Recruiting in Excellence

Although they have their roots in an earlier and much simpler time, old fashioned "reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic" remain core competencies for a successful career even in today's technologic and global workplace. A person who is skilled in the 3 R's can acquire, communicate and analyze information effectively, and those capabilities are still critical to successful on-the-job performance. They are also the foundation on which a second tier of equally important core competencies can be built. For recruiters, I call these essential skills the "super R's" of recruiting excellence.

The super 3 R's

The super R's are:

• Rigor: applying analytical skills to sourcing decisions;

  applying analytical skills to sourcing decisions;

• Relevance: applying marketing skills to brand and job advertising; and

  applying marketing skills to brand and job advertising; and

• Relationships: applying sales skills to our interactions with employment prospects.

  applying sales skills to our interactions with employment prospects.

As with the original R's, these super R's are core competencies for successful job performance. In this case, these are prerequisites for winning the War for the Best Talent -- for acquiring the top performers our organizations need to achieve their mission.

Every organization must spend its limited financial resources wisely if it hopes to meet the expectations of shareholders and/or owners. For recruiters, that means we have to avoid the "habit trap" -- using the same, old sources over and over again for every requirement, regardless of their yield. The fact that a source is well known or that it provided good candidate flow in the past does not necessarily make it the best source for our requirements in the present. And, picking the right sources for today's requirements -- the ones that will deliver top quality candidates with the skills we need at a price we can afford -- is one of our most important responsibilities.

How do we make such decisions? The key to making smart sourcing investments is rigorous analysis, and rigorous analysis depends on data. In other words, we have to become expert at:

• researching the characteristics that define and differentiate various sources (e.g., what kinds of candidates visit alternative job centre sites, how long do they stay on those sites, and what services can we use to reach them). These data enable us to make informed judgments about which source to use, when working on a requirement for the first time.

• collecting performance data so that we can evaluate the actual return we achieved on our sourcing investment. We need to establish a generally accepted definition of quality (i.e., one that's agreeable to both recruiters and HR managers) and apply it to the new hires generated by the sources we selected. That assessment of the qualitative outcome can then be compared to the cost of achieving it, and the resulting ROI for each of the sources evaluated to determine which performed best. This finding, in turn, should guide our next investment decision, with its results evaluated the same way, and that process should be repeated for each and every requirement.

  Relevance

   

   

Passive "A" level candidates are, by definition, reluctant job changers. They are almost always employed and, like most human beings, intimidated by the prospect of doing something new. To recruit them, therefore, we have to convince them to change devils -- to move from the devil they know (their current employer, boss and commute) to the devil they don't (our employer, a new boss and a different commute). That level of persuasive power cannot be achieved with a three line classified ad, a recruitment process that treats applicants as cogs in a supply chain or with hiring managers who interview like Attila the Hun.

The only way to sell passive prospects is by creating a powerful consumer experience. This experience encompasses all of the touch points where our organization and its employees interact with candidates during the three sub-processes of recruitment -- sourcing, evaluating and selling candidates. To optimize that experience, we have to:

• determine what factors are most likely to attract top prospects to our organization and motivate them to buy its value proposition as an employer. This information is available from the "A" level performers in the fields for which we are recruiting and who are also already employed by our organization. The best way to acquire it is with the same focus group research techniques that the marketing function uses to determine what consumers want from the products or services they buy.

• use the factors that will motivate top talent to "buy" our employer to tailor the procedures and activities that make up its recruiting process. In other words, we must give "A" level candidates the feel of what it's like to be an employee of the organization by providing a mirror image of that experience in our recruiting process. Further, that mirror image should be developed from an "A" level employee's perspective because that's the caliber of talent we're trying to recruit.

In almost every case, passive "A" level performers expect to be wooed. They want to be given information about an organisation and be sold on it by individuals whom they know and trust. Said another way, what top talent wants is a relationship. In that respect, they are not unlike consumers. Indeed, our colleagues in the sales function have long recognized that the key to arriving at a purchasing decision is CRM -- customer relationship management. It involves a clearly focused strategy for overcoming reluctance and reinforcing perceived benefits among those customers the organization wants most.

Candidate relationship management is not for the faint of heart. It requires a strategic perspective when most organizations are lead by executives focused on day-to-day operations. Yet, it's that big picture vision that ultimately provides real and sustainable strength in the near as well as the long term. To implement it, we must:

• identify prospects who have the potential to make extraordinary hires, but (a) are not yet ready to move from their current position, and/or (b) do not yet buy into our organisation's value proposition as an employer, and/or (c) for whom we do not yet have an appropriate opening. Nevertheless, we proactively seek to locate, contact and sell them on our organisation and the benefits of staying in touch with it.

• use mass 1:1 communications to build on that initial introduction and develop familiarity and trust with each and all of the prospects. Regular e-mail messages should provide professional and career information that the recipients regard as useful and, in return, ask for and gradually collect a file of information describing their occupational capabilities and goals. The net result is that we acquire the insights necessary to pre-qualify candidates, and candidates acquire the insights necessary to be pre-sold on our organization's employment value proposition.

The old fashioned 3 R's are just as relevant in our information economy as they were back in the industrial era, maybe more. But that information economy is now complicated by a labour market with critical shortages among key skill holders and exceptional performers. To survive and prosper in that more demanding environment, we need three additional R's -- the super R's of rigor, relevance, and relationships.

By Peter D. Weddle