Stephanie Klein, president and CEO of the Experience Factor, is a regular columnist for the Denver Business Journal. Her most recent column, reposted here, focuses on attracting top talent.
For many hiring managers, this is the toughest hiring market in 10 years. The time-to-hire metric most recruiters use to gauge their work is expanding beyond comfort. How can this be, when our national unemployment rate is still above 7 percent?
Many labor economists believe the true unemployment rate for candidates with a bachelor of science degree and more than two or three years of experience is actually 3.5 percent. It’s even lower in industries that are growing and rapidly evolving.
Ask any recruiter what the problem is and they’ll tell you that for many jobs, they simply can’t find or attract the right candidates. If you’ve found it difficult to attract the right talent to your organization, consider these five possible ways to improve your hiring effectiveness.
• Focus on the outcomes of the role rather than the person who will do it.
The job boards are filled with positions that focus too narrowly on a set of predetermined education requirements, skills and traits rather than the desired outcomes of the role. Too many job postings list experience requirements interlaced with generic responsibilities and meaningless catchphrases such as “communicate effectively” or “create value.” It’s far more productive to define the significant outcomes and goals of the position, before defining the person and the required skill sets.
• It’s not about you. It’s about attracting top talent in a tight market.
Stop creating job descriptions that have a heavy focus on your company, business model and presence in the marketplace. Hiring is about the talent — their needs, growth and opportunities for growth.
In this respect, recruiting is like sales. Do you have an opportunity that would be a better or superior career opportunity for the candidates you’d like to attract? Superior can be defined by many factors; better commute, promotion, an enlightened CEO or a better manager. Remember, “better” is in the eye of the beholder.
And does the job description creatively express why someone should be interested in learning more? Many companies are confusing their corporate branding with the appropriate sales approach required to attract and secure the right talent.
• Quickly identify the candidate’s primary acceptance criteria.
Somewhere early in the hiring process, create a way to uncover what your candidate would identify as the most important criteria they’d want or need to accept a role. This will enable your team to more quickly evaluate those criteria, and see if they are reasonable for your firm. Having this information also will allow you to tailor your future interviews to address these criteria.
• Improve your hiring IQ.
Though we are through the worst of the Great Recession, most hiring managers aren’t up to speed on how to hire effectively. Many are using old techniques and their gut to interview and gauge incoming talent. Big mistake.
Encourage all managers involved in the hiring process to use a consistent process that includes the ability to sell the candidate about the role. Many managers do a poor job selling the company because they don’t have a lot of time to keep up with competitive job market information, or they’re too burnt out to do it effectively.
Educate your team about the trends; make sure everyone that meets a candidate knows and can articulate why your organization is better. The process of selling innovators, top performers, executives or technologists is less effective if it’s not carefully customized.
• Evaluate your hiring process.
After you hire your next employee, spend time with her after she’s been on board for about two months and ask how you could have done a better job in the hiring process.
Did you miss an opportunity to better prepare her for the role? Could you have explained the opportunity she was being presented with any better? How would she evaluate the hiring process? What did your organization do better than others she interviewed with?
Also, call a candidate who didn’t accept your position and ask them the same questions. Use this information to improve your sourcing, interviewing and hiring process.
Skilled workers aren’t finding compelling reasons to give up their perceived security for a lateral new position. The best companies will evolve their recruiting practices to be more strategic, consultative and sales-oriented if they are to attract the people most likely to help fuel growth and profits.
Stephanie Klein, president and CEO of Experience Factor, a Denver recruiting firm, and chair of the Denver Workforce Investment Board, can be reached at 303-300-6976 or stephanie@www.experiencefactor.com.