Improved Practices and Processes

I think most everyone would agree that companies have pursued as hard and as fast as possible improvements in their various practices. Lean, Six Sigma and other practices have been used to make significant improvements. They are designed to improve efficiencies, reduce costs and make it easier for employees to know what to do and how to do it. It has allowed for more employee involvement in some cases and much more.

In all of that the overall goal is for the organization to be in a better position to achieve whatever objectives and goals for which they have planned. In addition, there is a continuous monitoring of all of results to identify the effectiveness and seek additional opportunities.

With all of that in mind, the one area that has gone unchanged and the current practices are found acceptable is how an organization attracts and retains the resources that either create that success, delays it or worse sees failure. The resources are the talent necessary for processes and practices to happen. It can be at any level in an organization that becomes the constraining point. Yet, in a hiring environment where the available talent is almost non-existent, companies are still posting jobs with inadequate information, pursuing practices that are superficial at best and yet are continuing to hope for the best.

When sixty percent of CEOs surveyed by Price Waterhouse Cooper stated they cannot execute their strategic plans due to a lack of the right people, it should indicate there needs to be a change. But, what change is necessary? For most companies it starts with an acknowledgement that their current practices for talent acquisition are not working and need to change.

What needs to change?  When we hear on a daily basis from company leaders that they receive 400-500 resumes per open position yet cannot find qualified people in them, it means there has to be a change in how they attract talent because they are obviously not. When the average tenure for an employee is only 14 months and declining, there has to be a change not only on how to retain people, but more importantly how to find the right people who want to stay and the organization wants them to stay.

When the search firms organizations are using have no better practices than what the organization’s internal practices can provide, they must learn how to partner with a firm that is truly helpful.  Most organizations assume all firms operate the same way with the same practices. While it is understandable why that is widely believed, there are a few firms whose practices are completely different in how they view their clients and the results they achieve for their clients.  A search firm has to be a true subject matter expert providing insights that improve the organizations ability to find the right talent.  They have to have a practice that can identify, attract, qualify, verify and confirm the three dimensions of the position against what the candidate claims.  They have to present the candidates credentials in a manner that provides clear information why the candidate is a fit and qualified.  They have to provide only a few qualified candidates.  A client should not have to do the work the search firm should have to conduct before they present the candidate.  And more.

In order to gain overall improvement in talent attraction, a review of how an organization currently presents itself and how it should present itself in order to attract the scarce talent. Old practices of simply saying, a company is great is what every other company says.

The Department of Labor, by the end of 2013 there will be 6-8 million open professional positions without enough people to fill them.  For an organization to have any hope of success and achieve its objectives and goals they have to be extremely competitive in attracting the talent they need.

Overall, companies have to re-examine:

• What they are saying to attract talent at all levels

• What are the internal practices including what is the skill level of company and corporate recruiters

• What kind of search firm to partner with that provides real value in numerous areas

The area of talent acquisition should be examined as close as other areas for real improvement.  It is the area that provides the resources that will allow all the other improvements that ultimately achieve the success of the organization.