Where did the forest go?

How to Gain Perspective When Job Pressure Causes Staffing Professionals to Lose Site of the Fundamentals

By Scott Erker, PhD

Scott Erker, Ph.D., Senior Vice President, DDI's Selection Solutions

At the risk of referencing the much overused analogy – don’t lose site of the forest for the trees – I think it can be used to describe a classic pattern that is emerging in staffing today.  For many organizations, the light is at the end of the tunnel.  Job growth could be on the horizon.  But there are many reasons to believe that the convergence of factors we typically see just before job growth will be compounded by the severity of the recent recession.  Do you see these patterns emerging:

• Recruiting resources are lean due to staff cuts.
• Placement and management of contractors is taking a lot of time.
• Turnover of full-time associates is taking a slight upturn as the incumbent population grows restless and see’s opportunity elsewhere.
• Some areas of the business are starting to create jobs and the demand for new hires is taking more and more time.
• Hiring managers are especially demanding as they’re nervous about hiring the wrong person (exacerbating to poor business unit performance).

I could go on.  At times like these, we should remind ourselves of the foundational elements that lead to successful staffing systems – in good times and bad.  While these items won’t help you in the short term they may help you to prioritize (or shape) your week-to-week activities, which in turn leads to sanity and hopefully, longer–term improvement.

Link Business Goals and Drivers to Talent Selection

On the surface, managers often have similar objectives – for example, growing revenue and increasing profitability are often at the core of most business goals.  However, the means by which managers seek to achieve these objectives can vary widely.  Take, for example, one manager who increases sales goals to generate additional top and bottom line growth, versus another who trims internal costs to drive the same level of bottom line impact.  Both have achieved their business objectives, but through significantly different means.  The requirements for people (e.g., the competencies and skills that define how those objectives will be achieved) and for the two managers are very different.  In the first, the growth goals dictate that people go out and aggressively promote their new offerings and sell to new customers to aggressively achieve an increased revenue objective.  In the second, people must find efficiencies and do more with less.  The way people are hired and promoted in the first manager’s business unit (who promotes strong sales skills) and is very different from the second manager (who promotes cost management skills).  Successful staffing professionals will establish selection criteria that link to the specific manager’s business goals and drivers.  Equally as important, they will have the ability to change their selection practices as the business priorities change.

Utilize Diagnostic Tools to Gather Accurate Information

Once the manager’s business drivers, goals and associated success profiles have been determined, leveraging diagnostics to determine which candidates possess these success criteria is critical.  All diagnostics fall into one of three buckets in the broadest sense – tests, interviews, and simulations (please note that simulations do not need to be complex; they can be as simple as a short role-play or business case exercise).  Assuming interviews are utilized for all jobs (hiring managers typically want to meet those who may become their direct reports, candidates generally want the chance to get to know the people for whom they may be working), the question then becomes when should an organization leverage tests and/or simulations.  The answer relies on two factors, criticality of the position and volume of candidates that apply for the job.

Simulations are often best leveraged for critical jobs, such as sales professionals and managers.  This is because simulations, by their nature, immerse candidates in challenges inherent to the target role, empowering employers to see firsthand how effectively candidates fare when faced with characteristics of the role.  However, they can also be resource intensive and costly, and are thereby best leveraged for lower volume and/or more critical positions.  Tests, on the other hand, are a cost effective means for determining who from amongst a large pool of candidates is likely to succeed in role.  They can often be completed quickly by candidates, and are cost effective for employers.  However, they do not provide the level of information or insight that simulations can offer. 

Given that job criticality and volume of candidates determine the most appropriate diagnostics to leverage, hiring systems often leverage testing and interviews for large volume, low level roles.  Low volume, high criticality roles often leverage interviews and simulations.  High volume, high criticality roles often rely on all three types of instruments; tests to quickly narrow the applicant pool to only the top candidates, then interviews and simulations to gain greater insight into the capabilities of those candidates.

Drive Development and Engagement on the First Day in the New Job

Perhaps the greatest missed opportunity in regard to new hires is the limited extent to which organizations link data gathered during the selection process to development.  This statement applies to both external and internal hires.  Organizations gather a wealth of information related to candidate strengths and deficiencies in comparison to specific job requirements in an effort to make more effective selection decisions.  However, surprisingly few leverage this information to identify the development needs of newly hired associates.  One particularly effective approach for remedying this is to sit down with new hires shortly after they are hired, review their selection system results, reach agreement on strengths and development areas, and plan individual goals, milestones, and actionable steps toward reaching them.  In addition to minimizing inefficiencies that would otherwise occur through guideless trial and error, further benefits of this methodology include the enhanced level of engagement achieved by new hires, as well as the social support they can attain through having the conversation and structured development plan early in their organizational tenure.  This approach can also lead to a reduction in ‘quick quits’ reducing turnover in the first, critical one hundred days of the job.  If you are saying to yourself ‘this is the job of the training department’, I would at least encourage you to provide the training professional and managers with the selection data so that they can take the next step.

The current economic climate has created a tremendous opportunity for HR to add value by re-connecting with line of business partners.  It is easy to forget about the basics when the day-to-day problems can overshadow the need to focus on strengthening a solid foundation.  Successful, sustainable Talent Selection must be grounded in a platform that links to the business drivers of the organization, clearly defines the components of job success, utilizes accurate tools for gathering talent information, and provides new hires with meaningful insight into how they can quickly become successful in their jobs.

A special thanks to Brad Schneider, PhD for his contribution to this article.

Scott Erker, Ph.D., is the Senior Vice President of Selection Solutions for Development Dimensions International. Read more insight from Scott on DDI’s blog Talent Management Intelligence.

Posted by Scott Erker on April 7, 2010. Filed under Human Resources, Recruiting, Thought Leadership. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry