CUTTING CORNERS to the best candidate
According to a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of Chief Executive Officers, two-thirds of corporate executives now use a planning cycle of one year or less. Such nearsightedness virtually guarantees that recruiting will be an ad hoc, reactive and often crisis-driven process. Requirements will come in without warning or even adequate information, and be declared mission-critical the moment they arrive. It’s no surprise, therefore, that the CEOs who responded to the survey also said that their greatest business risk (after an economic downturn) was their ability to acquire the talent they needed to accomplish their mission.
Ironically, their own approach to leadership is exacerbating the risk. Without advance notice of staffing requirements, recruiters do not have the time to source prospects from among the passive job seeker population. Without the lead time necessary to build relationships with those prospects, they are often unable to sell them on the value proposition of working for their employer. With a planning cycle only a gnat could love, recruiters have no choice but to limit their candidates to those they can find among active job seekers.
Why does that add to the risk facing corporations today? Because it decreases the range of talent an organization can potentially hire, and it increases the competition for that talent.
- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, active job seekers make up just 16% of the American workforce. Even if you believe that “A” level performers are as well represented in that group as they are among passive job seekers (and not everyone accepts that view), limiting an organization’s recruiting to fewer than one-out-of-every-five workers will inevitably depress its performance over the long run.
- Further, as the majority of employers are now using the shorter planning cycle that forces recruiters to focus on active job seekers, the competition for the best among them has significantly intensified. In essence, 67% of corporate recruiters are now trying to meet their requirements from among just 16% of the workforce population. The demand has remained constant, but the supply has been artificially limited, producing what is now accurately described as a War for Talent.
Yes, I know that sounds a bit hyperbolic. For many organizations, the problem isn’t finding talent; it’s staying on top of the tsunami of resumes that crashes into corporate e-mailboxes these days. This happy plethora of applicants would seem to belie any limitation on available talent. Unfortunately, however, the resume surplus is not evidence of a robust pool of candidates, but rather, the natural byproduct of the ease with which resumes are now submitted online. Full e-mailboxes mean that your employer is hearing from more of the 16% of the workforce who are actively looking for a job, not that it is reaching the other 84% of the workforce who are not.
What can we recruiters do to mitigate the risk this situation poses for our organizations? How can we cut corners to sourcing the best candidates? Consider the following steps:
- Build, communicate with and recruit from an alumni database.As long as a former employee left your organization on good terms, hiring them back provides two key advantages. First, you get someone about whom you know a great deal. They have a track record with your organization that eliminates much of the uncertainty associated with recruiting a new hire, and they can often be hired more quickly because much of your “due diligence” has already been accomplished (the first time you recruited them). Second, you get a “new” employee who has strengthened their potential ability to contribute to your organization by acquiring additional skills and/or experience elsewhere. If effect, their previous employer subsidized their development, and your organization can put that enhanced capability to its advantage.
- Build a database of prospects and establish relationships with them.Prospects are not past or current applicants. They are individuals with whom you have made contact (normally, through networking and employment branding) who may be superior candidates in the future. More often than not, prospects are already employed, and are not looking for a new job. They are the quintessential passive job seeker. They do not make snap decisions about their career, nor do they listen to strangers. To recruit them, therefore, you must first earn their trust and confidence. You may not know exactly when your organization will have an appropriate opening, but if you regularly recruit for top talent in their field, start communicating with them now. It takes time and effort to provide the information, persuasion and reassurance necessary to convince passive candidates to leave the devil they know (their current employer) and join the devil they don’t (your organization).
- Reinvigorate your applicant database. Your applicant database represents a population of job seekers who have already expressed an interest in your employer and about whom you know a great deal. You have a resume or application form on file and, for those who made it beyond the initial screen, you are likely also to have interview notes, assessment test scores and other data. Moreover, since these candidates were not selected to fill the opening for which they originally applied, they have probably gone on to other employment situations where they may have acquired new skills and/or gained additional experience. In effect, they are likely to have become stronger candidates, but the only way for you to know that is to stay in touch with them. Treat your applicant database not as a repository of dead data files, but as a reservoir of living contacts, and nurture those connections with continuous communications. To speed your sourcing, these messages should be both helpful (to pre-sell the recipient) and inquisitive (to keep their record up-to-date in your database).
Short planning cycles in the corporate headquarters can be a problem for recruiters, but only if we let them. There are ways to get ready today for almost any requirement that may arise tomorrow, and now is the time to get started.
Thanks for reading,
Peter
Who is Peter Weddle?
Peter Weddle is a recruiter, HR consultant and business CEO turned author and commentator. Described by The Washington Post as "... a man filled with ingenious ideas," he has earned an international reputation, pioneering concepts in Human Resource leadership and employment. He has authored or edited over two dozen books and been a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, The National Business Employment Weekly and CNN.com. Today, he writes two newsletters that are distributed worldwide and oversees WEDDLE's LLC, a print publisher specializing in the field of human resources. WEDDLE's annual Guides and Directory to job boards are recognized for their accuracy and helpfulness, leading the American Staffing Association to call Weddle the "Zagat of the online employment industry."
© Copyright 2007 WEDDLE's LLC.
|
