Time for a change, 0% recruitment.

There is something strange…

Take a look at the global talent landscape; there are two major trends that don’t intuitively make much sense:

1. Large scale unemployment. A jobless recovery. Entrenched levels of high unemployment among the young. More than 1.5 billion people – half the global working population – in vulnerable or insecure jobs. See a summary of the latest trends from the ILO in the UK Guardian newspaper: Global unemployment trends 2011 International Labour Organisation

2. A global talent shortage. The number of employers struggling to fill positions is at an all-time high. The global skills shortage is worsening, with more than one-third of companies reporting difficulties filling positions because of a lack of talent. The perceptions about a lack of skilled workers are everywhere. Manpower Group, for instance, reports that many employers surveyed say they have difficulty filling positions because of talent shortages. See the latest manpower global survey http://www.businessinsider.com/manpower-group-survey-q4-2011-10

Who is at Fault?

Employers lay blame with lots of generalisations about: Education; Government policies; Candidates who lack necessary skills and experience; insufficient qualifications; or a lack of soft skills.

Time to Wake Up?

Employers are demanding more of job candidates than ever and in ways that are demonstrably unsuccessful in finding the right person for the job. Either failing to find someone at all, or hiring someone who is then unsuccessful in the role and leaves after a few months, or even worse hangs on in role after role failing to deliver, demotivated and dragging the rest of the organisation down.

An Error of Laziness?

Companies want workers to be able to fill a role right away, without any training or ramp-up time, based on having done that specific job before, or based on academics. Put simply to get the job, you have to already be doing that job, or you have to be loaded up on outmoded academic credentials.

The candidate sourcing and recruitment industry has evolved over the last few decades to fit this desire for the easy route - to provide candidates who match a specific job in this way and then to charge for the sourcing of these individuals with little or no real evaluation of a candidates ability to do the job, or ability to learn to do the job and little or no attention to integration and on-boarding.

An outdated model? Finding people used to be hard work; recruitment companies developed networks and global databases on candidates and charged for the value of this with a % fee based on salary. Recruitment companies grew rich and employers paid for the easy option.

The Price you Pay

The macro impact is simple - a record global talent shortage combined with record global unemployment.

There are many more micro impacts at the company level:

1. Failure to fill critical roles, with the associated business impacts
2. Demotivated and disengaged employees, who find themselves doing the same job with no opportunity for growth and development
3. Staggering costs from mis-hiring, losing significant numbers of new hires, costs distributed across the whole business, wasted recruitment fees, wasted management time, wasted training, delayed projects, disruption to existing employees and teams, the list goes on and the real costs are huge.

Most of all business leaders will recognise and agree with this in some-way. 

Find a Better Way

Some assumption busting:

1. It is easy to find people today than ever before; technology has moved on, the recruitment industry, by and large, has not. How many of you are still paying 15-25% for sourcing candidates and often much more for senior positions? Finding candidates is significantly easier with the power of social media such as LinkedIn. There is little value in providing you with matching resumes, it's low value work, easy to do and there is no need to pay anything for this. 

2. The perfect candidate does not exist; drop the idea of finding a ‘perfect’ candidate based on someone having done exactly the same job before, even if you find this person, they will usually be demotivated and uninspired by doing the same job.

3. Academic grades are irrelevant. Academic credentials have never been a valid predictor of ability. As a predictor of success in role, the validity co-efficient from rating experience and qualifications is just 0.11*. Picking a CV at random while blindfolded would be a more reliable selection method. (*Schmidt & Hunter (1998). The Validity and Utility of Selection Methods in Personnel Psychology Psychological Bulletin, 124, 262-274.)

The Remedies

Discover the power of transferable skills and competencies and the incredible motivation, passion, energy and engagement that you can get from people who fit the values and culture of the organisation and benefit from learning to do the job with just a little training, practice and on-going guidance.

How?

1. Hire Better

Dramatically improve ability to select new hires using valid criteria to assess capability to deliver. 

There are two valid selection tools that are most significant – simulations and interview techniques that assess evidence of relevant competencies and transferable skills. 

Hiring managers need to know how to (and need help to) define their requirements in terms of critical competencies, desired behaviours, values and attitudes.  

Organisations, HR and hiring managers especially, need to create and learn relevant assessment approaches and know how to apply these in assessing transferable skills, values, attitudes and motivations.

 2. Transform Induction

Develop an on-boarding programme. The amount of training that the average new hire gets varies from miniscule to non-existent and much of what does exist includes just basic company induction. 

There are many people out there who could step into jobs with just a bit of training—even recent graduates who don't have much job experience, college students are pursuing more vocationally oriented studies. Follow the example of professional service and accounting firms or law firms that have long duration trainee models at lower costs, so give new workers a longer probationary period—with lower pay—until they get up to speed on the requirements of the job.

3. Dramatically Increase Internal Promotions

Drive enhancements in talent development to promote from within – set aggressive targets for internal promotions and organise work so that employees are given projects that help them learn new skills. Then hire in new employees at lower levels in the organisation at lower cost and deliver on training.

Overall there are many ways to hire more successfully that make it easier to find good people and cheaper too. It’s much better for everyone.

Save yourself organisational pain, time and money and contact us for a no-obligation discussion on how you can implement 0% recruitment fees combined with better selection, on-boarding and talent development.

 

Comments

[true religion outlet]

no man should be judge in his own case – is widely thought to capture a bedrock principle of natural justice and constitutionalism. The U.S. Supreme Court calls it “a mainstay of our system of government” and regularly invokes it in diverse contexts, and the principle has venerable roots in the common law. I will argue that the nemo iudex principle is worse than an outright falsehood; it is a misleading half-truth. Sometimes rulemakers in public law do and should design institutions to respect the value of impartiality that underlies nemo iudex principle.