In other words, cutting out layers of employees to save costs without examining where you are going in the long term is going to cost you even more. This short term thinking, unfortunately, is a common approach, particularly in current economic situations. Not only that, but many organizations fail to take a "talent management" approach at all.
What does a talent management approach mean? It means that recruitment, selection and management of your people must be viewed as a business process and it must be tied into your strategic plan. You need to do more than just "count heads," you need to look at each employee, identify their specific talents/capabilities and determine where and how they can contribute to your company as you move forward. Next, you need to forecast what skills are needed for your strategic plan and, if you don't have these skills currently, you need to determine how to develop them and/or bring in an external candidate.
At the same time, the entire process of recruitment must also be more systematic and strategic. It's not as simple as placing an advertisement and shifting through a bundle of resumes. First, you need to determine the job tasks and then conduct a thorough examination of the skills and competencies required. Next, you need to determine if these skillsets are going to be found within your trading territory or if you will have to go further afield in order to find a qualified candidate. This review will help you to determine where and how to market your job opportunity.
Ensuring that internal support structures for the recruitment process are in place is essential to creating a thorough, fair, equitable and transparent recruitment and selection process. This also protects you from any potential human rights complaints or other internal grievances as you will be able to return to your documents and demonstrate the thoroughness of your process. You will need to develop a checklist of skills and then use this as a tool to review each of the resumes. The checklist verifies whether the candidate is a "go/no-go" with respect to the next stage of the process. Once you are ready to move the candidate forward, the next step is to conduct a telephone interview and then follow up with a minimum of one face-to-face interview. These interviews can be with one management individual and/or a panel consisting of people with whom the candidate would work with and/or be supervised by.
A critical element of the interview process is the nature of the interview questions. While there are many questions that are prohibited by human rights legislation, there is also a whole set of interview questions that are just plain useless. For instance, "Tell me about yourself" doesn't give clear enough direction to the candidate regarding what you want to hear from them. A question like this typically results in a rambling answer that is out of focus and doesn't provide any relevant detail.
Inexperienced interviewers also often use what is called "situational interviewing." This method provides the candidate with a situation and asks how they would handle it. The problem is that any candidate who is a good communicator can quickly respond to these scenarios but, in actual fact, they may not have had the experience required.
The most effective interview method is called the "behavioural descriptive" interviewing strategy. This asks the candidate directly about their experience and requires a response that clearly demonstrates how they have managed or completed a task. It is also very effective in helping the interviewer to determine the level of skill and complexity the candidate is exhibiting.
No matter what interview framework is utilized, the interviewers need to be taking notes, rating the candidates and justifying their rationale. These documents then need to be kept for a period of time so that if there is a challenge to the process, the documents can be retrieved and reviewed.
While these challenging economic times may create a larger potential candidate pool, the recruitment and selection process should never be short shifted. Recruiting a new candidate into your employ must continue to be a stringent process that is fair, equitable, transparent and justifiable. In the end, you will be more assured that you will have the right person in the right job at the right time and, also, will be the right fit for your organization culture.
Paul Croteau, managing partner, is known as one of Manitoba's leading executive search professionals. His more than 25 years of experience in the recruitment of senior management and executive leadership professionals are the foundation to his solid reputation for developing a deep understanding of his clients' needs, enabling him to provide exceptional service and successfully meet the complex challenge of matching the right leader to his clients' business needs.
View the Original article