HR HIGHS
Raising the quality of hires is a priority
What differentiates leaders in business from the rest of the pack is the superiority of talent they bring into the fold. A star performer can add three times more value to the business than the average one. At the same time, poor quality of employees can bring down organisational productivity and ultimately affect a company’s ability to compete. It is therefore not just enough to make quick hiring decisions, but critical to find the right talent to meet corporate goa
ls.
Many variables determine quality and the decisive factor for a hiring decision may vary from organisation to organisation. However, taking a re-look at the way you handle recruitment and retention can significantly assist you in finding the right talent to meet organisational goals.
Reassess practices
The first step to making quality hires is to back track on your recruitment practices to find out what is good, what is wrong, and what can be improved. Begin by tracking the quality of recruiters, recruitment tools and the sources used in the hiring process. Analyse them to find out what source produces the best performers, long tenure employees, and bad hires. Adopt best recruiting practices from competitors and other industries to achieve significant results. By the same token, drop all procedures that don’t significantly affect your recruitment process or increase its speed and efficiency.
Identify priorities
Not all men are equal. Neither are jobs. Jobs of varying complexity require individuals of varying capacity and skill. It may be an impossible task to find the perfect fit for every job in the company, so be clear about your recruitment priorities. Identify key jobs and key managers. Concentrate on quality hires for key positions. You will find that having the right men in the most critical slots makes the biggest difference to the success or failure of the organisation.
Look to add value
During the hiring process, we may come across candidates who may be desirable for the company, though not in the current opening. It is a good idea to develop relationship-building programmes with such candidates for future possibilities.
Such programmes can save time and hiring expense while allowing the organisation to zoom in on the right talent for its requirements.
Employees too are a grossly underrated storehouse of talent. Personnel records, the most basic source of information about employees is frequently incomplete or woefully antiquated. Employees grow with the organisation over time. They may acquire new skills and interests or may realign their career goals in a different direction. Yet, much of this information does not get reflected in the personnel records, and as a result, goes unnoticed by the management.
By keeping your employees informed of openings in the organisation through regular employee bulletins and by conducting thorough discussions on their career goals, aspirations and interests on a periodical basis, you can uncover a reliable source of talent to meet new and changing requirements.
Hire for attitude
Hire for attitude, aptitude and ability. Many of the technical skills needed for a new hire are learnt on the job. It is a well known fact that path breaking companies from Microsoft to Google have always leaned towards making hires for their flexibility, problem solving abilities and bottom line smartness rather than for their fancy degrees or years of experience.
People with the right attitude are involved and driven by their work and are more likely to be successful at their jobs than those who have the right qualifications but wrong attitude.
Information
One of the primary impediments to raising quality of hires is poor information management. Although organisations collect mounds of data on candidates, whether it concerns job descriptions, training and education, employment history, special skills or career goals, they seldom use the valuable inputs that such data can provide when making hiring decisions.
Nearly 70 percent of hiring decisions are made ad-hoc, based on the hiring manager’s favourable or unfavourable perception of a candidate. Efficient management of information and streamlined communication can remove much of the hurdles managers face while making quality hires.
The substantial impact that the quality of hire can have on organisational priority has only been recently understood.
With so much emphasis being placed on the recruitment and management of talent, companies too are sensing an urgency to restructure the hiring and decision-making machinery within organisations to improve the value of hires that are brought in.
Clear metrics for competence, a well mapped out ‘success profile’, and a quicker, more efficient and hassle free hiring cycle can help bring in higher quality talent and greater satisfaction with the recruiting process.
BINDU SRIDHAR
faqs@cnkonline.com
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