that? In one year I hired 35 people. All failed, were fired, quit or stayed far....far too long.

I was a producer and I knew how to make the donuts, fry them up in a pan, serve seconds and then make more donuts. I did this over and over again for over a decade. It was who I was.  When the Pinnacle Society accepted my application I was flabbergasted. My billing status was a pretty big deal. I was good at this job.  So, the technician became a business owner, not out of a carefully designed plan, out of survival. 

The bottom line is in 10 years I spun through over 100 people. Some commission, some not. When I spoke to other business owners in the Staffing and Recruitment Industry, I was told this is what we get; our industry has an extremely high turnover, deal with it.  My paradigm for the staffing industry was developed on my first job.  I was brought up in a company that hired 10 people per month and if 1 was left at the end of the year, that was a victory. The difference between them and me, was that they had a person whose only job was to hire, train and churn people. I was the biller, owner, sales rep, recruiting manager, HR, and the so-called trainer.

Given my strong willed personality and insatiable appetite to get better, I knew I had to change, so I went to my Vistage chair (formerly known as TEC).  Mike Donahoe sat me down and we looked at what the high turnover, poor hiring practices and mediocre on-boarding was costing me. I knew it was costing me (Download The_cost_of_a_mishire) money, I never considered it was costing me time with my kids, happiness and fulfillment. That meeting changed my life. 

My coach had me take the income I earned in one year and divide it by the amount of hours in a work week.  Then he had me research how long each hire was with me, and the amount of my time was spent training, coaching, fixing, correcting, answering questions and un-ruffling feathers. Then he worked with me to figure out the cost to the organization in terms of lost sales, unhappy customers, unfilled orders. 

Then he had me take a calculator to it. The impact was astounding.

It was then, the fall of 2002; I chose to become a Manager. I chose to be a business leader that is effective at hiring and selecting employees, managing performance, on-boarding, compensation, employee engagement and retention.  Choosing was just the beginning; I then had to learn how. It did not happen right away, it took a ton of work. However, when I finally got it, I got it.

Before I knew it Alliance HR Network (my previous company) was training our customer's HR departments, Corporate Recruiters and their front line Chicago area Managers how to hire, on board and manage their new employees. The better I got, the better they got. 

When we surveyed our customers they told us they would like to see us offer more 'people consulting' services, such as performance management, hiring process training, human resource consulting, new hire selection, employee on boarding, employee retention and succession planning consulting for the people we placed and some of their key players. Our first projects were about installing effective hiring processes for growing companies.

In companies where the hiring process used to be a game of golf and a shot of Jack, they upgraded to using psychometric assessment tools in addition to an M interview and a behavioral interview to evaluate candidates. In Chicago area technology start ups, where normally a skill on a resume gets an interview, they upgraded their hiring process to glean the right behaviors, competencies and emotional intelligence required by the role. Skills are a given, they wanted more than skill from their technical consultants, they wanted to achieve corporate effectiveness through each and every hire.  Since those early days I have worked with many companies on different variations of our service offerings from Recruitment Process in Sourcing, RPI to Employee Retention consulting. More often than not we are bringing our recruitment, hiring, employee selection and on-boarding knowledge and processes to companies who have little or no internal Recruitment and Talent Management infrastructure.

I find it interesting, funny and amazing that most companies do not put more of a strategic emphasis on who they hire. The ones who do have sky rocketed in sales, in innovation, in service and in customer retention. The ones who don't, well maybe that is one of the reasons they fade away. Progressive, hiring savvy companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Enterprise Leasing, etc. do a very good job of following a hiring process, but most of the rest, from the perspective of over two thousand corporate recruiters and executive search consultants, don't even come close. They treat hiring like a crap-shoot or a collaborative popularity contest.

My question to a CEO of a growing organization is, "Why would you have a C player interviewing potential candidates?". I have heard jokes cracked that Mo, Larry and Curly led the interview in unison. People who have never been trained in interviewing, who don't fundamentally understand people or the role asking route questions, thinking about how much "other" work they have to do and resenting ever minute of it.  No wonder, my first sales coach, Tom used to say; the biggest problem with sales departments is the manager who does not know how to identify true sales people. "They thought they hired John Wayne only to find out it was Woody Allen."

I can't tell you how many times I interview a company who hired the wrong person and he or she failed in the role I find out they hired from the hip and not the head.  I see that type of behavior, specifically in sales recruiting the candidate shows up and looks super strong only to stop short of the finish line. The company, or the hiring manager bought the shiny penny, the creative communication, and the glamor of having 'the name' on the team.

If it is our job to run a profitable company, one who delivers excellent service; then it's also our job to run an operationally efficient company. Bad hires, people who miss the mark, people who are not aligned with the mission and vision, people who lack the work ethic and passion to get it done all lead to operational inefficiency and high cost.

We can not compete with high overhead and operational waste.

We can not compete with average sales people.

We can't compete with inefficient people, systems or tools. 

We can't compete without the right people, in the right roles, doing the right things, in the right way.

If your company carefully vets it's investments of time, money and resources and your people are your largest spend it's time for a change.

It's time to Choose Wisely.

Cost Savings In Recruitment

Is Your Company Maximizing Your Recruitment Effectiveness?  

The world has shifted; the economy has changed- we all need to do more with less.  The U.S. we are now entering into a Global Talent Marketplace. Companies can hire top talent labor cheaper than ever before.  Competitors in your marketplace are popping up all over the globe.  What happens when your competition offers your customers a better solution for less money?  As we slowly crawl out of the recession we enter a brand new age, new business models, a new age of pricing and a new age of service delivery. We all must maximize our effectiveness while minimizing our costs. Going forward one of the ONLY competitive advantages a company will have is the people working in their organizations. 

The U.S. talent market is shrinking while the global talent pool is expanding.  In the next 4-6 years, companies will face the most challenging and tumultuous times in building and retaining their workforce. Your company has choice in recruitment solutions.  You can build your own, In-source it, outsource it, or wing it. Below are some cost saving methods for maximizing your recruitment and retention effectiveness without paying high fees.

1. Benchmark your key contributor talent, clarify the DNA of winner in your company and then use that DNA to validate new hires.  
2. Identify KPI’s for each role
3. Utilize a contingent recruitment workforce – bring in skilled, accountable recruiting talent, ONLY when you need them
4. Eliminate wasted time, effort and money by implementing screening tools at the top of the funnel. 
   
5. Create steps in the recruitment process that bring forth the best and eliminate the rest.
6. If you use assessments do NOT buy them from the publisher, they are selling you their tools they are not helping you select the best tool for your roles, circumstances and culture.
   
7. Use Behavioral and Values based interviewing in the finalist interviews.
8. Have your recruiters trained in selection, retention and performance management so they understand the whole talent life cycle and make better matches.
9. Evaluate your current workforce: what is working, what is not, what needs to change and then hold Managers accountable to make that happen.
   
10. Implement performance management across the board.
11. Tie everyone’s performance and compensation to the company’s profitability.
    
12. Get help in making the final selection of candidates for key roles.
    
13. Make employee engagement a priority.
    
14. Set up futures meetings with your key contributors.
15. Exploit the grapevine.
    
16. Select 1 job board and maximize that relationship.
17. Measure recruitment success.
18. Measure retention success.
19. Monitor steps in the process for new efficiencies.
20. Outsource pieces of the process.
21. In-source pieces of the process.
22. Train your Managers to recruit, select and on-board key contributors and mission critical talent.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Recruitment Process In-Sourcing A Solution For You?

Does the life of your company depend on the people inside?

Are quality service, employee productivity and corporate effectiveness important to your organization’s success?
 
Are you forced to do more with less?
 
Have you experienced frustration and concern that your current recruitment and hiring process is not delivering people who deliver the results you need when you need it?
 
Is your company committed to maximizing your return on your people investment?  
 
If the answer to any of the above questions is yes, Recruitment Process In-Sourcing with KeenHire Talent Management is the solution for you.

Our Premise

We partner with companies serious about thriving in today’s competitive market place by enabling them to maximizing their return on their people investment. We do this by developing and managing a recruitment, hiring and on boarding process that mitigates the risk of a mis-hire and brings forth the best-suited talent for the role and the company. Our work doesn’t stop at the offer; we work with your management team to ensure a smooth transition, effective integration and peak utilization of the new hire’s skills and talents.

Keen’s conscious-hiring process is comprised of 4 key elements
 
1.  Understanding your corporate strategy and creating a workforce assessment and gap analysis – we tie your corporate strategy to your people strategy.
2.   Conducting a deep dive performance based role analysis for each position - we validate the job needs from an outcome, behavioral, value and  competency point of view.
3. Executing a lean recruitment and candidate vetting process – we save your management team time, money and resources and only submit the right match
4. Standardizing On-boarding and creating a customized new hire integration plan for each manager and their new hire – we maximize your team’s ability to leverage this new talent in the shortest possible time period

Today there are many alternative cost saving packaged and component recruitment solutions from RPO to off shore resume aggregation and on line candidate sourcing.  

Imagine working with a company who brings forth the best component offerings and built a process that operates on efficiency, economies of scale and identifying the right fit (cultural, philosophical, competency, character, values), all while maximizing your ability to synthesize your new hires.  

KeenHire Talent Management offers this specific solution and we have many happy customers to show it.  

Candidate’s say, for the 1st time they feel listened to and cared for in the hiring process, whether they get the job or not they are better suited to go out and target the right role for them after participating in the KeenHire process. An effective recruitment and conscious-hiring process amplifies your Employee Value proposition.  

Employer’s are delighted when they show up in an interview and the person sitting across from them is exactly who they said they wanted at the beginning of the project.  A great process saves your people time and effort.   Hiring Managers are thrilled that they are given the tools, material and guidance to get the best out of their new hire early in the employment life cycle.  

KeenHire RPI – top shelf technology, efficient recruitment process, earnest employment branding, solid candidate assessment and effective new hire on-boarding. And there’s more, our highly skilled Recruitment professionals’ trained and certified in Employee Recruitment, Selection and Retention are available to work at your location or ours, it’s your choice. 

We help you put the right person, in the right job, for the right period of time, for the right cost.  

Recruiting: Filling The Talent Pipeline

Filling the Recruiting Pipeline  

Sourcing and Selection are two very different worlds. One puts as many applicants in the pool as possible and the other sorts and selects the best fit for the fulfillment of the positions’ key objectives.  Given there is a War for Talent many companies fear that they can not afford to be highly selective in their recruitment efforts. The reality is while there is a war, there is also a recession which means certain industries are dying and with that is the emergence of talent from hidden sectors. 

If you strategize effectively you will easily attract solid ‘core’ talent from industries that are highly compatible to yours. Yes, you may have to train the candidate to your company, products and services. However if you conduct the hiring process with thoroughness and integrity you hire ONLY the best suitable talent - rather hiring the best suitable experience (which we all know backfires when it’s the wrong ‘fit’). Either way you have to train a newcomer to your firm, so it is your choice whether you want to train and fix bad behaviors or invest in up front industry, product and service training.  

To attract, hire and retain the “right” talent Keep in mind there are now a multitude of cost effective options and alternatives.  If you are choosing to pay a fee, or hire a contract recruiter ensure your recruiter is highly skilled in both search and selection, or consider outsourcing pieces of the processes to firms or people who are highly skilled in a specific area, or make certain that your internal resources have all the tools & training  they need to improve their hiring batting average.

Options for Generating Candidates at the top of the funnel:

A. Hire a Contract Recruiter, a full scale Search Firm or a local Employment Agency

Interviewing & Hiring A Recruitment firm or Professional Recruitment Contractor:
Questions you may want to ask.
1) How many placements have you made in our field/niche/industry/position level?
2) What is your passive candidate strategy? Please outline it.
3) What system are you utilizing to evaluate your candidates strengths, behaviors,and competencies as they compare to our immediate and long term needs for the role?
4) What is your due diligence process? Who pays for that?
5) What is the average tenure of your placements?
6) Will you consider a fee arrangement with a percentage weighted on retention
7) How many customers have you retained for 5+ years?

B. Sourcing Candidates through the Boards & Internet

1) If you using the boards to source candidates – hiring a 3rd party sourcing company might be a prudent option; these companies have armies of people who scour the job boards while we in America are sleeping. The average cost of this service is $1500.00 per search to $2500.00 per month.  Different companies charge based on the deliverable. This emerging industry is rapidly taking their stake in the talent acquisition sector.
           
2) Resume Search Aggregation and Filtering – these are software as a service subscriptions that take your job specifications and pull appropriate resumes from a multitude of job boards. This type of software can save your internal Sourcers or Recruiters hundreds of hours.

3) Posting technology - There is job board and social media posting technology that takes your single job posting and delivers it to hundreds of specialty sites in seconds. Pretty cool!

C. Passive Candidate Acquisition: Social Networking 

1) If you chose this route make sure you are hiring/contracting with a person who has no fear of rejection, is willing and able to make an abundant of outbound calls on a regular basis and who has strong talent in navigating around the internet.

2) Linked in and Face Book are by far two of the most effective ways to find passive talent. 

D. New Fashioned Head hunting

How is your recruiter planning on building the list of who to call? Do they have the resources for list building; will they outsource this function; if so how much will that cost?  There are excellent technology solutions that your recruiters need be using to maximize their efficiency and effectiveness. 

E. Create an EVP and promote the hell out of it

Find out why people work for your company, find out why they stay. Create an Employee Value proposition and promote it on social media, industry sites, internally, to customers, to local colleges and vocational schools, etc. 

F. Pay Referral Bonuses

G. Build Your Internal Recruitment Team to Maximize Your People ROI

Consider implementing B-F with a carefully selected and trained internal recruitment team. The internal team must be evaluated based on hiring metrics, retention, efficiency and value they provide.

The bottom line is make sure you are investing in the right solution for your unique situation.

You Are The Sum Of The 5 People You Spend Your Time With

Sometimes that statement makes me cringe. If that statement is a true one, we all best be very selective with who we chose to call our friend and who we chose to give our time to.

I make friends easily. On planes, on trains, in cars, in bars, in courses, on horses, at lunch, upon a hunch, through my boys, because of my sporting toys..... it seems no matter where I go I come back with new friends. The real question for me to answer is, "How do I feel when I am on my way home from being with these people I am calling friends?".

Do I feel energized, powerful and giddy or am I drained and exhausted? Are my friends and business partners feeding my spirit or sucking the life out of me?  Do they give what they take, or do they just take. 

Do we share values, beliefs and commitments? Or do we share partying and fun over cocktails and gossip?

The naked truth at times hurts. Sometimes even people I have known and loved for a decade need to take a back seat because they are stealing my energy, time and in some cases my spirit. 

One of my new friends and inspirations is a  man named Michael Nila, Michael is the CEO of Guardian Quest. When we met we discussed everything from spiritual matters, leadership, parenting, sex, business and family.  I was sharing with Michael my dilemma of as I get busier and have less time, how selective I need to be with what I do with my time. He says purging is part of life. Sometimes you see people because of the family connection, other times because of a deep bond and a need to be with that person, other times it is to fill in the space or out of obligation.  The key is evaluate, assess, weigh the pros and cons of having certain people in your life.  Sometimes when there are people who I am around out of guilt or fear they limit who else comes into my life and the time I would have to nurture the right relationships is wasted and misused.  WOW, it seems pretty much like the coaching I give to hiring managers and business leaders on choosing their talent wisely.  When the student is ready the teacher appears.

Michael believes that Magic moments are what ties people together and builds foundational bonds. Sharing things that matter, like life training programs, family events, kids sporting games, life losses, charity events, spiritual awakenings and uplifting adventures. He said that the ability to communicate good, bad, happy, sad, real feelings is critical. As he was speaking I kept checking in with myself for how I was interpreting his words. The thought that kept popping up was shared values. Common bonds, common life experiences, aligned beliefs, similar work ethics and missions in life. 

It is a lot like hiring, right?  You are the sum of the 5 people you surround yourself with in business. Are you surrounding yourself with challenging people who will up the ante or are you surrounding yourself with people who are happy just to have a place to call home?

My conversation with Michael was very timely, actually perfect as I plan for 2010.  I chose ideal friendships, and ideal lover, ideal business partners, ideal employees and ideal customers, people of depth, purpose and passion.  People who will call me to be at my best. 

Cha Ching - Ring in the New Year!

Best of Success in 2010

Margo

Stop Jamming A Square Peg Into A Round Hole

As a manager, have you ever had the experience of trying to ‘make’ an employee change, forcing an outcome from an employee to improve their performance or even worse; have you ever attempted to have them work differently by encouraging them to alter their natural work style, values, behaviors, beliefs and personality so they would perform better in their role, or for the betterment of the company?  

As leaders of people, we often have to deal with ourselves to overcome the syndrome of

“I can fix and change people".  As a peak performer in recruitment, for years I found myself placing the best and hiring the rest. As a small business owner, I was hiring 'C' candidates, because they were more affordable and selling myself on the myth that they would be better if someone just helped them and then I expended enormous amounts of my personal effort trying to overcome their ineffectiveness.  My shortsightedness had me saving money on the front end and spending 3 times the savings on the back end. Until I went  through a basic training from Vistage (formerly known as TEC),   I was not present to the profit erosion that these non strategic hiring practices were causing.

Once having my eyes opened, I embarked on a hiring process development journey. I was committed to fixing my problem and I took courses on organizational assessment, behavioral interviewing, top grading, organizational development, personal transformation and executive coaching.  Over the course of a decade I invested $100,000 in mastering 'putting the right people on the bus'.  After much resistance and many breakthroughs, I finally learned the lesson handed down to me from my first mentor.  "People are whole and complete and have everything they need to be successful, as long as you put the right people in the right role." It is your job to Choose Wisely"

There have been many books, articles, lectures and even case studies written on this subject. Companies like General Electric, PepsiCo, Spielberg Productions, DreamWorks, Google, Microsoft, The Limited and more have all publicly stated that a KEY factor to their enormous success was the people they chose to employ in key contributor, mission critical and leadership roles.

The new game in the business of Recruitment Process In-Sourcing

7 Easy Steps To Becoming An Employer Of Choice

Step 1 – Establish Your Employee Value Proposition

 

Tie your employment brand with your business strategy. Understand why people want to work for your organization and develop a program that attracts more ideal candidates through your doors.

 

Recommended Reading: Attracting Perfect Customers: The Power of Strategic Synchronicity, by Stacey Hall and Jan Brogniez.  

 

 

Step 2 – Establish a 'Cracker Jack' Candidate Sourcing Strategy

 

Do the work to find out where your ideal candidates are right now. Where do they hang out? What do they read? What do they do for fun?

 

Include Social Media tools, this means be a proactive social media presence. Have a credible, passionate, authentic person from your company talk to your ideal audience all the time, whether you are hiring or not. Provide value.  Keep ideal candidates coming back for more, get them on your web site, create reasons for website and social media stickiness.

 

Be a talent scout. Enroll your team into scouting for additional contributors and mission critical players. Reward your people for quality recommendations.

 

Hire the right recruitment talent.  Select your partners as wisely as you select your teammates. There are a ton of ‘recruitment’ alternatives in the marketplace. Choose a partner who is committed to your end game and will do a great job surfacing, selecting and assisting you in on-boarding top tier people for your organization.

 

Step 3- Conduct a Role Analysis – Let the job talk.

Define performance criteria before you start searching. Sit down and work through the KPI’s, Core functions and specific Selection Criteria with the key stakeholders impacted by the success or failure of the hire. Predetermine the “who” in who you need to hire. What values do they honor? What is their work ethic? For that matter, what are their ethics? What are the non-negotiable competencies, behaviors and emotional intelligence levels required in the role?

 

Recommended reading: The Truth About Managing People and Nothing but the Truth. Stephen Robbins.

 

Step 4- Establish a hiring process that holds your hiring team accountable for selecting the best and eliminating the rest.

 

Create a process and choose to stick to it. All to often a great process is defined and then a decision maker meets someone who strikes their fancy yet clearly does not meet the selection metrics required. The decision maker calls the shots, ignores the very process they implemented and pulls the trigger only to discover that a slick talker with a good story has bamboozled them into paying way to much money for way too little in return.

 

Step 5 – Begin amplifying the employment brand during the hiring process.